Official Pink Sweets -Ibara Sorekara- thread (renamed)

EOJ · Post by **EOJ** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 6:39 pm

Icarus wrote:FCUK. Something tells me I should have sprung for that when I had the chance. -_-;;
Thanks for the info. Back to waiting...

New hope for ya:

http://page2.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/b81470655

Starts at 10,000yen. Comes with the original instructions, move strip, marquee and box.

Post by **Icarus** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 6:49 pm

Does it come with the midget monitor as well? (￣▽￣)
Thanks for the heads-up! That's mine if it stays at a decent price.

EOJ · Post by **EOJ** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 6:51 pm

Haha, no, the guy makes a point to say that the harness and mini LCD monitor are not included. Looks pretty cool though.

And yeah, this one could end at a good price. I think it's the first PS board I've seen on YJ that's started at a low price (in other words, a real auction!).
Good luck at it.

Post by **Icarus** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 6:59 pm

Yeah, first one I've seen as well. I have a feeling some of the lurkers on this forum now have their eyes on it as well. -_-;;
If I get it though, I'll be taking this game apart after STGT.
And then the nice (long) wait for an affordable MMPork! begins.

Twiddle · Post by **Twiddle** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 7:06 pm

I'd like to know exactly what's wrong with the rank system. Regular medals seem to be avoided like the plague in normal runs.

EOJ · Post by **EOJ** » Fri Sep 14, 2007 7:09 pm

Collecting medals, rose hips, and items jacks the rank up pretty bad, and dying doesn't seem to lower it as much as a death in Ibara does. Trying to medal past Stage 5 is really hard (not impossible, but hard). No one here with the game has managed to do it yet.

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 6:12 pm

pink sweets is a pretty brutal game. in a lot of ways, i kinda see it as the anti-ibara. maybe it's to do with how badly ibara flopped, i dunno, but a lot of mechanics are very different. no score based extends, no bomb fragments, medals fall down the screen at the same rate regardless of rank, etc. but changing so much also brings a new set of problems. the two that really bug me are when you die, you don't spew out any power-ups/weapons. and when you're hit by a bullet or whatever, you take soooo long to animate your death and respawn on screen that unless you have a medal in the top third of the screen, you'll lose the chain. ultimately, 1 death at high rank in the wrong place can make it impossible to continue, and you'll lose the rest of your lives in no time.

more new vids from ger:
http://www2.dokidoki.ne.jp/ayame/trash.htm

zinger · Post by **zinger** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 6:44 pm

Pink Sweets was even more unpopular though, AFAIK.

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 6:51 pm

i wasn't saying it was successful

ibara, pink sweets, and ibara black label all pretty much flopped. maybe cave fanboys in the east are just as open-minded as cave fanboys in the west?

their loss really. normal ibara especially.

EDIT: i think muchi muchi pork continues this trend, with yagawa moving into a more "cave-style" game. not sure if this game has done more money or not...

EOJ · Post by **EOJ** » Sat Sep 15, 2007 9:53 pm

jpj wrote: EDIT: i think muchi muchi pork continues this trend, with yagawa moving into a more "cave-style" game. not sure if this game has done more money or not...

It seems more popular than Ibara or PS. Probably due to the more Cave-y scoring.

IBL seems to be liked by the small number of people in Japan who play it. Problem is very few arcades in Japan have one, so it never got a wide audience. Typical problem with Black Label print runs.

ill6 · Post by **ill6** » Sun Sep 16, 2007 5:59 am

I got PS the other week and while I have not had much chance to play it cos I have been out of the country I thought its probably a pretty cool game.

The first impressions were that it would take a fair few goes at it to really get into it and it does not have the immediate stickiness of other recent Cave from either department...

