Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Not dead yet!

Just thought I'd make this filler post to let you all know I haven't abandoned this yet. Perhaps like many other of you, I've been dragged to many family outings for kurisumasu, letting them remind me of how ronery and disappoint I am, so yeah. Our immediate family decided to boycott x-mas this year though, so no one got presents for each other, although I did get some money as a present to NEET that much longer which is nice. Overall these get-togethers make me appreciate my room, vidya, and japanese cartoons all the more when I get back so in that sense they are good, as well as all the free food and getting fat as well. Hope you all survived your holiday outings too!

Thursday, December 16, 2010

999 General


So I finally got around to getting to clearing the True End, and all I have to say is what. Really loved this game though and I feel silly for not have played Ever17 yet (writer is the same as this game). Not sure how much I could talk about the game without spoiling it, so all I have to say is if its on your backlog, put it on highest priority! Also, that elevator dialog between June and Junpei made me wet.

Monday, December 13, 2010

つまんな~

So as of December 10th, I've officially withdrew from all my classes at Uni. The way things were going there's no way I was going to pass any of them, so might as well have them appear as nice big "W's" instead of big fat "E's" (F's are too offensive nowadays). I've talked with my advisor about my cool story and such, and recommends if I don't like what I'm doing now, and not what to do exactly, a liberal arts degree might be ideal. She also went through my old community college transcript and also recommended since I took first year Chinese and Japanese there with good grades, that linguistics in asian languages would be a good choice too. I'm not really sure what to think of all this. I feel like if I'm going to go to college, it should be purposeful and a libtard degree seems like a waste of time to me, but at least it'd get that precious piece of paper that is a minimum requirement of doing any non-menial work. Then again I have no desire to work so whats the point. And maybe a linguistics/Japanese major might be cool but I see that as equally worthless as a lib/arts degree for some reason. I do have a strong interest in learning this language to read my VN's, idolm@ster and watch raw animu, and the classes would certainly help, but I also want to learn this on my own and not waste money on tuition. Plus there are other bullshit classes necessary as well. Thinking about this stuff is too stressful, I need to make a portal to Gensokyo and take it easy for eternity. Talking with my adviser though made me feel less like shit for failing though, I was seriously depressed about it the last few weeks

On the bright side, with no current plans for the future and no job, I'm officially a NEET for the unforeseeable, I guess I can finally take it easy, at least while the funds last. I can get quite a bit backlog done now, and further embark on my quest of getting the moonrunes to tell me their secrets. By not going out except only when necessary is nice, even though Christmas is around the corner it hardly feels like it. I'm OK with this, and hope to at least have a lovely dinner with my waifu on that night.

Take it easy guys, and stay dry this winter.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Ketsui and dodonpachi daioujou Now working in Mame

Perhaps if you've been browsing /jp/ in the last hour or so, or keep up with this shit like I do, two famous and arguably the last "manly" bullet hell Cave shmups are now playable in Mame. The sound emulation isn't perfect, so some songs are playing slower/faster than they should be, which is unintentionally awesome sometimes. But other than that they play beautifully. Espgaluda should be following shortly as well.

Enjoy
http://www.mediafire.com/?juh0m233e8ehdmc
Just extract and run the mame.exe, and you're set.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

MuchiMuchi Pork/Pink Sweets confirmed for region free

Pretty soon after my previous post, explaining that Mushifutari and EspgaludaII were the only RF shmups for the xbox360, Cave has just announced, in a somewhat unexpected move, that the upcoming MMP/PS port will be region free as well! Cave has explicitly stated before they wouldn't be doing any RF ports after galuda2, but they appear to be appealing more to overseas fans like us as their Official facebook group might indicate. It all started when they posted this up there:

Some of our fans may be familiar with our upcoming Muchi Muchi Pork/Pink Sweets Japan release. We currently have talks over some of our other Japan-only titles ongoing with overseas publishers, but our producer Asada-san is currently thinking about making the MMP/PS double pack region free. Feel free to send him some feedback here: blog360@mail.cave.co.jp

And has since been confirmed since this article on slowtaku

To which all western shmup fans (myself included, even if I already have a j360) bombarded him with emails pleading to go through with the decision. But basically, although great news, if you read between the lines of their intent, I believe the reason they're doing this is because no western publisher like Aksys (who have brought Deathsmiles here, among other niche titles you guys know of) wants to pick this one up, as its a vertical scrolling game with no redone HD graphics, which is a bit of a turn off to casual western gamers apparently. So in general, with no chance of increased profit of licensing the game for a western release, they'll increase sales by making it more import friendly.

