Momoiro Underground (hori, hey1230 x Motoaki Furukawa)

[Dinir]

You said you're writing a guide and it seems necessary, but oh my look at the size of the information there!
That's a lot of new information I didn't know, I am glad for the sharing.

I was streaming a 'research' run few days ago, and you can watch the video now. I tried to list all the rank decreases, boss par time, boss destruction bonus, and few moments that clarify it's only Front Flame that gives a score for dealing a damage.

There are obvious wrong sentences in my guide now with all the new info, so I need to modify them!

Including losing a heart not causing score loss - I think I was not aware of the penalty at the moment I saw the score decreasing. It's probably that the penalty just got into action right before I died that made me think that way.

Boss Time Penalty (I was keep calling this 'Par Time', after seeing one 'concept' entry in Giant Bomb with the same name - I think I am gonna keep saying it that way just because it's a familiar term to me now) is -1 score/frame. When you make the game go crazy enough, it ends up only giving -20 score/sec(?). So I think it's depending on whatever smallest time the game can run on, instead of frames. There are few moments where the game doesn't constantly give defined score penalty, and trying to do double on the next frame. Like, the first-digit should go 0-7-4-1-8-5-2-9-6-3-... but instead it sometimes go like 0-7-4-4-8-5-3-2-6-...
Tower B (Stage 11) first boss's first phase, two orbs, are separately counted toward Par Time. So when you exceed a Par Time in this phase, you always exceed two at a time, as long as both orbs are alive.

I am happy to know that you are telling about the bomb not instantly go off the HUD. I thought I am keep getting score too low, and there were moments I use a bomb to buy a new bomb instantly after, while I am having a full stack.

Money
I doubt testing the crystal rank impact would be easy - crystals not retrieved are shown in just few pixels, and then - if my guess is right, that they stay visible 'then' invisible - become invisible for a brief time until they're truly gone. So I don't think you can see a crystal actually disappearing... I hope my run video would help seeing if this is really the factor to the rank.

Crystals will likely become invisible faster if you deploy more than 3 weapons, just like how treasures not retrieved disappear for the same reason. But like the treasures, crystals disappeared this way will return back to the visible state but they will eventually become invisible - again if my guess on 'first stay pixels then become invisible' is right.

I started to think that the graphic shown at the moment you buy is the upgrade you get. And each weapon upgrade has 5 graphics cycling, so total of upgrade for each weapon could be 5. I think I saw Down Sprinkle upgrade only showing Twin Laser graphic in later game, but I need to confirm after watching more videos.

I have yet no idea about what Bomb Level upgrade would actually affect. My guess is it increases the lasting time. I need to watch more videos for this one too.

Animal
I was thinking that one full plant fills up a fifth of the animal soul gauge, so I think you're right on the exact number.

I was happy to find that some stages with abnormal scroll direction is not just the graphic! The same way you described, the scroll affects the trace of animal on City B too! When the scroll briefly stops, the animals will also not scroll away! In Stage 11 I tried to kill popcorn enemies and La.Gorilla (the big ones with two arms) behind them so I get most of the animals. It is certainly dangerous to do.

Time
This is the reason why I want to call my guide just covering the basics. Such insight is something I can't provide by my own!
I have no clear observation on the scroll speed at the moment...

Other things
Shopping
I am pretty sure I tend to buy life at full stock in my earlier runs. I need to watch my early runs again to see what changes.

Stage 11
First time I thought the bosses are tied to each route, then I saw Kachirou getting Acidic Princess in Route U, where I always get Paladin Kilauea. It could be related to rank or something else... Butler and the Princess were the rarest one I could see in my runs.

Routing
One of my runs ended with the Double KO Momoko. I got the boss destruction points, but the game ended after.

Real Talk
At least I am really happy for having Route U, I didn't know it's a randomized route. It's sad to not have all stage routes though, and that even in 'two full area' routes you have to listen to the same music 2~3 times because all stages in an area mostly have the same stage music. I really hope Shohei could make stage music for all stages and that is included in the game in similar to how M2 includes various soundtrack to each game. All we get is just suspiciously named 'Rejection' tracks.

Momoko's few patterns really killing me, they're single-handedly killing all my clear attempts recently, do you know how to properly handle them?

Also I want to post my guide on this forum, but I have no idea how to properly post it there: I tried to find the meaning of those acronyms for an hour and then gave up.

[Zaarock]

There was a japanese player grinding this out after launch who got over 4600000 scores. Pretty sure there's no videos though. I remember messing around with 500 starting rank before dropping the game back then, that is really brutal

[CStarFlare]

4.6m - yikes. Do you remember if they ever specified the route?

[Zaarock]

Route S was highest, route Q also over 4 million.

[CStarFlare]

Dinir, I thinks ST: Momoiro Underground works just find for a Strategy forum thread.

