Mushihimesama HD (360) 24th May 2012

[Pretas]

Guwange's Blue Arrange mode is also more forgiving, as painted bullets are canceled upon defeating the enemy that fired them. 360 mode has even more bullet canceling.

But I agree that Feveron would have been the better candidate for a worldwide XBLA release. They even had a port in a playable state at one of the Matsuri events.

[bcass]

Irrelevant. There are still more accessible games in the Cave back catalogue. If you made a casual gamer play every single Cave shmup I can guarantee you that Guwange would not be near the top of the wish list.

[Pretas]

Maybe they weren't thinking of accessibility or catering to an uninitiated general audience in their decision to release Guwange, and simply wanted to provide service to the fans who voted in their poll?

Cave has never shown much serious interest in breaking into international markets or courting the casual player. Most of that interest has come from overseas publishers, who then quickly lost and regretted their interest, as it backfired hard on them due to poor sales. The US downloadable release of Deathsmiles IIX was apparently an initiative from Microsoft Japan.

[trap15]

There are still more accessible games in the Cave back catalogue.

Like? The only more accessible game I can think of is DonPachi because of how simple (and relatively easy) it is, and ESP Galuda for how easy it is. Aside from those?

[CStarFlare]

DDP is relatively generous with resources, and rade isn't that bad. Guwange throws enemies at you from all directions, restricts your movement with terrain and the Shikigami attack, and all but requires you to bullet cancel effectively to progress.

Played correctly Guwange may be easier, but it's much harder to learn.

[Kollision]

(...) if you're just learning to play, Guwange is a fairly accessible game with a smooth difficulty curve. Newcomers will especially like the powerful bombs, the speed and ease of controlling your familiar, and the fact that you can take multiple hits before losing a life.

no, just no

[bcass]

Maybe they weren't thinking of accessibility or catering to an uninitiated general audience in their decision to release Guwange, and simply wanted to provide service to the fans who voted in their poll?

In which case, it was still a huge mistake, because the largest number of 360 owners don't live in Japan. I don't really think they could ever catch the casual player, but there are lots of people out there who play games a lot (and aren't completely useless at them) who might be tempted to give a couple of shmups a go, to play in a semi-casual manner. I think that's the crowd that Ikaruga captured.

Cave has never shown much serious interest in breaking into international markets or courting the casual player. Most of that interest has come from overseas publishers, who then quickly lost and regretted their interest, as it backfired hard on them due to poor sales. The US downloadable release of Deathsmiles IIX was apparently an initiative from Microsoft Japan.

And my original point is that Cave should have bypassed dealing with foreign publishers, and gone straight to the international digital markets (XBLA & GoD). Much less risk, substantially reduced costs, compared to retail. They should have released all the older titles on XBLA for around $10, and released the newer titles for double that on GoD. That would have done a better job of garnering impulse purchases from customers outside Japan. The retail route was stupid. You couldn't even find the games in most shops.

[bcass]

There are still more accessible games in the Cave back catalogue.

Like? The only more accessible game I can think of is DonPachi because of how simple (and relatively easy) it is, and ESP Galuda for how easy it is.

Thanks for proving my point. Also, don't mistake accessability for difficulty. Even the more difficult Cave games are more accessible than Guwange.

[Erppo]

Guwange was pretty much the first arcade game I cleared, I really don't see how it's inaccessible. Purely as a clear, it's a rather easy game since you can take tons of hits and extra lives are plentiful.

[bcass]

It's really very simple, and staring everyone in the face: controlling two things is always harder than controling one thing.

[Despatche]

no it's not, because you don't even have to do that. the very second you start thinking things like "oh no i have to control two things at once" is the very second your entire mindset for the game needs to be re-examined.

"casuals" don't need to care, they can just press bullets out of the way and then they're done.
the "hardcore" don't need to care, they're already trying to replicate this and that so it's irrelevant.

there is no in-between. there's almost never an in-between when it comes to what you want to be talking about (actual people). the closest thing to that is someone like me, who truly is not a casual and who truly does not wish to watch replays for a time.

sometimes i don't like being this in-between, sometimes i get scared by the two extremes and then do like it. all the time i feel like the extremes are doing it wrong and i'm doing it wrong, but that doing it right is somewhere above what i do. that's probably why i'm bad at games.

tldr: you're trying to synthesize two things that have nothing to do with each other except some incompatibilities. actual people operate on that dichotomy, yet your claims of guwange being inaccessible are supposed to apply to people like me (also they don't actually apply).

guwange isn't even particularly hard. due to the lifebars, you can kinda cheese it like ddp. it doesn't even have something like gaara in esprade. donpachi and dangun are a good bit harder than both (not even considering donpachi loop 2), just from a survival standpoint; scoring is WAY harder.

[supergrafx77]

I agree that the whole CAVE library should have been released straight to GOD/XBLA for international distribution, skipping any sort of middle man.

If CAVE had done this, I believe they would have more $$$ right now as well as influence in international markets, especially given the fact that it doesn't get much better than Cave in comparison to anything else on this planet. As long as I've been playing games, that's just a god damn fact.

