Office Caravan Tournament

[davyK]

Ran a little 2 day caravan shooting game high score challenge in the office this week.

Used Star Soldier on Gamecube, 2 min mode. Hooked the GC up to a projector for big screen gaming.

Some people who haven't played a shmup since the arcade days lapped it up.

It's quite a nice little game - the winner topped 100K which for noobs/casuals wrt shmups wasn't a bad showing as people could only play during work breaks.

Overall went down very well. A success.

[Pedro Lambrini]

Sounds like fun. Got any pics?

SS on the GameCube is a great wee game. I seem to remember it getting short shrift when it first came out but I didn't regret buying it. Especially for a budget title. Like you said, it's a nice intro for casual players. Nice and bright and not too intimidating.

[M.Knight]

I wish you didn't need to use a controller with turbo buttons/switches to fully enjoy this game, because it really is great aside from this and the weird power-down mechanic. PC Engine fans are definitely not gonna agree with me or believe I missed out on something but I have much more fun with this Star Solider's Caravan modes than the PC Engine games' and I think the GC/PS2 SS Caravan modes are more interesting.

Really cool to see non-shmup fans give this game a go and enjoy it.

[MintyTheCat]

That's awesome

Reminds me of us idiots playing four player tennis on the Wii in one of the meeting rooms back in Cambridge It was funny as hell as you could look into the room through the windows and just see these nutters hopping and jumping around. I miss that

[davyK]

I wish you didn't need to use a controller with turbo buttons/switches to fully enjoy this game, because it really is great aside from this and the weird power-down mechanic.

Could you explain that a bit more? Are you referring to the fact that the first shot is higher powered so if you use the in-built auto-fire then it's underpowered? I suppose that is a bit annoying but I just accept it's part of the game.

Not sure what you mean about the power-down?

[d0s]

Has anyone played Star Soldier R on Wii? It's pure caravan, one stage but it blows the cube one away, imo. Lack of built in autofire is inexcusable after the PCE games which all had it.

[davyK]

Cube Star Soldier does have auto-fire - it's just that the first bullets are more powerful.

Played quite a bit of the Wii version. Was very nice but it was a bit of a shame there was no main mode - the GC version's main mode has 9 levels plus a final boss level.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Star Soldier R was a Wiiware launch title, wasn't it? Perhaps making it so small it could not have been misunderstood was done on purpose. Easy to forget sometimes how alien the concept of a game can be for non-gamers; I know a person who can barely distinguish between coin-op arcade games (now all but extinct in my country) and slot machines (ubiquitous nowadays) - which I find offensive, but what games company can afford feeling offended by their client's misconceptions?

Perhaps "bog-standard shmup" modes in classic Caravans were only there so they wouldn't spoil the home console games market. Hardly needed anymore when downloadable at a much lower price point.

Tangentially, I think bringing GameCube out there (to play Caravan shmup on it at that) was darn cool! The first Super Monkey Ball has been my "everyone's" 'Cube game...

[M.Knight]

davyK : As you said it, the built-in autofire is quite weak, and you'll have to either mash like crazy or use a turbo controller to achieve a high fire-rate. While the game can be played with the default fire rate, it feels more fun with autofire, notably because bosses and enemies die faster. That also means scoring requires high fire-rates.

The power-down mechanic is a bit weird. Usually, in Star Soldier games, when you get hit, you lose some firepower, worth one or two powerup items. And when you are brought down to the default power, getting hit will make you lose a life. That makes sense.

In the GC Star Soldier, it works like this for the most part. But once you reach max power, things start getting messy. Your ship will receive some sort of shield that can take 3 hits, represented by small green spheres circling the ship. If you get hit by a bullet in this configuration, one shield unit will disappear and you will power-down as you should.

However, if you want to power-up again while some shield units are still active, guess what happens? The game acts as if you already are at max power even if you are not and picking up the power-up triggers the bomb. In order to get back to max power, you have to do this roundabout technique of actually hitting bullets on purpose to lose your shield units and heavily power-down in the process and then pick up a powerup item that will immediatly boost you back to max power. Needless to say, it's kinda dumb.

That said, it's still my favorite Star Soldier game. I have Star Soldier R as well and like it, but the lack of a main mode puts it behind the GC Star Soldier to me. I also prefer GC SS's music and special weapon as it feels more involving than the Star Soldier R options that do the job for you.

[davyK]

Thanks for that explanation. I haven't played it enough to figure it out but I was wondering how the shield worked. Makes sense now. It is a weird system though.

[Harpuia]

That sounds like a ton of fun. There was a video game club that I went to at my high school (it basically became Smash club though), and if I had been into shmups back then it would've been really easy to just set up some emulated games for a score rush contest.

[Pedro Lambrini]

It actually makes me want to do something like a Caravan over here in Edinburgh. There's really not that much here. There's a games cafe or bar that I've heard about that's just opened up and there's a retro club on the other side of the city but I don't have the money to go to a bar and I don't drive making the retro club difficult to get to (3 buses!).

An annual caravan might be something to get my unemployed teeth into... Not sure if there'd be much interest though. Might just be me and the mice in a church hall!

[Obiwanshinobi]

From what (English) Wikipedia is telling me, Edinburgh (City) isn't that large. Seems like one of those more pleasant to explore on foot than wheels. I'm extremely pedestrian, though.

[davyK]

Tangentially, I think bringing GameCube out there (to play Caravan shmup on it at that) was darn cool! The first Super Monkey Ball has been my "everyone's" 'Cube game...

Ha. I ended up going with Gamecube simply because out of all my shmups I felt GC Star Soldier was the most casual/noob approachable that had a 2min mode.

But yeah - it's a quirky choice for shooting games. It's a JPN console in black and with the matching black controller it is rather nice even though there is no RGB SCART out of it. Component cables cost a packet if you can find them and anyway - I have a Wii with Freeloader and component cables if I want 480P. I have got an s-video cable though which I find pretty close to RGB SCART.

I've also got the JPN version of Castle Shikigami 2 for it which I really have to spend more time with......another game in my pile of shame!

And - yep - if I was to sum up the console by picking one game for it, then I would pick Super Monkey Ball. As close to a perfect video game as I can think of.