Shmup Related Questions That Don't Deserve a Thread

[AntiFritz]

1. I heard that there are quite a few 360 cave games that let you mix and match the ingame soundtrack using both the normal soundtrack and arrange soundtrack; which 360 ports let you do that, and how would you go about doing so?

Dododnpachi Daifukkatsu 1.5 does if you have the black label dlc. I don't know about the black label retail version but I suspect they included the 1.5 soundtrack as well.

[hail good sir]

Mushi HD lets you do it too, it's somewhere in the sound options. You can set which stage music you want, and which boss music you want, for arcade, arrange, and I would assume 1.5 but still haven't played it.

[Furry Fox Jet Pilot]

I have 2 questions:
1) In Strikers 1945, how do you trigger the funny dancing alien and weird guy in a trenchcoat on the Moon Stage (Stage 6), and does it have any significance at all?

2)What is the meaning of Raiden III's rather strange ending, with the fairy?

[Master O]

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/aerofighters/aero3.htm

In Aero Fighters 3, how do you trigger the Darius boss parody? The above link mentions it, but never says how to trigger it.

[ACSeraph]

There's a copy of Ibara sitting in a glass case in my local mom and pop gamestore for 9800 yen. I'm tempted to buy it, but that's a lot of cash and I'm still hoping we will eventually see a modern port. Also I don't really like vanilla pink sweets, just arrange mode, so would I even like Ibara? I like a lot of the other Yagawa stuff I've played though...

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Try it out in MAME first - it runs pretty much flawlessly, both the vanilla and black label variants.

[trap15]

It isn't flawless in MAME, the slowdown is hilariously wrong. The PS2 port is sadly only slightly better in that regard, and has the additional issue of looking strangely blurry.

[Jeneki]

In Strikers 1945, how do you trigger the funny dancing alien and weird guy in a trenchcoat on the Moon Stage (Stage 6), and does it have any significance at all?

The boss you get in that section is based on your plane's position on the screen. At least, that's how it was described in the Strikers episode of STG Weekly.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

It isn't flawless in MAME, the slowdown is hilariously wrong. The PS2 port is sadly only slightly better in that regard, and has the additional issue of looking strangely blurry.

Oh, that's too bad. I'd been told it was a pretty good way of playing the game, but I didn't realize the PS2 port wasn't much better. At any rate it works well enough to get an idea whether or not you like its mechanics I suppose before buying a copy.

[Mortificator]

In Aero Fighters 3, how do you trigger the Darius boss parody? The above link mentions it, but never says how to trigger it.

According to the excellent Sonic Wings wiki, that boss is one of the two random possibilities for the Mars stage, which you'll arrive at if you take the right-hand route at the last branch.

[Eno]

This isn't 100% shmup related but it also doesn't deserve a thread anywhere else. Is there a non-dead MAME distribution with autofire support for Linux? Or any native software that provides good autofire functionality? xboxdrv has autofire, but it often fails to deliver a consistent burst.

[Bonus!]

Eno,

I also use Linux and have the same problem, but I think I found a solution: Arcade sticks like Hori's Real Arcade Pro have autofire settings per button, so the following should work:

- map the fire button to two different buttons on the stick
- set one of them to autofire

I have yet to get that stick, but maybe someone else can confirm.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Any controller with autofire would work for that, really.

What he may be after is being able to do it with the keyboard, though. Does shmupmame not run properly in WINE? You could always set up a virtual machine or separate partition with a dual-boot into Windows just for gaming.

[ratikal]

Is there a way to get ChoRenSha 68k in a window and/or to get autofire in it?

[nasty_wolverine]

Is there a way to get ChoRenSha 68k in a window and/or to get autofire in it?

autofire yes. need a pad/stick and joytokey, map autofire z on a unused button. windowed mode, i dont know.

[ciox]

DxWnd works just fine for making it run in a window.

[KAI]

I want to play Direct-X in WinX68, but I can't make it work. Help pls.

[Gingerzilla]

In Deathsmiles Xbox (JPN version) how do you find your high score?
I can view friends and the rest of the world just not mine.
I'm playing in Score Attack mode. I mainly play the XBox version.
After finishing a game I get two warning signs, one that I assume is about posting a hi-score up and the other I guess is about recording a replay. I click yes to both.
Still I can't find my name online, unlike most CAVE games where you can just click to where you are on the list.
Does it take some time to update on the servers?

[hail good sir]

The scores should update instantly, maybe check and see if your EX on/off is correct.

[Gingerzilla]

maybe check and see if your EX on/off is correct.

What is that?