More research - good! The -1 rank for Crystals disappearing is real! From your video, the boss of City A3 (the one that makes the big purple rings) is very much worth milking - his big rings are worth 3k each. (You say the boss kill there is worth 6k but I think it's 8k based on the video). This would be one to milk as long as you can even though there's not much money or animal in it.

Did some testing myself on City 1 of Route A. All of this applies there and maybe nowhere else.

Boss Time Penalty/Par Time
The penalty on City 1 progresses something like this:

Code: Select all

Stage 1 | Begins ~50 seconds into fight | -60 score/second
Stage 2 | Begins 30 seconds after that  | -120/sec, white shots begin 
Stage 3 | Begins 30 seconds after that  | -180/sec, increased aggression
Stage 4 | Begins 30 seconds after that  | -240/sec, increased aggression
Stage 5 | Begins 30 seconds after that  | -300/sec, increased aggression
Boss Dies | About 20 seconds after that | no point gain

I only lasted to the end starting at rank 0. The boss actually starts losing health at stage 1, but it really speeds up at stage 5 (if you haven't damaged him with weapons, stage 5 starts with him at 50% health). I think stage 5 should have lasted 15 seconds, but the boss had its state change a few seconds into the stage where it didn't take damage for 5 seconds. So once you start losing score, you have 2 minutes 15 seconds to finish him off so you can expect to lose 22,500 score from beginning to end. I'm not sure exactly when the score stops falling - by the time he died I was at 0.

I tried this starting at 0, 100, and 200 and the timings were pretty much the same. I'm not sure rank has any impact on this, thought I only did three lazy test runs on the first level.

Rank
The things I can tell Rank impacts:

How many enemies spawn (at the very beginning 3 lines of 5 Hiko spawn, at 100 3 lines of 10 Hiko spawn. And at 0, the first rocket that falls is alone, at 100 there are three of them)
The turrets some enemies carry
Bullet density
Bullet Speed
Bullet Strength (Red, Blue, White - blue being difficult to clear, white being impossible to clear)
In some cases, whether enemies do contact damage (again, see the Hiko at the beginning)
Drops? (see below)

(I was surprised to see that Rank explained some, but not all, of the changes I'd attributed between City 1 and it's Extra version. There's extra enemies, but at no rank are the helicopters replaced with those little robots)

Drops
On each of my three runs I went in to the boss fight with:

Code: Select all

Rank 0   | 19,305 score | 52,000 money | 10,020 animal
Rank 100 | 19,243 score | 42,000 money | 13,409 animal 
Rank 200 | 19,645 socre | 64,770 money | 15,966 animal

(I think I missed a couple of treasures early on during Rank 100 because I was trying to take care of the extra rockets and not succeeding)

So I think the broad answer is that higher rank leads to move money and more animal. I suspect it's not just number of enemies but I'm a fairly inconsistent player, so the 13k extra money could have just been that. Score didn't get much of a boost but that's probably because on the first level it's hard to kill the extra enemies.

Shopping
Buying life at full life just gives you 2,500 score. I don't see the point except to save you from throwing SMART away with a bad purchase.

Misc.
Flowers can be hit with the front shot for tick points. This is worthless information.

I'd like to have some time to do a couple of runs soon.

[2a03]

where can i get this game

[Dinir]

http://ovs.akbh.jp/products/list.php?tr ... 3%E3%83%89

This is currently the only official seller who ships to outside of Japan.

I bought it from Rakuten using Zenmarket. Total cost was ￥8,598 (the game and the book were ￥5,400), and I have waited total of 11 days - Buying using Zenmarket took a day, Shipping inside Japan took 5 days, Zenmarket took 2 days + Sunday to send the package.

There are many sellers who only ships inside Japan, but you can get a copy from them the way I did. Also ゲームショップ1983 has a towel with Furukawa Motoaki's sign and a novelty CD as bonus items and ゲーム探偵団 has the Novelty CD. This novelty CD seems like containing 5 tracks by Furukawa.
These sellers would be interesting if you're a fan of Furukawa Motoaki, but... I think the reason this game being this hard and expensive to obtain is because of him.

[Dinir]

Although the newly found and actually correct infos are not added, I copied my guide to the Strategy section of the forum! I will modify some wrong sentences the next spare time I get!

I am not a great shmup player, as I only have played 3 shmups deeper than casual players would do so far. I think I should refrain from writing and including actual strategies for each stage and scoring tactics. I personally hope CSF could write about them!

Update: the guide is now updated with all the info given from CSF!

[Dinir]

One of the games sold on M's Art (read 'only distributed via physical packages') is coming on Steam!!!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1046980/HORGIHUGH/

Hope for the online debut of Mogura is being closer...!

[CStarFlare]

I’m writing up my thoughts on the different stages and bosses now and will post them in the Strategy thread.