That said it is as if Cave wanted to do everything possible to discourage you to sit down and play it. I am sure its not deliberate but when I opened it up my thought process was:

- WOW - HORRIBLE poster with those girls on...
- Erm - This POP and art work is looking pretty shitty too... Still, lets power it up and look at the attract....
- Oh - those tin toys look completely shit hmm... Can't see the connection to the poster and artwork... Still lets put in Y100...
- Oh wow - that music is very shit!!!
- On the plus side the ships look pretty cool and the backgrounds are nice but they don't seem to go with the enemies and all the girls look good as before in Ibara.... Hmm

Of course if you buy a board you persevere somewhat and get past all of this but my point is...

I think Cave could have released EXACTLY the same game mechanics with a different THEME (i.e. get rid of the tin toys and bolt on afterthough cutsey theme) and a lot more people would give it a chance. I don't think I would persevere if I didn't own it.

The bug wouldn't help either.

Post by **Dave_K.** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 3:13 am

ill6 wrote:Of course if you buy a board you persevere somewhat and get past all of this but my point is...

On the surface it doesn't make much sense, but play it for a week or so and things will start to fall into place. Its intended to be campy. I absolutely love the music now, and find it so fitting. I describe this game as a 5 year old girl kicking you in the nuts....its cute yet brutal. Kinda hard to portray this without being campy.

Zebra Airforce · Post by **Zebra Airforce** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 3:58 am

I don't understand why people don't like the music. I think this game has a really cool soundtrack!

Icarus: If you get it, post some videos! I want to see this game played well for once

Post by **Dave_K.** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 5:42 am

Zebra Airforce wrote: Icarus: If you get it, post some videos! I want to see this game played well for once

Seconded! I've been waiting for Icarus to pick this up and give it much needed attention. We need a real strategy thread.

Post by **Icarus** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 8:50 am

1) There was a bidwar 24hr ago while I was asleep, and the price of the PCB EOJ pointed me to has shot up to roughly what I was willing to pay for it. -_-;;
I'll keep an eye on it but I'm not optimistic about the end price come end of auction.

2) I still cannot capture from my supergun yet. The problem I was having before has not been resolved yet.

EOJ · Post by **EOJ** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 8:59 am

Icarus wrote:1) There was a bidwar 24hr ago while I was asleep, and the price of the PCB EOJ pointed me to has shot up to roughly what I was willing to pay for it. -_-;;
I'll keep an eye on it but I'm not optimistic about the end price come end of auction.

Interesting that that bid war was comprised of a few Japanese bidders, no bidding services involved. If you're only willing to pay around 50,000yen for it, I'm not sure when you'll be able to buy it.

Post by **Icarus** » Mon Sep 17, 2007 9:15 am

Depends on whether or not it stays at this price come end of auction. I'll probably go for it regardless, but I'm not paying more than the price for the other PCB that's on the list for it.

Heck, if by some miracle this ends at 60-65k, I'll be quite happy.

And apparently, me being interested in buying the game equates to "replays of game being played properly" and "a real strategy thread" appearing, which is something I find quite comical.

ill6 · Post by **ill6** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 9:33 pm

Dave_K. wrote:
ill6 wrote:Of course if you buy a board you persevere somewhat and get past all of this but my point is...
On the surface it doesn't make much sense, but play it for a week or so and things will start to fall into place. Its intended to be campy. I absolutely love the music now, and find it so fitting. I describe this game as a 5 year old girl kicking you in the nuts....its cute yet brutal. Kinda hard to portray this without being campy.

Yeah - I was saying that they seemed todo everything possible to deter you from playing it in the first place...

Having given it a bit of a go I would say that it seems like a *very good* game. Certainly prefer it to Ibara (certainly easier!) and it has plenty of Raizing depth... Loving it; shame that it will probably end up the least played Cave release in recent years.

Post by **Dave_K.** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 6:11 pm

EOJ wrote:Alright, I asked him about the DVD and some other things. Now we just have to wait for the reply...

No response from Galford? Did you ask if we can pay him for a copy?

His last blog entry on 9/18 says something about getting some more free time to work on PS, but getting quite frustrated at the random freeze/crash bug of the original board.

