shmups.system11.org

Well that's dumb.... I thought I had found the perfect mode .

Well just drop the last "1" and you are all set!

It's the forgiving chaining that turned me on at first, I like that your counter and total bonus ticks away rather than just saying haha fuck you. At first I liked 1.5 novice because the chain bar depletes super slow, but now that I've put some time in it's TOO slow, it's trivial to hold a chain through a stage once you've done it once or twice, and of course you just don't get that rush when all the patterns are neutered.

I can respect that 1.5 is the natural evolution of the DDP and DOJ system, and rewards truly fantastic play even further, it's just... I'm a big baby and it's too much.

edit: Just to give some perspective as to how depressingly bad at scoring I am in 1.5, and why I hate it, I did my first normal 1.5 run since probably the day I got the game a month ago, after I made the above original post. A-strong, 1-all, final score: 1.5 billion. My best first loop novice run, just for the sake of comparing to a run with no chain breaks, is a little over 200 billion. I guess there's just something to be said for the illusion of not having such an astronomical gap between crap scoring and good scoring, even though it's all mental. At least in DOJ I could chain smaller portions and still get 5 or 10 million here and there with the bee scoring system.

The birthday fairy dropped this on my table this morning and I have put in A few credits on some of the modes. Very positive impressions so far!

It would be interesting to know how much sales Cave expects to see this as 'profitable', or how many would be needed for it to be 'success'.

According to this link, deathsmiles sold 182,970 copies (not too bad in my opinion), and less than third of the sales were from japan. At least this should prove that it definitely helps to publish on other continents as well.

The numbers on madeupchartz are bullshit. Especially the numbers for sold games. They pull them out of their ass (this is their secret formula).
The only thing that website is good for is historic numbers of hardware sales (not their current weekly numbers, only old ones AFTER they have been retroactively adjusted by using data from real market research companies and console manufacturers).

Wrong, they are not made from thin air, instead they are estimates from small retail samples. It may be slightly better than pulling them out of your ass.

Since publishers don't disclose their sales this is pretty much all we can have. I know that at least one retail game having reasonably accurate sales presented there, due to fact that I had friend working on that game, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the numbers there are way off.

PS. I wonder why you call yourself "friendly"?

Calling 5 stores accross the globe is not a reasonable sample size to determine anything, and is basically the same as making things up (which anyone who has studied even a single semester of business administration will confirm). That is why madeupchartz's software sales numbers (especially for niche titles from small publishers) are often off by 50% and more. There is a very good reason why they don't disclose how they actually come up with their numbers (including their sample size, sources, methodology): Because then everyone would instantly realize that they are about as accurate as asking a Magic 8-Ball, except for the times they get sales data from actual research companies. For instance, the only case in which they have reliable numbers for Japan is when they get them from Media Create (via Famitsu). Which of course they never list as a reference when they publish "their own" weekly numbers. And thus you never know when one of their numbers is based on reliable data or made up.

So, did DeathSmiles sell well? My Magic 8-Ball says "Signs point to yes".


Because I'm a very friendly person. Instead of giving you an explanation, an unfriendly person would simply have written: "You are an idiot for quoting madeupchartz".

Guys sorry I skimmed 36 pages briefly but maybe someone can just answer--

I know I can run the UK PAL release on my US 360, but will the video display correctly? Will it be running in a window or something?

No. High definition has put an end to bordered visuals in games. Although I'm pretty sure that it was Europe that had to put up with borders as a result of sub-par NTSC resolution in the SD days and not the other way around.

suweet! order placed! Thank you

Thanks, interesting.

But what I really wonder is that whether cave is happy with the sales of their xbox360 titles.
Because I am hoping they will keep supporting the platform. Articles have said they have had some success but hardly anything else.

Irrespective of what he posted the sales and people's satisfaction with them is down to the publishers (in this case Rising Star Games).

Did DS and DFk sell "well enough"? who knows. RSG have committed to the release of AKS.... I suspect the sales will be 'moderate'. Is moderate enough to justify further discussions with Cave regarding localisation?...... the money and the numbers will tell... Sadly my feeling is that it won't.

I see Rising Star and XSeed as the kind of companies willing to localize a few games they know they're going to take a loss on. DFK PAL has performed pretty miserably, but they're nonetheless sticking with Akai Katana.

That doesn't make any sense. Care to back this up?

It's a personal opinion, not a statement of fact. I think I agree with it myself - honestly I doubt Rising Star would've gone through so much effort to get the fixed OST discs for Deathsmiles or even publish it to begin with if they were anything but "the kind of companies willing to localize a few games they know they're going to take a loss on" in some sense.