But I think we’d be better off if a genuinely good player were to come back to Momoiro and really give it a look from a serious player’s perspective. @zaarock

It would be fantastic if Momoiro made its way to Steam. I imagine a lot of people had been waiting for some sort of digital distribution until they just forgot about it. I do wonder what price they’d try to sell it at though - it still retails for 4K yen. :/

[Despatche]

In a just world, it would continue to retail for ¥4000 no matter where it ended up. But in a just world, we wouldn't have digital distribution either.

[Dinir]

We are getting closer to the monstrosity that is 4.6m, and by we I mean 'CSF'......! I saw 3m is conquered yesterday.

I am gonna record the run so I could put it on my phone.

[Shepardus]

This is getting rereleased for Switch and PC as "Dezatopia." Thanks to @shmups for reporting.

The game's site has the Steam logo on it so that much is confirmed. Considering that the same publisher also released Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo on the Humble Store, I'd say that's not out of the question either. Not sure what's with the name change and the apparent lack of involvement from Motoaki Furukawa (site says "All-new music by HEY"), but I'm just glad to see that the game isn't entirely forgotten.

And yes, this does mean that STG Builder has been ported to Switch. Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo is also getting a Switch release: https://twitter.com/shmups/status/1138481026789863424

[CStarFlare]

Interesting - it seems they renamed the ship (even in the Japanese text) and they aren’t indicating any additional content over the doujin release (or at least not any additional routes which is a shame).

The only exception is the note that says 1,000 steps in difficulty - the rank system in the game goes from -99 to 500. Curious to see what the extra levels might be.

The site also doesn’t mention the speed option which is weird. Sadly the title screen doesn’t show the main menu options which might shed some light on the above two items - both speed and rank are set on the title screen.

[Dinir]

FINALLY PC DEBUT
ALL-NEW MUSIC BY HEY?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

OH SHIT NO, I AM TOTALLY GONNA BUY THE GAME AGAIN

[GSK]

Not sure what's with the name change and the apparent lack of involvement from Motoaki Furukawa (site says "All-new music by HEY"), but I'm just glad to see that the game isn't entirely forgotten.

From the sounds of things, HEY's contract with Furukawa was keeping him from releasing the game overseas, digitally, etc and so he stripped all of Furukawa's contributions and is rebranding this version as a separate product in order to sell it the way he wants to sell it.

The game was crowdfunded and Furukawa's reputation was a big draw for their campaign, so there's an ethical question about double-dipping in this fashion, but I don't think anyone's contesting his legal right to do so, provided he strips absolutely everything contentious.

[CStarFlare]

From the sounds of things, HEY's contract with Furukawa was keeping him from releasing the game overseas, digitally, etc and so he stripped all of Furukawa's contributions and is rebranding this version as a separate product in order to sell it the way he wants to sell it.

Good, he should have done this a long time ago. Furukawa's work in Momoiro isn't good enough to warrant restricting its distribution. (It's fine. It just wouldn't be a draw for the game without his name)

There's nothing like double-dipping here - the version of the game with Furukawa's work was released and has been available for years now. The backers got what they backed; the fact that a slightly different product is released later doesn't create an ethical issue.

[Dinir]

I am happy that HEY can now

• release the game on digital stores,
• with all new music - in-game music is composed of 14 furukawa's and 24 shohei's making total of 38, and Hanaji Games say there will be 'over 40' tracks so I don't think we could get all unique music for each stages though (I really hoped),
• update the game finally - WE MIGHT BE ABLE TO FREELY BUY BOMBS LIKE MAD MEN,
• add translation finally,

and with all the changes

• it would be much more easier to buy the game... that it won't be any more only really small amount of people who play the game at once.

But I am kinda worried that HEY would get some sales from overseas in exchange of getting his reputation really crushed in Japan.
I saw a tweet saying he's rude because he did this re-release without permission from 'investors and furukawa', and I feel like this might be a major opinion in the scene.

Furukawa apologized on his twitter to backers that Dezotopia release has happened. This also makes me feel awful. Was being royal to the backers/investors the reason it was so awkwardly hard to obtain the game all the time? And could the 'being royal' mean that not letting the way to buy this game getting any easier than how the backers obtained it and how it was established at the time the crowdfund project was going?

[Dinir]

There are people saying Mogura wouldn't exist at first if Furukawa was not there, Shohei has no confidence so he had to remove all Furukawa's music from the game.

First tweet was retweeted by Furukawa. Second tweet was included in a thread where the first one in the thread is also retweeted.



People request a detailed explanation from project people about why the Dezotopia release announcement is happened, implies that shohei doesn't see games as arts anymore and just trying to reach for some pennies, implies shohei forced changing some assets only to be able to sell few more copies, doing a big excuse to Furukawa.



