PS2 Ibara Impressions

zaphod · Post by **zaphod** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 6:02 am

It' snot the poele thatlike to play for score that hatte Raizing stuff. Raizing games are 100% meant to be played for SCORE. Tis is ABUNDANTLY clear.

Its' the people who believe that all shmups; should be possible to single life clear that hate Raizings vicious rank, which seems to be designed to make a single life clear impossible in some, but not ALL of their games. Garega, in particular is infamous for this.

Use of both tactical and strategic suicide is considered esential at any level of play that is required to clear the game on one credit.

Tactical suicide=gets you a bomb and a half back/damages enemies, get you some invincibility to pull off a scoring trick, etc.

Strategic suicide=sucide purely to lower rank.

Naturally emlploying either prevents the one life clear.

The first time someone manges to one life it up to "the wall" and gets pwned, they go " i'll NEVER 1lc this thing". They either quit in disdust or bite the bullet and learn to play "properly" so they can acutally clear the thing. My skills aren't even there yet, so I still play it sometimes, because at least until I hit that wall it will still be fun for me.

I enjoy Battle Bakraid so much more than Garegga, because the game doesn't FORCE you to play it for score, with intentional suicides. You can play for survival, and have fun, and the 1LC is a goal that seems within reach. Yet it can also be played for score in a manner that demands as much attention as DDP:DOJ with abuse of the bomb multiplier and extendig it with suicides to get insane 4.000,000 point+ scores on stage 1 an dmaking the lives back up with extends.

Ibara, despite the very heavy Raizing influence, seems liek it CAN be played with a survivalist style, though doing so is very dificult. BUt i fidn it impossible in Garegga. Ranks effects are just so severe...

zaphod · Post by **zaphod** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 6:16 am

PS. batrider and garega PCBs chea badly.

Every game played increases the initial rank counter value. every <X> lops of the attract mofde decreases it. this feature is a bon t the arcade operator who wants to make money.

Garegga starts at minimum initinal rank after poweron. But Batrider starts at MAXIMUM initial rank. So to play Batrider seriously, you have to let the attract mode lop for a few hours to drop the rank down.

This means that, unfortunately, high score threads aren't valid for that game.

cigsthecat · Post by **cigsthecat** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 7:13 am

Not a few hours, not even close. Letting Batrider sit for 20-30 minutes is plenty. I fail to see how this invalidates the high score thread.

Ammadeau · Post by **Ammadeau** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 7:21 am

cigsthecat wrote:And to those complaining that the bullets need to look like Arrange, no thank you. Bullets in Arrange look tacky and gross. I agree that Garegga's bullets (not all of them) can be hard to see. Complaining about them in Ibara just means you likely need to see an optometrist.

Yeah, I've set the arrange bullets to normal. I have no trouble seeing them in TATE, but sometimes they come so fast and furious that seeing and avoiding aren't quite the same thing. I agree the flame throwers are a bit of a pain, though more because of the sheer size of their 'shot.'

Being a Raizing fan (and not one who has ever played for score) I'm enjoying Ibara a lot, much more than Mushi and Homura. Visuals are fantastic and all the weapons make me giddy. I plan to one credit both modes, but that's bound to take me a looong time.

The only two things I would like is the ability to shut off the intro and skip that loading moment, and the capacity to save replays. And maybe a much bigger TV to play it on.

chtimi-CLA · Post by **chtimi-CLA** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 9:46 am

zaphod wrote:It' snot the poele thatlike to play for score that hatte Raizing stuff. Raizing games are 100% meant to be played for SCORE. Tis is ABUNDANTLY clear.

Its' the people who believe that all shmups; should be possible to single life clear that hate Raizings vicious rank, which seems to be designed to make a single life clear impossible in some, but not ALL of their games. Garega, in particular is infamous for this.

i used to think like this, i have a more open stance about rank now, but what i don't like in garegga rank is the "stair with hidden steps" effect, by that i mean the discontinuous rank increase; if you guess wrong and suicide 1 second too late, you're stuck on the next rank step. the bullets, you get used to them.
anyway good impressions, makes me curious about the game.

Thunder Force · Post by **Thunder Force** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 12:32 pm

zaphod wrote:PS. batrider and garega PCBs chea badly.

Every game played increases the initial rank counter value. every <X> lops of the attract mofde decreases it. this feature is a bon t the arcade operator who wants to make money.

Garegga starts at minimum initinal rank after poweron. But Batrider starts at MAXIMUM initial rank. So to play Batrider seriously, you have to let the attract mode lop for a few hours to drop the rank down.

Does Battle Bakraid also include this "feature"?

Post by **BulletMagnet** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 2:51 pm

chtimi-CLA wrote:but what i don't like in garegga rank is the "stair with hidden steps" effect...

