Progear no Arashi by Capcom and Cave?

[KimagureMachibuse]

I discovered this game when looking up CPS2 games on System 16 and would like to know what people's thoughts are
If they are familiar with it. Its a game by capcom and cave which is a cool combination but have yet to play it.

So far the sprite work in this game is absolutley beautiful and was one of the reasons i wanted to know more of this game it was released in 2001 which i find to be interesting though shame it did not get a home release but good thing for mame.

[Steven]

I found this in Mikado a few months ago. It's okay, I guess. CAVE isn't really my thing. No missed halfway through the first loop on my first time playing it without ever seeing any footage or knowing anything about it prior to playing it, so I honestly found it a bit boring and almost walked away from the cabinet to go play Hishouzame instead. Then I finally died and half-intentionally chain deathed to game over.

[Fudoh]

Progear is part of the Capcom Arcade Stadium, so it's available for XBox, PS4 and Switch.

It was also included on the Capcom Home Arcade (that giant arcade stick which you connect directly to your TV).

[Sumez]

Game looks cool. Thanks for the recommendation

[m.sniffles.esq]

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[kid aphex]

Anyone ever heard of Gradius? Just found it. Great music!

[To Far Away Times]

It's okay. Scoring is not that intuitive. Boss fights drag on forever with looping patterns. Music is not up to the CAVE standard. The artwork is nice though.

Honestly, I would recommend Akai Katana Shin over it. It's a similar game by the same developer but better in every way. Akai Katana Shin even uses a similar type of score system based on cancelling bullets but its done much better. Music is a huge step up too. And the game has more vibrant use of color, Progear looks a little washed out at times with all the light yellows and greys.

[Creamy Goodness]

Seconding the bosses being kind of ridiculous especially the final boss. Overall I enjoyed it. Bullet cancelling is very satisfying. Graphics are good, but the music sucks though.

[Sengoku Strider]

Those kids waving you off at the beginning make me feel determined to finish it. Do they blow up? Am I avenging their deaths? Is this a lesson on the horrors of war?

It's also cool just to see where Rolling Gunner got a lot of its ideas from. Totally worth th $5 or whatever on Capcom Stadium.

[Stevens]

Anyone ever heard of Gradius? Just found it. Great music!

Posts like this one are why I love this place.

I won't just shit post though. Progear is dope and spent a few years on the top 25/honorable mentions list.

[KimagureMachibuse]

Anyone ever heard of Gradius? Just found it. Great music!

Im not a shoot em up expert so pardon me if i don't know much about them or am not aware of all the ones in existance.

Gaiden is the best game though

[KimagureMachibuse]

Game looks cool. Thanks for the recommendation

glad i could recommend this game to you

[beer gas canister]

Awesome game. Chaining system is super cool, it creates very chaotic and fluid situations

[Some-Mist]

tldr: it was bullet herding, canceling, and scoring 101 for me.

the advanced techniques such as bullet streaming and ring consolidation are super gratifying. it might have one of my least favorite OSTs ever, but the scoring system is so fun how you can cancel bullets across the screen just if they're connected to the spread that you've canceled. makes for some real fun improvisation to figure out how to herd bullet spreads to overlap to cancel for big scoring opportunities and make your own path.

been a game in my top 25 list for the last 10+ years even though the 2nd loop is brutal and necessary for high scoring

[sunnshiner]

I love the aesthetic of it but can't play it for toffee for whatever reason. I also prefer Akai Katana Shin which Progear feels like a rough prototype of to me, like Cave sort of had this ace idea that they needed to work out through Progear and into Akai Katana Shin proper.

[dark]

This was one of my alltime favorites for several years. Especially since I didn't have to rotate my screen to enjoy it fullscreen. At least on average difficulty settings I found it to be very forgiving compared to some other shmups. The music seems minimal, like Cave never finished it, was struggling with the CPS2 tech, or had to strip pcm samples out to save space, but the music really grew on me over time, I love it.

The game would have been great on dreamcast, which received many other late period Capcom published CPS2 ports, like Mars Matrix and Gigawing.

What I'd like to know is why Capcom contracted this games development in the first place, and why they required Cave to use the CPS2 hardware.

[Bassa-Bassa]

Same reason they hired Raizing and Takumi - by the end of the century they wanted to give the genre a serious push as it had known much better days. The CPS2 was cheap and ubiquitous, so it was an easy choice.

[Redfox]

I found this in Mikado a few months ago. It's okay, I guess. CAVE isn't really my thing. No missed halfway through the first loop on my first time playing it without ever seeing any footage or knowing anything about it prior to playing it, so I honestly found it a bit boring and almost walked away from the cabinet to go play Hishouzame instead. Then I finally died and half-intentionally chain deathed to game over.

Try Dangun Feveron. That's Cave's most Toaplan style shooter (Some stages even look like they belong in Truxton 2 artistically visually speaking)



As for Progear, I like it but I def think Akai Katana was better executed. That said, I always wondered how much better progear might have been received if they had gone ahead with their TATE envisioned concept like you see in the Wiki entry...