As for the second part,

Would've performed better if they didn't cock up the release in Australia. KOF XIII had no such issues and it's not even meant to be out yet (while I'm seeing it in stores a week before its official release).

Yes. Every part of PAL except UK got fucked in the ass.
It's not unexpected that a game doesn't sell well if you push back the release date twice (on the release days themselves) and then don't even send out enough copies for them to be readily around.
I've heard from a lot of people that getting DFK in country was a huge hassle. That shouldn't be, considering how close to release this is.

Oh yeah, KoF XIII apparently got fucked up over here too.
The biggest store in sweden currently stocks 4. This is less than two weeks after release...

Does anyone know if there is a general DDP DFK or Resurrection strategy guide? I'm having some trouble with the hidden route. Even when I seemingly destroy the oil tanks before the tanks do, and even when I collect all of the bees, it appears that I access the hidden route only about half of the time. Am I missing something? I'd like to be able to do this more consistently to avoid having to restart in the beginning.

this shop over here has it listed as a FPS so it might sell slightly better here

I'd be surprised any company would release a game thinking they were going to make a loss on it. RSG obviously thought there was a market for these games over here, and they were right. Fixing the Deathsmiles OST if anything proves this - if they had it written off as a loss why bother replacing the discs? Why release DFK?

I was wondering if the opinion was based on an interview or something. I remember reading about the guy at Triangle Service not having enough money to live on whilst working on one of those Dreamcast shmups... It's very idealistic.

Whatever, I think Akai Katana is more of a safe bet. Giant HD battleships in 16:9 will win over the masses.

Back on topic: just like the Japanese release I played this a lot for a couple of weeks (mainly BL), but now I just can't face it. Too many frills.

Rising Star and XSeed (and other similar companies) are largely made up of fanboys, and in a few cases they've clearly been happy to localize games that would excite and please fellow fans, even if the market for them was very small. Look at how long Atlus committed to Sting's infamously unmarketable RPGs.

Of course, they can't always be like this--XSeed plainly stated that they didn't localize Game Center CX 2 because the original was pirated so heavily.

Did someone at Rising Star Games or CAVE tell you this or are you making shit up?.

I mean, look at how fast it dropped to nearly half price.

Well when it gets released in countries other than the UK then you might see a sales increase.

There are still copies of Deathsmiles on the shelf here - what happened with DFK huh RSG?? Why did GAME drop it in Australia? Why is JB-Hifi not selling it like they are selling DS??

the entire world feels the daifukkatsu meh

Holy crap BL is tough! Infact if it wasn't for the autobomb then 1.5 would be really tough as well. It is certainly doable and with practise I can see a 1cc of the first loop without too much effort, but there are a lot of patterns and a hell of a lot over overlaying nasty shit that cross each other diagonally.

I am really enjoying the graphical style of this after having spent a fair bit of time playing DS and Futari. Nice to go back to some badass spaceships and neon spray.

I also think that this is the first time that I will enjoy a chaining mechanic due to the timing window.

Anyone up to doing a guide in the strategy section detailing the differences between every mode?

I think any niche game released in the last couple of months is doomed for failure. Rayman Origins only sold 50k in the 1st month in the US. That game got vastly more PR than DFK so I shudder to think of how DFK sold. Everyone is too busy putting hours into COD, DS, Skyrim etc to bother picking something like RO or DFK up until its at bargin bin price. Those who dont even know about DFK will probably never know since then game isnt displayed on the XBL marketplace.

Still im grateful to RSG for localising DFK. Im sure they knew what they were getting themselves into. My guess is that they originally wanted to release it during late summer and with Akia planned for next year was put between a rock and a hard place.

Maybe you are answering your own question. How do you know the Deathsmiles sitting on the shelves haven't been sitting there for ages ? Australia is a tiny market comparitively speaking, the effort to get the games on shelves against the number of possible sales is unlikely to be significant. Besides why would you buy it at retail in Australia anyway ??? Pay twice as much and wait for a delayed release if it ever comes... no thanks.

Because importing (and/or online purchases) isn't an option for some.

If you register your game with rising star games, you can download a small guide from their website, but it mostly gives tips for scoring.
For the actual secret routes, only info I found was at the xbox360 achievements.org.
Strategy section has something about the black label, probably rest too but I havent bothered to search yet.

And about the tanks, all you have to really do is to destroy the silos before tanks hit them. It seems at the moment that I get to secret area every time I do that.