For those unfamiliar with these two titles, check out the PV below



Another, very "interesting" older PV for MMP's arcade release


One last quick note about these game: Both of these titles are not exactly your typical Cave danmaku fare. They are programmed by Yagawa, whom Cave hired when Raizing (Battle Garegga, Armed Police Batrider) went bust, and play very differently from other bullet hells, the biggest is in that they employ a rank system, where basically if you go around shooting everything and collecting every powerup, the game difficulty gets jacked up to a point where its impossible. MMP is not that bad in this regard but Pink Sweets sure is, so it may not be for everyone (personally not too fond of it myself) but they're still fun titles regardless.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Cool Stories and region free

Thought I'd make a cool blog post, but making a really long-winded posts aren't very enjoyable to me. Probably later down the line this week when I get even more depressed. For now, lets just say I'm coming to terms with my life and what I want to do, and its not very good (and will certainly make my parents very disappoint). Its pretty much school related and I'm not enjoying what I'm doing at all, and feel its a waste of time/money/effort to stay in, yet also at the same time if I quit now I'll feel even more like a failure. I can't take it easy at all like this.

Anyways I think some people expressed interest in knowing which shmups for the Xbox360 are region free, so you can know if pirating buying a copy will work on your NTSC-U or PAL console. There is a very handy guide on the shmups forum about owning a Japanese 360, and in there is the list of most every shmups released on the 360 so far. Also, on play-asia they list which regions a certain game will work on if you happen to buy from them, or even if not a good resource on looking up a specific game, STG's or otherwise.

Pretty much in general, all XBLA releases work on any console, and the only two region-free retail disc games are Mushihime-sama futari, and EspgaludaII Black Label (normal edition only), both of which are very excellent games. If there's just one you must get, I'd recommend mushi futari for its slew of many modes that both novices and experts of the genre can enjoy, and overall represents quite possibly Cave's finest work, and a very good modern bullet hell shmup in general. The music is fantastic, the scoring systems in all the modes are fun, and it also features Palm the shota, as well as the delicious no panties wearing Reco. There is a platinum edition that recently came out for it, so its pretty cheap to import it now (~$35). For you fortunate NEETs out there getting SSI money and whatnot, add this game to your list of figures!

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

DDPDFK 360




Just got this game, its amazing. Will do some impressions of all the modes and such later when I have more time. And also, /jp/ still has some remnants of normalfags from their "puddi raid xD" so I think I'm just going to take it easy and sleep.

Friday, November 26, 2010

shmuplog general

Since I've had some nice procrastination time with a double snow day, I thought I'd try to get back into some games I haven't really put enough time in, or trying to improve some old scores I've been wanting to. They all end in failure though, and it makes me feel shitty to be worse at the games than I was before ;_;.

Some goals I've been failing at so far in some games:
  • Trying to 1cc mushi-futari God mode again with a better score
  • 1cc'ing EspgaludaII again
  • Trying to compete in a little score contest for DeathsmilesIIX mode on another forum
 No touhou though, I've long since graduated from those silly hat games ages ago. Although at one point I had the top score for SA extra stage, then some fag beat me. And one day I might try to improve on that, but there's so much else to play. And it doesn't help that dodonpachi daifukkatsu is out now and my copy should be arriving next week. Although its a great thing Cave is porting a ton of their backlog onto the 360, its like a curse too with so many releases per year, you can't invest enough time to get any decent at them. For that reason I might wait on the Pink Sweets/MuchiMuchi pork combo, that's coming out in February.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

shmuperplay.com

In anticipation for the Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu release, and also looking for some better mushi futari BL replays as well, I found this nice french blog where some dude uploads quite a few Cave and other superplay DVD's.
You have to register but its really easy, in the middle right there's a link to do so and even though its in french its easy to understand. (You put in a username and email, and get sent an email with the pw to login there). There may be torrents of these elsewhere but they sure aren't easy to find, and these are hosted on megaupload for easy DDL'ing.