I still wonder if Ibara works like this, or if the rank system therein is "un-tiered." It's pretty hard to tell using the rank-o-meter...again, I wonder if the booklet or some other source elaborates on this.

One other relatively minor thing I forgot to mention in my first impressions post was the unpleasant return of the "item scatter" method from Garegga; as in the aforementioned game, the items which scatter from you when you die can fly off past the side edges of the screen, making them impossible to re-collect; if you get tagged near the far left or right edge of the screen, you may well be forced to lose just about everything you had. IIRC Raizing addressed this by the time Bakraid rolled around, in that your items would "bounce" off the edges of the screen instead of going off them and would stay within the visible area; you still wouldn't be able to re-collect EVERYthing, but you'd at least get a fair shot at getting back on your feet, regardless of where onscreen you died. In a game where suiciding is part of the strategy, I can't help but wish they'd kept the newer item scatter method.

zaphod · Post by **zaphod** » Sat Mar 04, 2006 8:03 pm

sa far as I know Bakraid doesn't do this. it's rank is muck more straightforward. increases with survival time lowers when you die, and if you manage to stock 4 extends starts shooting thru the roof, where you can then try abuse it to get even more points with bomb chaining.

Upon poweron Bakraid is not NEARLY so brutal as Batrider is.

Why i say this invalidates the score is because we have no idea what the starting rank is. With Garegga, the first game played from poweron is at minimum starting rank, so we know that is the baseline, and if anyone scores better by raising the initial rank that is their perogative. But with Batrider, no one knows what the baseline ititial rank is, so the competition isn't fair. we don' want soeone beating your score because they let the attract mod eloop longer than you did.

We all know that Batrider did this because of people powercycling Garega to reset the rank, triggering an annoyingly long self test dring which the game cannot earn money every time. This discouraged that trick. But it's a pain for us emulator uses.

An official savestate to load, with the inital rank at minimum, could be used to help solve this problem in the high score thread.

Neon · Post by **Neon** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 4:41 am

Got it earlier than expected and felt I should say a few words about the loadtimes: Namely, very short. The beginning load rivals Gigawing Generations, but the between-level ones vary in length but all seem to be shorter than SS Garegga's, for instance. Nice.

Bullets are goddamned invisible, all mixed in with debris and roses and it'll take quite a bit of practice to sort it all out (but not years, Herr S. ya troll).

Graphics are fucking GREAT - the filter is slight and scaling only noticeable on the bullets really (playing on commodore RGB monitor). Really a nice blur:scale ratio, looks almost low res (all the purists are dying inside reading this, but seriously, don't bother with the PCB). Music and announcer are excellent.

Have we got a definite answer on whether initial rank is high or what, what have I got to do to get the game at lowest rank (resetting/waiting 30 minutes are both shitty)

Post by **Dave_K.** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 4:53 am

Neon wrote: Graphics are fucking GREAT - the filter is slight and scaling only noticeable on the bullets really (playing on commodore RGB monitor). Really a nice blur:scale ratio, looks almost low res (all the purists are dying inside reading this, but seriously, don't bother with the PCB).

I had a room full of people at the san jose shmupmeet who would disagree with you.

Mind you, for what its worth, the port is still fantastic, just not as perfect as the Arika ones.

CIT · Post by **CIT** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 5:08 am

Is it just me or will scores in Arrange Mode not be recorded after restarting at any point in the game, including the first stage!?

EOJ · Post by **EOJ** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 5:18 am

CIT wrote:Is it just me or will scores in Arrange Mode not be recorded after restarting at any point in the game, including the first stage!?

Anytime you restart in Arrange it counts it as a continue and puts an extra 1 in the first digit of your score. So, you obviously can't post a score with that. Similar to Mushi's not allowing you to record scores after restarting. Strange Ibara normal mode allows you to restart on ANY STAGE AS MUCH AS YOU WANT and still post scores.

CIT · Post by **CIT** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 5:30 am

Yeah, that's what I was wondering about. Why include the feature at all then!? Cuz you can't use normal continues in Arrange anyway.
Besides, you should be able to restart stage 1 and not have it count as a continue. It's annoying to have to go back through all the menus to restart if you scratched on the first stage.

Dandy J · Post by **Dandy J** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 5:58 am

That reminds me, I pretty much quit playing because I restarted stage 1 more times than I can count.

freddiebamboo · Post by **freddiebamboo** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 1:46 pm

twe wrote:
CIT wrote:Is it just me or will scores in Arrange Mode not be recorded after restarting at any point in the game, including the first stage!?
Anytime you restart in Arrange it counts it as a continue and puts an extra 1 in the first digit of your score. So, you obviously can't post a score with that. Similar to Mushi's not allowing you to record scores after restarting. Strange Ibara normal mode allows you to restart on ANY STAGE AS MUCH AS YOU WANT and still post scores.

