shmups.system11.org

I kind of like the slowdown during the boss explosions, it makes them more dramatic.

That slowdown is intentional, you know, and only really appears in the GC version.

Ikaruga is up on partnerNet as of this morning, (a 49.04 mb download), I wonder if this means it will be out soon? I've seen it listed as 1/15/2008 release..
I grabbed some screens of a couple menus, the leaderboard and downloadable replay stuff is nice along with the video and hud settings.

These jpg's are pretty compressed but it looks excellent in motion, runs with antialiasing turned on also. I might grab some video but afterall it's just Ikaruga

http://i15.tinypic.com/6x8qbfm.jpg
http://i14.tinypic.com/6uq4okg.jpg
http://i19.tinypic.com/815v1gp.jpg
http://i9.tinypic.com/6q2qmvt.jpg
http://i17.tinypic.com/7ymd508.jpg
http://i2.tinypic.com/6tm6hip.jpg
http://i5.tinypic.com/6z5x3xe.jpg

thanks!

16:10 support as well, nice

Yeah, 16:10 support is pretty cool indeed. Also the option to download replay files.

I too played it (also played REZ and the XBLA version of Trigger Heart Exelica ), but I don't really like talking about partner.net XBLA games cuz everyone that has access to partner.net are bound to some kind of N.D.A. preventing them from talking about it.

Sometimes it really sucks to be sitting on something without being able to talk about it. I know that if I were to take screenshots and videos of partner.net stuff, I would get fired on the spot.

Oh and even if it's up now on partner.net, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's comin out soon.

@genetik
Did they enhance the textures in any way? Added details or changed colours?
@kemical
Thanks for the links, hope you don't get into trouble for that. And yeah, gameplay video would be great

I will buy it for sure to show my support to Treasure, but I still think I will prefer playing on my Dreamcast with a TATE CRT and with my Saturn pad hooked up. Everyone with a 360 should buy it and any good Shmups that comes along. If the games don't sell, they will stop porting them. Since the 360 is not doing well in Japan, they must really be counting on shmups fan located outside Japan.

The worst thing about any shmups that will eventually be coming to the Xbox 360 is the crappy d-pad. I know that I can hook up a HORI stick, but I'm better with a Saturn pad or something that feels like it.

More Ika, looks pretty:-)

http://www.gamersyde.com/news_5719_en.html

After seeing how nicely they handled Xevious, I'm not so worried by the yoko format. I think this is great how a first-rate modern shmup will get such wide exposure.

The pad is a bit of a worry isn't it. I have a 360 pad hooked up to my pc and when I use it in MAME I sometimes feel like i'm fighting against the d-pad as much as i'm fighting against the game.

Thats my excuse and i'm sticking to it.

Absolutely, that's an issue. The only solution currently is the Hori stick, and most people will have no idea. The hori stick is terrific, though.

Maybe the release of Ikaruga will ecourage some 3rd party to release a proper joypad with a proper d-pad for the 360. Well, at least in Japan maybe... I have to say though, the d-pad on the later 360s are better than the early models.

I don't own a 360 but can you use USB controllers on it?

Hmmm... I should give this a try. It's certainly true that the Hori stick works via USB port.

MMMMM. Do you own any other XBLA game?

Oh yeah Kotaku linked us:

http://kotaku.com/341897/ikaruga-coming ... ease-hurry

Yeah, I'll test it out tonight. Spadgy and I are going to do a quick overview/review of downloadable shmups. It would be nice to have a decent pad for the XBLA games.



Very cool.

OK, tried it, and my USB controllers don't work on the 360. That's a shame.

Third party 360 controllers have to licensed or they won't work.

As far as I know there is no Xbox 360 controllers that wasn't licensed by Microsoft. They're locking out anything not licensed. Thats why there's so few third party stuff. So it's impossible to find a off the shelve usb controller that works with the 360. This is also why there's not one usb adapter like PS2 to USB, Saturn to USB...

Someone has to make a controller that has a nice d-pad and have it licensed by Microsoft, otherwise, shmuping and 2d fighting on pad will kinda suck.

Looks... Upscaled. Kinda surprised it wouldn't just be native.

Trigger Heart Exelica is up on Partnernet too. Looks like we may be getting both games really, really soon.

Wow this is the first 360 game I've seen that has 16:10 ratio support.
Glad to finally see some quality XBLA ports, I've been waiting forever.

Trigger has been up for a long, long time. It's not because it's there that it means it will be out soon. I've seen games 6-7 months before they hit XBLA.

I don't know how to handle the horrible pad, either. And the Hori stick is pretty bad, too.

Well, you'll get used to anything after a while. SnapDragon came 3rd in the NetRanking for the Gamecube version... playing only with the analog stick.

Really? I know it's not a first-rate stick, but as someone who usually uses a pad, I'm really happy with it.

I can't remember if I mentioned it earlier, but the later iterations of the 360 d-pad are a lot better than the earlier releases.

To be honest, I have a launch white controller, a black Elite one, an Halo one and I can't tell the difference between their d-pads.

Its also worth mentioning that Ikaruga is not bad at all played with the analog stick. There isn't much precision bullet movement or squeezing through patterns like there is in, say, Cave games. You might need to use the d-pad in the crates section of 2, or perhaps chapter 3, but once you memorize the game (which is inevitable if you intend to score at all) the analog stick works great. It and Gradius V are the only shmups i can reliably play with the analog stick of the standard controller for those systems (PS2 and GC)

I actually preferred using the GC analog over the dreamcast agetec stick.