I've been looking for these DVDs for quite a while now and someone conveniently upped quite a few of em, so thought I'd share for anyone else interested!

Here is the PV for DDPDFK, I seriously can't wait for this game to come out. Pity I have so much school crap to take care of around the time I get the game. Makes me wish I could quit it all and take it easy erryday

Friday, November 12, 2010

Cosmic Break

Anyone else try(ing) this game out? Its the last beta weekend of it, (From yesterday to this Sunday) before the game goes retail. For those who don't know what it is, its a mecha-musume and robot action game that plays like a mix of Armored Core and Virtual-On, and like any good robot game has tons of parts to customize your moe-bot with. Sometimes there's threads about it on /jp/ too. My IGN is AppleMecha, so anyone's been playing or thinking about it, feel free to drop me a line. Their website is http://www.cosmicbreak.com/home/

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

ehhh maji

Programming sucks. Had a take home midterm due on saturday, and then a big project due just a few days after that (the project is basically an MSpaint clone). And then next will be the big Tetris project. So for now, everyones favorite, filler!
My instructors face

Monday, November 8, 2010

Fucking xbox360

So I finally have some free time again to bring out the 360 again, and now I have to wait for yet another shitty update, which apparently is a revamped UI for Natal. YOU ARE THE CONTROLLER DERP. I just want to play some real games, namely my precious shmups ;_;
fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu
My setup. Normally play with the stick in my lap though. Cleared some space on my desk to fit that gigantic 21" CRT on there again. People literally leave quality monitors like these out on the streets, giving them away in craigslist ads, to "upgrade" to LCD's. Enough rant, time for some vidya! So what have all you guys been playing recently, besides toohoo?

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Shmupmeet in Seattle

Shmupmeets, or "Shmeets" for short (even more retarded sounding than shmup is!) is when fellow STG connoisseurs get together to play these fine works of gaming art, and/or discuss how delicious Seseri and Reco are. Mostly these are done at someones house, but in the very rare instance an arcade in the western side of the world should have some shmups, they make ideal locations too. Fortunately for me, living in the greater part of Seattle there has been a certain import/retro game store called the Pink Gorilla that opened up a little arcade in the back of their store for about half a year, and the owner happens to be a fan of STGs! The meetups have started not too long ago, and for our next one we got a snazzy flier:

This will be our 3rd meet now, and since the 2nd one we've been doing a tournament where you earn points in ongoing meets, although its just for fun with no prizes for winners or anything like that yet.

These have really been a 'blast' to attend, as there are some top-notch games and candy cabinets to play them on. Thanks to an anonymous arcade collector, and contributions of other attendees we've had the following games at previous meets:
  • Dodonpachi (Daifukkatsu, Daioujou White Label, Dodonpachi)
  • Espgaluda (1 and 2)
  • Armed Police Batrider
  • Muchimuchi Pork
  • Pink Sweets
  • Ibara Black Label (incredibly rare game, extremely fun too, has a touhou-like grazing system)
  • Dangun Feveron
  • Raiden Fighters Jet
And a lot more! For their current games list you can visit their fb fanpage here, and the thread on the shmups forum here. And now for some pictures of previous meets:

MuchiMuchi Pork

DDP DOJ

7 candy cabs, and more being worked on now! This is the current setup

One of our nakama's owning up DFK (got his first Cave 1CC on this)

If you want to see more photo's, check the links above for the rest of the pictures. If anyone actually lives around here, by all means come by! It's not a very hikki thing to do, but think of it like a /jp/ meetup minus the trumpets.

Friday, November 5, 2010

Hello World

Greetings fellow blogoroids and/or /jp/ fellows. I'll be posting content mostly related to shmups mostly, probably just play a bunch once I tate my monitor once again, and post scores/screens of whatever I'm playing. Or whatever else I feel like, such as animu, other games, and hikikomori / general. Blogging ho!