The Future of CAVE in the Videogame Industry

[Jonst]

^ you should have played akai katana... (Shin/zetsu)

[d3vak]

I feel like Cave's artistic flair was beginning to get lost in the chaos of their patterns. Daifukkatsu is the last game of theirs that I played, and there isn't a single boss or stage that really stands out to me. The bosses themselves just didn't seem to have any gravitas to them, they were just nondescript mechanical shapes spewing out death. Contrast them with the beautiful, intricate designs from Garegga, or the epic bombast of a Darius boss encounter, or even Cave's earlier work like the helicopter from stage 1 of Ketsui, rising out of the stadium.

To be fair, Akai Katana is beautiful (Aside from the boss' design of course)

Edit:

^ you should have played akai katana... (Shin/zetsu)

^ See?

[Tregard]

To be fair, Akai Katana is beautiful (Aside from the boss' design of course)

Edit:

^ you should have played akai katana... (Shin/zetsu)

^ See?

Yeah I missed that one... maybe my beef is with Daifukkatsu itself rather than late-era Cave.

[CloudyMusic]

Yeah I missed that one... maybe my beef is with Daifukkatsu itself rather than late-era Cave.

SDOJ has the same problem with (visual) stage and boss homogeneity, if not worse. Everything in that game is covered with blue neon lights for some reason.

[Xyga]

Waifukkatsu is ugly. Impressive and flashy yes, but really uninspired visually speaking.
SDOJ is even worse yeah.

[Squire Grooktook]

They were a legitimately amazing video game company and should be remembered as such.

Yes. I don't understand why some people are reacting as if CAVE releasing a new game would be the equivalent to get their mothers insulted.

Nobody is reacting that way. Jokes aside, I'm not happy that Cave is gone, I'm just not sad either. For those who genuinely adore the style, I can sympathize with wanting a few more remixes of level design to play around with. But Cave already gave us a ton of just that, as well as a trio of impeccable realizations of their design goals with DOJ/Ketsui/Futari. In a perfect world, Cave could release an infinite number of new games.

It does however strike me that people care more about slight remixes than they do games that genuinely push forward and try new things while being excellent in their own right. Contrary to what some people might think, I think shooting games have a TON of things left to do and their future is still very exciting. There are so many old concepts that haven't (or barely) have been explored or touched upon since the danmaku days started, and I feel like some really exciting and magical things could happen if developers took what they learned from the age of bullet hell and applied that fine tuning and depth to some of the things that made older shooters so fantastic.

[pokemon123]

Hm the only game that cave has released that I could not like at all was daifukkatsu.



I agree that in terms of dodonpachi I prefer the looks of daioujou and dodonpachi over saidaioujou and daifukkatsu (although I admittedly haven't played saidaioujou but taking this based on footage I have seen)

My favourite look by far from cave is the mushihimesama series.

As for RNG dodging it's not really my thing(probably why eosd and ufo are my least favourite games in the touhou series)

[Skykid]

My favourite look by far from cave is the mushihimesama series.

Dude, those games really look like crap, great fun as they are: garish colours and plastic pre-renders ahoy.

They had much higher points in terms of illustration, stage layouts and colour blending. Espgaluda II makes Futari lool like it was slapped together by toddlers in a finger paint class.

[jepjepjep]

I think Esprade really nailed the visual style. That game is awesome.

[Squire Grooktook]

Esp Galuda II probably has my favorite backgrounds for stages, but Esp Ra.De is probably the most stylish.

[Oniros]

Mushihimesama is a gorgeous game. From the arcade splash screen with the rings you know it's gonna be a great game.

[pokemon123]

I think it had to do with it's world, that is what made me like the look so much. Could never really like espgaluda world. In terms of like how good something looks then I agree with the espgaluda.

[d3vak]

I think Esprade really nailed the visual style. That game is awesome.

I agree:

Oh, the beauty.

[Xyga]

My favourite look by far from cave is the mushihimesama series.

Dude, those games really look like crap, great fun as they are: garish colours and plastic pre-renders ahoy.

No no nope, the first Mushi may not have the greatest pixel art (yeah it's even atrocious at times), but man that giant beetle-like fortress level is still one of the greatest visual moments in shmups ever. A fucking 2D sprite sabbath on steroids, I have never seen anything like that elsewhere and it still amazes me today.

[emphatic]

PGM CAVE games 4 ever.

[Cata]

Mushihimesama is a gorgeous game. From the arcade splash screen with the rings you know it's gonna be a great game.

Even the "Enter your name" screen after a run is gorgeous!

[Doctor Butler]

The future of CAVE is cell-phones....

[d3vak]

The future of CAVE is cell-phones....

And more Hello Kitty?

[IseeThings]

Interesting to see more people forming the opinion that the SH3 stuff generally looked cheap and garish, they really overused the blending effects, and, unlike other platforms, were still using 5-bits per pen colour, so gradients never looked as smooth as they could.

Personally I'd like to have see something that combines various aspects of Cave titles with something like Fantasy Zone - structured levels with set goals, crazy bullets, enemies that were approachable from different angles, with more difficult attack patterns from one side, but maybe a tradeoff in points..

[Bananamatic]

my only visual issue with sdoj is the thin blue/green boss hp bar
other than that i think all the games look alright, wouldn't call any of them ugly