Furukawa's manager tweeted that digital release version of Mogura was almost about to be made but then the developer left the collaborative relationships so they can't make it anymore. No proof and plainly putting blames on HEY for a thing they couldn't do in 2 years after the release.

The last post about oversea purchase of the game was on Furukawa's facebook, 1 Jun 2017, 4 months after the release, simply saying:

To anyone who wanted Momoiro Underground by @hey1230 and @MOTOAKIFURUKAWA ASAP, Akiba Hobby ships overseas!

And there was no any news about development of DL version of this game at all, for whole next couple years.

One twitter account says 'but changing music is like completely changing the world in the game, looks like he doesn't love even his own works', 'could he be psychopath?'. The fact that the account is PiXEL Co. official one hurts me.



They're an asshole. And this is terrible. I am growing hatred toward Japanese gamers and this composer now.

[CStarFlare]

Twitter users are awful the world over, I guess. Will have to make a point of spreading some love on twitter about the announcement. Looks like Pixel did retweet your post about the worldwide release which was neat.

[CStarFlare]

I went back and took a closer look at the Dezotopia trailer.

Most interestingly, the Routes appear to be different. Dezotopia's Route A goes

Ocean 1 > Forest 2 > Mountain 3 > City X1 > City 4

The Route A stage order in Momoiro is City 1 > Ocean 2 > Forest 3 > Mountain X1

You'll notice that Dezo has an extra stage in its order - Momoiro's routes typically include a stage from an area is immediately followed by that area's B stage. Four times, then stages 9 - 12 are always the Tower. However, Dezo's route has 5 stages listed - either the pattern of playing pairs of stages from an area has changed, or the route length is no longer the same. That's potentially painful as a run is already 45 minutes long!

Or, maybe back third of the game is different. Not all routes have 5 stages; the Flat routes show 4 stages and presumably the routes with all stages from 2 areas will return. The site does advertise 21 routes, so I don't expect we'll get to go all the way to Z this time, either.

The Route select screen shows stats: clear count, high score, best time, max rank. The last three have a letter grade next to them. This screen also has different blurbs at the bottom of each route's screen. They appear to be conditions of some sort - the trailer does say you can unlock secret levels through skill, so this is probably connected to that.

There's a section where there's just white walls and the route name I - it looks too plain to actually be a new level, but it could be a new attract mode.

The title screen music appears to be unchanged. And some of the rest of it sounds familiar? I guess that shows you how closely I'm paying attention to Momoiro's music.

[CStarFlare]

I haven't been seeing all of the activity on the Dezatopia twitter account apparently. Some stuff that's been posted since the announcement:



Box Art. It's kind of uh

Other info:

- They'll be showing the game off at the Digige (Digital Game?) Expo on 11/17. From what I can tell it is meant to be essentially the final build. They decline to provide a release date, however.
- People who stop by to play will be given a "Stuff Book" containing info, illustrations and short stories. I haven't gone back to compare but I think the samples they show are different than what is in the Momoiro book, though it looks to be along the same lines.
- It looks like a physical edition of Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo + OST will also be available. A future run of this isn't guaranteed so they suggest getting it if you want it.
- They're also selling little clay (?) figurines of one of the Dezatopia bosses. It's cute and only 200 yen.

If anyone is going, I'd love to get my hands on that stuff!

Other Twitter info:
- This video shows bullet cancel chips being sucked up from a a long way a way vs. most of them just fading like in Momoiro - this could be an interesting milking opportunity, though it always depends on whether you're able to cancel enough bullets to offset the time penalty. Likely it will simply make other milking opportunities more lucrative.
- Hidden items which only contributed to your money in Momoiro seem to have been replaced with different items - Speed Up is shown here, and a Music item (for unlocking sound test tracks presumably) is shown in another screenshot. (The autotranslated text here might imply that which shot you use has an impact on what spawns? I might be reading too much into machine translated words, though) They no longer add to your money, and you have to shoo the spot to uncover instead of overing over them. This would make building your money much harder in Dezatopia, except....
- These boxes give WAAAAY more money in this video than they would in Momoiro, which suggests that crystals appear in much higher volumes. (It also doesn't let you buy health if you've already maxed your health bar - in Momoiro, doing so just added the cost to your Score)
- The above hidden item video shows that the game speed is now controlled by items you find rather than being manually adjusted. No indication of whether faster game speed has any new compensations from a scoring standpoint.
- The flowers you grow with the water weapon look different now! They seem mechanically the same though.
- Other recent posts showed off the Museum, where items can be unlocked by playing the game over and over. (I might be mistaken, but I seem to see a Music icon where a hidden money item would normally be - I hope it still adds money!). This includes the sound test (which contains several tracks from Momoiro, so maybe Hey had already contributed quite a lot to Momoiro's original soundtrack).