[Steven]

I found this in Mikado a few months ago. It's okay, I guess. CAVE isn't really my thing. No missed halfway through the first loop on my first time playing it without ever seeing any footage or knowing anything about it prior to playing it, so I honestly found it a bit boring and almost walked away from the cabinet to go play Hishouzame instead. Then I finally died and half-intentionally chain deathed to game over.

Try Dangun Feveron. That's Cave's most Toaplan style shooter (Some stages even look like they belong in Truxton 2 artistically visually speaking)

I've been meaning to buy that on PS4 as it is, actually... I should probably get around to doing that eventually!

[Some-Mist]

I'm kinda excited to sink some more time into akai katana again based on some of the responses here. when it first released on 360 I only spent enough time to clear the arcade mode a couple times to post a high score before I got burnt out. up until that point I enjoyed my time playing it but it never stuck with me as something I wanted to improve upon.

a couple things I do remember vividly is that it definitely puts more of an emphasis on dodging because you couldn't cancel yourself out of a situation. the closest was popping out of shield mode to push bullets back but potentially creating a worse situation for yourself, or on the flip side use it as an opportunity to quickly level up energy again to pop another shield. I also remember walking away thinking that the bullet patterns and bosses lacked the charm of progear even though the scoring system was fun. It might be because how the patterns in progear are so similar and often compared to ketsui and in akai katana they kinda lose form and deviate in a less aesthetic way

I heard the arrange "shin" mode was where the game really shines which I admittedly haven't really touched so I'll likely be focusing my time on that mode with the upcoming release.

[bigbadboaz]

Is it consensus now that Akai Shin is better realized than Progear, or do we just have particular fans of that game chiming in at this point?

(I remember when Progear was current and it was very clear to all that the game was God himself)

[BareKnuckleRoo]

or do we just have particular fans of that game chiming in at this point?

I suspect it's a bit of both. I don't really get why Akai Katana keeps getting compared to Progear since it plays completely differently. Bullet cancelling is handled far differently in Progear than in Akai Katana, Progear's lock shots are functionally very different from Akai Katana's option shot (unless you're playing Type B which has a similar lock on shot)... Battle Traverse is far closer to Progear than Akai Katana is in terms of how shot mechanics work (it also has some similarities to Ketsui, but like Progear the lock ons will work without needing to hit with the "main" shots).

[Jonpachi]

^ Was gonna say much the same as above. Other than some visual call-backs, AK is a wholly unique game and doesn't share much in common with Progear. I love Progear, but will admit that it's long-term value is hampered by it's scoring system. You either "don't get it" or you get it so well you break it and end up banking so many extends it becomes trivial.

[donluca]

+1.

But I'm heavily biased because I absolutely love Progear and I personally rate it as one of my favorite shmups ever.

And, on that matter, I've never been able to get into Akai Katana. Apart from the soundtrack, there's not a single thing I like of it.

[Some-Mist]

I was going to make the argument that they really aren't too comparable, but when it comes to the actual conversion of bullets into scoring gems(?) in AK arcade I did remember it feeling a little similar with timing in regards to canceling bullets - or maybe I'm misremembering

or you get it so well you break it and end up banking so many extends it becomes trivial.

for the 1-ALL but the 2nd loop with suicide bullets, turning off score extends and it's weird "trial" nature

[Sumez]

Is it consensus now that Akai Shin is better realized than Progear, or do we just have particular fans of that game chiming in at this point?

When Akai Katana was announced I was hoping for a Progear 2, but I only spent a few minutes with it before realising it's something entirely different.
I'm not really sure what the "weaknesses" of Progear actually are? - something about the patterns in the game feel odd to me, and it some times seems harder to dodge stuff that I feel I would have had no issues with in a vertical game. Something about the implied gravity? Also, the "just never use a bomb" aspect to the scoring system is probably the worst the Cave anti-bombing mentality has ever been.

Akai Katana (in at least one of its modes) seems like a game that wholly satisfies fans of that style of game. It's definitely not among the most popular Cave games, but I've run into more than a few dedicated fans. To me, the scoring system is just way too esoteric, way too many steps. I know that's a dumb excuse, but it means sitting down and getting into it will very easily take lower priority than most other shooters.

[wiNteR]

I can understand the comments in most of the posts above. If it was a one loop game only then there are many other games [and specifically a lot of Cave games too] that I think could be said to be better. However, due to the second loop, I feel that this would be among top two or three Cave game (if not the best).

================

Regarding the game as vertical, I think it wouldn't work. One of the reasons is that the way bullets fall down (essentially giving the feel of gravity) at various points [this happens in a number of patterns and sometimes in stages too].

Even more importantly, I think it would be impossible to create the feel of the stages (w.r.t. backgrounds). I will give examples:
(1) How would one show the sea (from the side-angle) in stage-2 as a vertical?

(2) How would one similarly show the rail stage (from the side-angle) in stage-3 as vertical?

(3) How would one create the feel of ascent in stage-4 and the ascent and descent in stage-5? And, once again, it wouldn't be possible to create the feel of stage-5 background as a vertical.