Yeah, I don't know why they did this. I found out when I tried to see what my best possible run would be and got a stupid 5mil fake score sitting at the top of my scoreboard. Thank god I don't put auto save on.

captain ahar · Post by **captain ahar** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 2:07 pm

anyone who ordered from yesasia... did you get the booklet?

DC906270 · Post by **DC906270** » Mon Mar 06, 2006 5:51 pm

yes, i pre-ordered from Yes Asia and got the booklet

Post by **BulletMagnet** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 5:11 am

Me too, though it's not a whole lotta use to me since I can't read Japanese, heh heh. Anyone want to try a translation?

bigbadboaz · Post by **bigbadboaz** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 12:55 pm

It seems like everyone here who ordered from YesAsia got the booklet. Add me to the list. It's really a nice package with everything in the resealable wrap. It does indeed suck not to be able to read the booklet.

You didn't get shafted, did you, ahar?

I was a bit annoyed by how long it took to receive my order this time, but now that it's here I continue to be thrilled with Y-A. No booklet hijinks, the cheapest price anywhere, no tax, no shipping charge. Can't do much better than that. My Treasure Box should arrive from them any day now.

Neon · Post by **Neon** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 2:22 pm

Any replays floating around? I'm sucking serious ass despite having figured out a couple of things.

cigsthecat · Post by **cigsthecat** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 2:48 pm

http://www.super-play.co.uk/

Zweihander · Post by **Zweihander** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 4:47 pm

Anyone else notice a couple of the Ibara girls got a slight costume change? Most notably: Teresa's panties and chest, and Meidi's panties. Guess they had to cover them up a bit more to keep the game's rating at 12+?

benj · Post by **benj** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 5:09 pm

Zweihander wrote:Anyone else notice a couple of the Ibara girls got a slight costume change? Most notably: Teresa's panties and chest, and Meidi's panties. Guess they had to cover them up a bit more to keep the game's rating at 12+?

That's true. In fact, Meidi's panties were the reason I decided not to get this game. I could have lived with filtering/scaling and whatnot, but that really pissed me off.

the allett · Post by **the allett** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 6:04 pm

Did anyone get the phone card with there order!!!
I got the game, book, and phone card all for £55 from VGI

mark

roker · Post by **roker** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 6:27 pm

benj wrote:
Zweihander wrote:Anyone else notice a couple of the Ibara girls got a slight costume change? Most notably: Teresa's panties and chest, and Meidi's panties. Guess they had to cover them up a bit more to keep the game's rating at 12+?
That's true. In fact, Meidi's panties were the reason I decided not to get this game. I could have lived with filtering/scaling and whatnot, but that really pissed me off.

well it was the resolution of the panties that pissed me off

Zweihander · Post by **Zweihander** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 12:04 am

Kickass, they posted my mini-review!

...I really should have put my email address in there for credit... ~_~

Neon · Post by **Neon** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 4:16 am

After seeing the 2+ millions stage 1 replay, I got discouraged, heh. I'm gonna try to clear Garegga and Shippu Mahou before this game...expect my dominance of Ibara's hi score chart to be put off awhile. ^_~

I was looking forward to it for months, then it gets here and graphics, music, gameplay are all awesome...but I feel like I should keep going with the stuff I've been playing, rather than halfassing it and starting something new. Am I being dumb?

NTSC-J · Post by **NTSC-J** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 5:01 am

the allett wrote:Did anyone get the phone card with there order!!!
I got the game, book, and phone card all for £55 from VGI

mark

ouch isn't that like $110? Do all Brits overcharge?

it290 · Post by **it290** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 5:26 am

Neon wrote:After seeing the 2+ millions stage 1 replay, I got discouraged, heh. I'm gonna try to clear Garegga and Shippu Mahou before this game...expect my dominance of Ibara's hi score chart to be put off awhile. ^_~

I dunno, I'm not that good of a player, nor have I been playing this game for very long at all, but I hit about 1.8 on stage 1 routinely and I'm sure 2 million is easily doable with a little more boss milking.

Neon wrote:I was looking forward to it for months, then it gets here and graphics, music, gameplay are all awesome...but I feel like I should keep going with the stuff I've been playing, rather than halfassing it and starting something new. Am I being dumb?

Well, it's good to be dedicated, but Ibara certainly grabbed my shmup attention completely, even though I've been playing Mushi pretty often for quite a while and just got Blazing Star and MUSHA last week.

judesalmon · Post by **judesalmon** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 6:54 am

I've only played the first couple of levels, but haven't had any slowdown. How come they can do Ibara with no slowdown but Mushihimesama has loads? Are the ports by the same people?

shmups.system11.org

PS2 Ibara Impressions

costume changes

Re: costume changes

Re: costume changes