Iwanaga

[Ozymandiaz1260]

How can I download this? I can't read Japanese, but I think that the link in the OP is giving me an error

[Necronom]

How can I download this? I can't read Japanese, but I think that the link in the OP is giving me an error

Go here:
http://www.enterbrain.co.jp/techwin/dat ... anaga.html

See the two words "gold" and "game"? Click on the download button next to it (on the right). You'll need winrar because it's lzh format.

[Ozymandiaz1260]

Thanks

[Skyknight]

Now if we could just find the plot someplace...That all the bosses--not just the demons, but the swordsman/shade and the final twin silhouettes--are labeled as "Old Order" must mean SOMETHING to the game's story...

Apparently, EACH difficulty level has multiple endings. I wonder if it depends on such things as raw score, whether or not you had to fight the time-over "Order" boss, etc.

EDIT: I ended up downloading the thing and clearing it on Easy. I notice that some of the bosses are missing in this setting...

Anyway, I'm feeding what I can of the manual into BabelFish and seeing what I can cobble together for the plot.

First of all, "Iwanaga" refers to a bit of Shintou mythology. Ninigi, the first of the emperors, fell in love with the princess Konohana, daughter of the mountain king Yamatumi. Delighted, Yamatumi acceded to the request of marriage, and even put in Konohana's sister, Iwanaga. One problem, though--whereas Konohana was very beautiful, Iwanaga was ugly, and so was turned away. Dismayed, Yamatumi revealed that the two princesses were a set. Konohana was the bringer of prosperity, Iwanaga the bringer of eternal life. Because Iwanaga had been rejected, even the divine-blooded emperors were doomed to mortality. Konohana's name, by the way, refers to flowers, and Iwanaga's name to stone. Notice the stone motif of the Old Order's members...

But...what if another fell in love with Iwanaga? What would their descendants be like...?

In the story, during the Showa period, a commission sent to prepare to construct a dam discovers a heretofore unknown village at Yamanaka. Most of the villagers bear the name of Oyama ("great mountain", I guess?), and the village is pretty well-to-do. Even with their isolation, the village doesn't have a spectacularly low population. Meanwhile, hearing about this isolated-yet-prosperous village, treasure hunters begin to drop in...

The village explanation for their non-existent troubles is the local god who thwarts plague, natural disaster, etc. His shrine is also thought to be a tribute to marital accord--there's an emblem of a man and woman in there. It's thought that once, a man and woman were kept from being married, but divine judgement came down on the one who did the thwarting. (All right, anybody who can read Japanese, check the "Traveler's Deity" section in the Mode page! I honestly don't think I figured out what BabelFish was trying to say with that last bit...)

(I absolutely give up in trying to decipher BabelFish's rendition of the story segment on the controls page...I'm not doing so well with the system page, either, but it looks like the dam project is having problems with a woman with red eyes...Boss 1-2?)

Although the dam is completed, with all of Oyama village coming out to see the finished product, it ultimately isn't that interesting to them, and they return to their ways, with the rest of Japan returning the favor. However, a good deal of spirit activity begins to manifest soon afterwards. Oyama seems to be their main target...

My guess: The construction of the dam awakened the Old Order, banished spirits of the wicked portion of Iwanaga's descendents. Their plan--to take from the good portion of Iwanaga's descendents (i.e. the Oyama) their immortality. I just wish I understood how that ties into the ritual at the beginning of the game...Is the woman the reincarnation of Iwanaga herself?

[Skyknight]

All right, I found out something interesting while feeding Jeffrey's some of the kanji used for the song names. When I looked at the kanji for the song "Old Order" (it starts playing when the very first boss appears), I thought I recognized the second kanji as kami/"god". Certainly not "order". So I decided to check that kanji, and try to figure out the first kanji.

Together they mean..."traveler's guardian deity". Like what's supposed to be watching over Oyama Village. On top of that, the column in the instructions first describing the village is called "幻の村". With my luck, there's an idiom in Japanese that I don't know about, but the literal meaning of the first kanji is such things as "dream", "illusion", "vision", "phantasm", and "apparition" (the ending kanji means "village"). I guess it might refer to the fact that the surveyors found a village where there wasn't supposed to be one (i.e. if you took the map as your authority, then the village was naught but a vision).

Also, the song called "Paraiso" might suffer from mistranslation as well. The kanji actually are either a reference to an eternal, unchanging state (like stone...), or a shorthand for the afterlife.

So...what happened? Did the villagers letting the dam be built get interpreted as a breach of their contract with the Old Order/wandering deities/whatever it's supposed to be?

Edit 1: Turns out Jeffrey's has NINE phrases meaning "traveler's guardian deity", all of them with initial kanji with very different meanings (we need more nuance in the English translation, methinks). The one that Iwanaga uses to describe the Old Order is 塞神. That first kanji means "close, shut, cover, block, obstruct". So the question becomes, what were the Old Order tasked with sealing OFF? (This doesn't mean that the spirit at the very close of the game--the one that summons the mouth-armed rock demon--is supposed to be Iwanaga herself, does it?)

Edit 2: Notice the kanji that appear before each main section of the game (i.e. accompanied by a little "Area #" in red)? I haven't tried to search for the part following the "no" (no way I'd be able to properly draw the second one...), but for the three that can precede the "no", they are, in order, "Earth", "Waters", and "Heavens". Considering that the "Heavens" are UNDERGROUND, something's clearly up...

[Necronom]

Hmmm, interesting stuff...I still play it from time to time

[BIL]

Is there any news of a patch / workaround (or cause) for that apparent DirectX error, with the fullscreen version? I've seen it reported it in many other places.