[hail good sir]

It's a filter up top next to where you select which mode you want to view, if you chose to play the canyon (or ice palace in MBL) in your run you'd be under EX ON, if you skipped it/them you'd be under EX OFF. If you didn't make it that far I think you'd be in EX OFF but it's been a long time since I played.

[Chaos Phoenixma]

Also, for Vanilla and 1.1, you need to actually clear the Ex stage before you get on the Ex On leaderboard. For MBL and MBL 1.1, you only need to enter an Ex Stage to get on it.

[cave hermit]

So, exactly what is different about Futari Black label compared to 1.5? Is it worth $15? Also is the freeze bug still a thing, or has it been fixed? If not, how bad is it exactly (like does it affect modes other than Black label? How detrimental is it?)?

[Eno]

Does shmupmame not run properly in WINE?

I was so obsessed with finding a native solution that I entirely disregarded the obvious one
Apart from recognizing my one gamepad as two it does seem to work fine, yes. So there we go, MAME on WINE until I get something with built-in autofire.

[AntiFritz]

So, exactly what is different about Futari Black label compared to 1.5? Is it worth $15? Also is the freeze bug still a thing, or has it been fixed? If not, how bad is it exactly (like does it affect modes other than Black label? How detrimental is it?)?

The freeze bug still exists but only happens if the dlc is situated on a hard drive. I just moved the dlc, disc installation and saves to my consoles internal flash memory and it now runs fine. If you don't have internal memory you can probably use a usb stick too.

[hail good sir]

So, exactly what is different about Futari Black label compared to 1.5? Is it worth $15? Also is the freeze bug still a thing, or has it been fixed? If not, how bad is it exactly (like does it affect modes other than Black label? How detrimental is it?)?

All 3 modes have slightly more enemies in places and higher player firepower. There is no longer a selection between normal and abnormal, it basically combines the two and you just pick a character.

Original - More.... everything. More slowdown is the obvious one for survival, however gems can be leeched by point blanking large enemies so you have the potential for a larger overall counter, which leads to even crazier rank and insane bullet speeds. Fun to play for survival when you're starting out and insane to play for score at all skill levels.

Maniac - I haven't played it much, but what I do know is it's easier to chain enemies so you get large gems. So I would imagine it ends up with faster paced scoring. Counter possibly carries over between stages? and I don't know about clear difficulty vs 1.5 maniac.

Ultra - Now called "God", more slowdown and patterns aren't quite as hard. Still plenty difficult. The old scoring system is replaced with a modified version of the maniac system where the counter goes up to 30k and carries over between stages. With the huge bullet cancels you can do some incredible scoring tricks and sometimes even break the game for a second where it can't even display all the x30000 you just created. I was always too scared of the survival difficulty to put much time into it but it's a great mode and there's a lot of room to get creative.

Worth your money? Depends on you, 1.5 original and maniac are plenty good on their own.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Black Label is awesome. The Original mode's remixed scoring mechanics are amazing, Maniac's scoring changes make it not sucky to play (and less of a chore to raise your chain bar), and God is pretty darn awesome while not being quite as unforgiving as Ultra is. My system doesn't have the slowdown jitter, but I've played it a lot at a friend's and even with the occasional stutter, it's still very playable. Really it only happens once every 5 minutes at most.

[Bonus!]

Seeing that Cave hasn't yet released a "Cave The Best" or Platinum version of Mushi HD, I was wondering if there is any chance that they will do so, and that they remove the region lock. The Pink Sweets/MMP release came out of nowhere, if I recall correctly, and DDP SDOJ was released region free. I'm probably way too optimistic about this though... (I don't think I could justify getting a JP X360 for this, DDP DFKBL and Death Smiles IIX, though).

[BulletMagnet]

Seeing that Cave hasn't yet released a "Cave The Best" or Platinum version of Mushi HD, I was wondering if there is any chance that they will do so, and that they remove the region lock.

If they haven't done so at this point I doubt they will in the future, and even if they did I'm not aware offhand of any situation where a re-release of a region-locked game became region-free. I'm not basing this on anything official, though, so who knows for sure.

[cave hermit]

Seeing that Cave hasn't yet released a "Cave The Best" or Platinum version of Mushi HD, I was wondering if there is any chance that they will do so, and that they remove the region lock.

If they haven't done so at this point I doubt they will in the future, and even if they did I'm not aware offhand of any situation where a re-release of a region-locked game became region-free. I'm not basing this on anything official, though, so who knows for sure.

Technically they did this with Espgaulda ii black label; apparently at first they decided to just region lock the game, but changed their minds later; however by the time they changed their minds the limited editions had already been printed. Hence, the limited edition is region locked, but the normal print is fine.