Bcass thought concerning doubling up the price (in comparison to Guwange) for newer Cave titles is spot on.

For 29.99/34.99/39.99, digital dl(s) of SDOJ;Mushi HD, etc..., would of sold very well IMO.

I find it really puzzling, since this model (at least temporarily) worked very well for the dumbed down phone;iOS games.

[MR_Soren]

And my original point is that Cave should have bypassed dealing with foreign publishers, and gone straight to the international digital markets (XBLA & GoD). Much less risk, substantially reduced costs, compared to retail. They should have released all the older titles on XBLA for around $10, and released the newer titles for double that on GoD.

The only reason CAVE games started getting physical releases is because Microsoft, in one of their many decisions that screwed over shmup developers and publishers, said that they did not want Xbox Live Arcade to be full of arcade games. Microsoft wasn't willing to put the ketsui and ddp doj ports onto the release schedule, so 5pb decided to go retail.

Also, Microsoft wouldn't have allowed GoD releases of games that do not have a physical release.

Some people at Microsoft put forth effort (and likely money and/or other resources) to woo shmup developers to their console, while other people at Microsoft region locked the console, made the minimum prints run requirement too large to be feasible for most shmups outside of Japan, and wouldn't let them release the games on XBLA or GoD. Classic one hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing.

[Doctor Butler]

And my original point is that Cave should have bypassed dealing with foreign publishers, and gone straight to the international digital markets (XBLA & GoD). Much less risk, substantially reduced costs, compared to retail. They should have released all the older titles on XBLA for around $10, and released the newer titles for double that on GoD.

The only reason CAVE games started getting physical releases is because Microsoft, in one of their many decisions that screwed over shmup developers and publishers, said that they did not want Xbox Live Arcade to be full of arcade games. Microsoft wasn't willing to put the ketsui and ddp doj ports onto the release schedule, so 5pb decided to go retail.

Also, Microsoft wouldn't have allowed GoD releases of games that do not have a physical release.

Some people at Microsoft put forth effort (and likely money and/or other resources) to woo shmup developers to their console, while other people at Microsoft region locked the console, made the minimum prints run requirement too large to be feasible for most shmups outside of Japan, and wouldn't let them release the games on XBLA or GoD. Classic one hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing.

Management of the Xbox brand sounds like a real clown-show. Unsurprising that there's talks of Microsoft ditching the brand altogether.

[Despatche]

it's quite dumb, but ms is really only bothered about the whole mess known as the one. i think they were satisfied with what they were doing up until recently.

[bcass]

The only reason CAVE games started getting physical releases is because Microsoft, in one of their many decisions that screwed over shmup developers and publishers, said that they did not want Xbox Live Arcade to be full of arcade games. Microsoft wasn't willing to put the ketsui and ddp doj ports onto the release schedule, so 5pb decided to go retail.

I remember this, back when before Ketsui was announced to be released. It was all down to the then head of XBLA (I forget his name). It was less than a year after that he left Microsoft and the strategy was dropped and plenty of arcade ports started reappearing on the service. This was long before the majority of Cave's 360 releases had been released.

Also, Microsoft wouldn't have allowed GoD releases of games that do not have a physical release.

A very minor point. They could have just released on XBLA with a higher price point. Bigger budget XBLA games had already started appearing at higher price points by that point and the arbitrary game size restrictions removed.

Some people at Microsoft put forth effort (and likely money and/or other resources) to woo shmup developers to their console, while other people at Microsoft region locked the console, made the minimum prints run requirement too large to be feasible for most shmups outside of Japan, and wouldn't let them release the games on XBLA or GoD. Classic one hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing.

I'm all for Mircosoft bashing, but the "no arcade ports allowed on XBLA rule" lasted for probably less than 12 months, so can't be wholey attributed to Cave's frankly odd distribution decisions.

[silvergunner]

Big thanks to "Jonst", a very friendly guy from UK who sells me a dlc code for matsuri 1.5 ver.

[Jonst]

^ you're welcome!

[Uncle Rico]

Is this game supposed to save your highscores after the patch? I recently purchased this and mine is still not saving. Its annoying as hell.

[el_rika]

Sorry to bump such an old thread, with a question probably answered a million times already

Is there an option to activate the "arcade slowdown" (wait control). Seems pretty slowdown free so far, which is a bit unforgiving, and not very accurate.

Also, regarding the other Cave Xbox360 ports. Do they have a similar option?

One last thing, could you link me to an in-depth analysis of the ports (xbo360).

Thanks a lot!


Edit: Ok, so i played a bit, reached level 3 and...yeah...the slowdowns have slowdowns of their own i love it.

Now, another question. What is the arcade level of difficulty? I assume Very Hard?

[AntiFritz]

Default difficulty is always normal, those difficulty settings are shit and only made for arcade operators who want to extort more money from people.

[Bananamatic]

the slowdown is pretty accurate in the ports, especially in arcade mode