[Skyknight]

On a hunch, I checked Jeffrey's (http://linear.mv.com/cgi-bin/j-e/jis/dict for those of you not in the know) for any words in the baseline database that began with 塞. One of them came back with an English meaning of "closed source", and the only other kanji meant precisely "source". So these aren't sealing gods we're dealing with, but sealED gods. Something tells me the construction of the dam managed to disrupt the seal on Iwanaga's not-so-pretty progeny (...or ancestors? I don't know whether the ultimate enemy should be regarded as Iwanaga or Yamatumi...)...

Curiously, the player-character (called "Komon", I think) was a well-known entity in Oyama. I guess it's some kind of last-resort sentinel, in case the Old Order ever manages to get past their seal (considering what happened to the ashigaru investigators, and the young man being suffused with an aura of darkness before becoming Komon, this is kind of the working definition of "last resort"...).

[ssfsx17]

I finally managed to get the not-enough-time ending on Easy (I sucked badly and had to grab red powerups instead of blue ones from the weak enemies). Somehow, I have the feeling that all of the endings might be combined together to make more sense.

I am extremely curious about the following story points:

- Who is the girl that seems to be responsible for causing the hero dude to transform?

- Why were the woman and the hero dude about to get shot? Were they on the wrong side of Nobunaga's politics or something?

- Why do they need to bring out all the priests & priestesses & what not (during the Easy ending)? I could swear I just killed off the whole Old Order, even though poor hero dude didn't escape the black hole in time.

[Skyknight]

(My apologies for restoring this thread after so long, but I see an inaccuracy, I need to fix it)

The Shouwa era is from 1926 to 1989. So this is LONG after Oda's death. Also remember that the Old Order was released by the building of a dam, not exactly technology available during Oda's time. That dam is what Komon and his protege are walking along in the Hard ending.

I'm thinking that the Easy ending is portraying a funeral for Komon and his protege.

[tomwhite2004]

Does anyone have a new link or source for this game, itching to give it a go...thanks.

[Zaarock]

Does anyone have a new link or source for this game, itching to give it a go...thanks.

https://enty.jp/posts/9827 or http://kerubin.web.fc2.com/game.html

[tomwhite2004]

Thanks VERY much for those links, would never have found those on my own!

[Squire Grooktook]

This game is super cool as fuck and I recommend everyone give it a try. If you can't get the full screen version to run, use windows magnifier to blow up the tiny windowed version lol.

Crucial bit of mechanical info: the type of pick up that cancelled bullets are converted to at the end of fights is based on which shot type you kill them with. The size of the shots is dependent on how much ammo you have in reserve (so, for example, if you need a time boost, finish off bosses with a blue shot thats near 100% ammo).

[tomwhite2004]

I seem to have the opposite whereby the game defaults to full screen but with the ver1.04 : Project-T.STK text, so still windowed but fullscreen. This also seems to chop the top and bottom of the playing area off, like its hidden under the windowed area.
Tried the magnifier but from fullscreen even the smallest level of enlargement is too much. Wish this game had an ini file so i could force a regular windowed mode and magnify from there.

[ZellSF]

dgVoodoo2 is a sure way to get the fullscreen version to run if you have a DX10+ GPU.

[qmish]

I started getting DirectDraw error with usual version, so i had to go with

use windows magnifier to blow up the tiny windowed version lol.

solution.

Any way to just resize window to 1280x960 or something?

[guigui]

Interesting game. The 2019 question is : Switch version ?

[Zaarock]

The sequel looked really nice but I think it's been put on indefinite hold 2 times now
https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm26103692
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZqg1JLogJA

I like the original concepts look, reminds me of dreamcast era games.
The developer is still around working on similar games.

Was just thinking of playing this more. The scoring is pretty fun after you clear too.
Never found a way to resize the window, I plug in a 2nd monitor and force that to a really low resolution.

[qmish]

Oh, also, can i use gamepad or stick with it? I'm really bad with zxc+arrows layout, after 19 years of WASDing

[Zaarock]

It has some kind of controller support but I had better success using a key mapper. The controls feel nice on stick.

[ZellSF]

I started getting DirectDraw error with usual version, so i had to go with

use windows magnifier to blow up the tiny windowed version lol.

solution.

Any way to just resize window to 1280x960 or something?

Why not just use dgVoodoo2? The link I posted is outdated, it's here now:
http://dege.freeweb.hu/

Using Windows magnifier manually is outdated for playing games, this utility uses the same Windows functions and automatically zooms, centers and puts black bars around the playing area:
http://tanalin.com/en/projects/integer-scaler/

If you for whatever reason actually want to play it windowed at 1280x960, DxWnd should work:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/dxwnd/

[qmish]

ah, oops
thanks, should try!

[MathU]

The developer is still around working on similar games.

Rather disappointed to learn that Buster seems to have given up on 2D pixel art, they were a nice sprite artist. Also a little sad to see the sequel in the works is giving up on gravity and allowing flight like Treasure did with Sin and Punishment 2. Cabal must live on!

[Zaarock]

I put up an archive of Iwanaga & Vacant Ark with higher resolution modes and working fullscreen, alt+enter (using dgVoodoo mentioned by ZellSF above). xinput controllers should work as well.

Also a little sad to see the sequel in the works is giving up on gravity and allowing flight like Treasure did with Sin and Punishment 2. Cabal must live on!

To be fair they did encourage staying on the ground with that score bonus, but it's a little jank iirc in the iwanaga prototype flight was only with the secondary girl character you swap to? The guy is still doing nice pixel art in the realm of low res texture work.

The devs current project "mana xa ray'o" is looking nice. The setting looks related to Vacant Ark with one of the playable characters being from that game.

[tomwhite2004]

I put up an archive of Iwanaga & Vacant Ark with higher resolution modes and working fullscreen, alt+enter (using dgVoodoo mentioned by ZellSF above). xinput controllers should work as well.

Thank you very much for sharing!