EOJ · Post by **EOJ** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 7:31 pm

Dave_K. wrote:
No response from Galford? Did you ask if we can pay him for a copy?

Nope, nothing. Yes, I asked if I could pay for a copy. He does not seem interested.

Post by **Dave_K.** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 4:13 pm

Didn't want to clutter up the high-score thread with this, so thought I'd continue the discussion here. Can someone confirm what test you can do to confirm if you have the bug or fixed version on PS?

Icarus or EOJ, did either of you confirm getting the original bug version board?

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 6:05 pm

apparently it's getting five lives in stock. easiest way to test that would be setting up the board with 4 lives per credit, and no-missing up to stage 3, getting a 1-up from the tank or the midboss.

and i think the bugged version crashes a lot at random intervals.

EOJ · Post by **EOJ** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 6:38 pm

jpj wrote:apparently it's getting five lives in stock. easiest way to test that would be setting up the board with 4 lives per credit, and no-missing up to stage 3, getting a 1-up from the tank or the midboss.

I used to think this, but I tried doing this (set the extra lives to 4, got a 1UP, then died and one life was subtracted) with my new board and it worked just like it did on my old board. If what Mlejazz says is correct, all you need to do is go into Score Attack mode and die once. If a life is subtracted from the stock, you have the fixed version. If it isn't, and you have infinite lives, you have the original version.

To test for the infinite lives bug in the actual game, it seems you need to start with the default 2 spare lives, and get 3 1UPs in a row without dying, then die. If you don't lose any from your stock then you have the original version.

The original version only crashes when the infinite lives bug has been triggered and you do stuff to jack up the rank.

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 6:41 pm

ah i see. has your second copy turned yet, and is it first or 2nd version?

EOJ · Post by **EOJ** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 6:43 pm

jpj wrote:has your second copy turned yet, and is it first or 2nd version?

EOJ wrote: I used to think this, but I tried doing this (set the extra lives to 4, got a 1UP, then died and one life was subtracted) with my new board and it worked just like it did on my old board.

So yeah, it's exactly the same as my first board, and seems to be the original version.

Post by **Dave_K.** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 6:53 pm

EOJ wrote:If what Mlejazz says is correct, all you need to do is go into Score Attack mode and die once. If a life is subtracted from the stock, you have the fixed version. If it isn't, and you have infinite lives, you have the original version.

This does not make sense. Score Attack is supposed to be a timed run with infinite lives, just like Dangun Feveron's Score Attack mode. Mine does not subtract any lives in SA mode, and I'm sure mine is the fixed one from Fujita.

Twiddle · Post by **Twiddle** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 6:55 pm

There's a reserve bonus, so there's probably a point to limited lives.

EOJ · Post by **EOJ** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 6:57 pm

Dave_K. wrote: This does not make sense. Score Attack is supposed to be a timed run with infinite lives, just like Dangun Feveron's Score Attack mode. Mine does not subtract any lives in SA mode, and I'm sure mine is the fixed one from Fujita.

Why are you so sure? If you bomb the trees in the first stage and get birds, that's also supposed to show you have the first version.

And if they took out the in-game reset code, as MleJazz said, then they would NEED to make Score attack no longer be "infinite lives" based, as there would no longer be a way to exit out of it other than to sit there and wait for the time to go down, which would be a silly thing to do in an arcade setting.

Anyway, if you really want to know FOR SURE, you need to get 3 lives in a row on defaults in normal mode, and then die. Then you'll get a clear answer.

Twiddle · Post by **Twiddle** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 6:59 pm

Nope, the reserve bonus is for minutes.

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 7:20 pm

sorry dude, i sometimes skim a lot of your posts.

okay, so i get the trees on stage 1, and have infinite lives on score attack, so this is allegedly an original version?

so basically, me, dave, twe, and icarus should try to get three 1-ups in a row without dying. and after one of us has done that, we can confirm it.

what i don't understand is why they would take out the reset code (it's awesome), and why alter the score attack mode?