(4) Similar comments as above apply to boss battles. One would have to completely change the sprites for all of those (and to some extent also the feel of the game).


So I just don't see how it would fit as a vertical game.


================

To me, the scoring system is just way too esoteric, way too many steps.

To be honest, I have to say I am not really that interested in scoring system of the game. However, here is a very crude summary in two or three steps (ofc this excludes lots of specific tricks that I have no idea about). Below "shot" means tapping the shot button and "focus fire" means holding down the shot button:
(1) You just look at the "jewel level" that you have in the lower left corner. The first step in always to bring it to "diamond". For this, you want to hold up you shot a bit and wait for the time when you see a lot of bullets around some enemy (or a cluster of enemies for that matter). The idea is to destroy an enemy (or cluster of enemies) with your shot when there are lots of bullets around them.

(2) The previous step takes your "jewel level" to diamond. Now when you see lots of "enemies and bullets" present in a very close radius to each other you use the focus fire to extract the diamonds.

(3) Keep repeating the first two steps over and over.


P.S.
There is a slight (extra) subtlety in the above. Bit difficult to explain in words but for example imagine that we have lots of enemies[denoted by "e" below] and bullets[denoted by "b" below] adjacent to each other in the following pattern (as a horizontal line):
bbbebbbebbbebbb

So imagine that you destroyed the enemy that I underlined above using your shot. You would get the following cancellation (which I highlight in bold font):
bb beb bbebbbebbb

Using focus fire you would get the following cancellation (which I highlight in bold font):
bbbebbbebbbebbb


In other words, when in a tough survival situation, using focus fire generally seems to be a better bet for survival than shot (due to the chain reaction of cancellation).

[Some-Mist]

To me, the scoring system is just way too esoteric, way too many steps. I know that's a dumb excuse, but it means sitting down and getting into it will very easily take lower priority than most other shooters.

I can relate because it's how I felt about espgaluda II for the longest time. After revisiting it I was kicking myself for not taking the effort earlier because it rocks (my favorite of the trilogy). akai katana took a similar amount of effort to learn and having to sit down a learn a games scoring system to progress (even if it's just to get yourself out of sticky situations) is something I do enjoy that's not overly common in the genre. I'll throw mars matrix in the mix too because it similarly feels good once it finally clicks.

[wiNteR]

akai katana took a similar amount of effort to learn and having to sit down a learn a games scoring system to progress (even if it's just to get yourself out of sticky situations) is something I do enjoy that's not overly common in the genre. I'll throw mars matrix in the mix too because it similarly feels good once it finally clicks.

Are you talking about games where learning some kind scoring mechanic also helps in survival? For example, it would seem that RSG is a typical example of this? I think games like this could at least fall in two categories:
(1) The first category where learning a scoring mechanic helps in boosting up or leveling up of some sort (such as RSG).
(2) The second category where the extends are given at regular intervals (instead of being fixed to 1 or 2 score-based extends in advance). Progear would fall in this category.


If you are talking about games like above, then I think while Marx Matrix falls in the above category "theoretically", but practically I don't think it does. For example, many years ago, I got the 1CC for it in a version MAME which had a separate button for the piercing shot. For survival purposes piercing shot is pretty powerful, so you don't have to worry about leveling normal shot much if your goal is just survival [and, at any rate, stage-5 in the game gives an easy opportunity for few levels on the normal shot too].

The other thing is that going for score can get risky without lot of practice [if the purpose is just survival]. Because it can happen that to keep chain you go towards a bullet (or a bullet cluster) but get fraction of a second late in activating the reflect shield.

[Some-Mist]

akai katana took a similar amount of effort to learn and having to sit down a learn a games scoring system to progress (even if it's just to get yourself out of sticky situations) is something I do enjoy that's not overly common in the genre. I'll throw mars matrix in the mix too because it similarly feels good once it finally clicks.

Are you talking about games where learning some kind scoring mechanic also helps in survival? For example, it would seem that RSG is a typical example of this? I think games like this could at least fall in two

I think the similarity between them is they all have central game mechanics directly tied to scoring and they all take a similar amount of effort to learn how those systems work with one another for the game to click...instead of something like futari (a game I also love) where it's a lot easier to pick up and play and the scoring doesn't have any impact on the game outside of score extends. outside of that aspect the games themselves are wildly different

in akai katana you have to learn how to build up the energy bar to be able to use the shield/scoring ability to deflect bullets, though you don't necessarily have to rely on it that heavily, it's a nice crutch to have to get out of immediate danger
in mars matrix learning how to use the mosquito barrier to absorb and throw back bullets out helps remove them off the screen while also aiding in keeping your chain going to make your ship more powerful
all versions of espgaluda II including arcade and arrange modes include a way to cancel and/or redirect bullets flipping between the different modes like zesshikai and shikai

with all 3 of those games I had to decide whether I wanted to actually take the effort of sitting down to read up/watch vids on how to play them or not to go for a clear. with espgaluda 2 I actually walked away from it not wanting to put the effort in before returning to it later on (admittedly to first see if I could figure out how the yagawa arrange mode worked)