Capcom vs Cave, and localising Death Smiles

[Udderdude]

If they released a game with no continues or 3 continues max, they would simply shred the game as impossibly difficult. Take a look at some of the old review for Gun Valkyrie for the Xbox, for instance. If the learning curve of the game is longer than the review period, the game is an impossible, disappointing failure, whether or not the reviewer has bothered to make it to the second level.

Good thing Cave is adding an easy-mode to Futari (and I guess Espgaluda II).

And we're talking about 2D shooters here, not a game with a custom dual analog control stick.

[WarBovine]

Metacritic

To be honest, there's more good reviews there than I remembered. Still, the other half of the reviews there are going to complain that the control scheme was terrible (i.e. doesn't play like Halo), the vulcan cannon and hovering should be easier (both of which were completely useless), and Naglfar's Pit was long, tedious, and badly designed (a level that can be beat in under a minute if you know how to boost properly).

I agree that Gun Valkyrie was a slightly different problem than shmups in the mainstream. Until you learnt how to boost around properly, it wasn't a lot of fun. By contrast, the 'learning curve' for shmups is short: press the shot button and don't navigate into bullets. But to actually be able to accomplish something takes a lot of time and practice. Most people (and reviewers) are going to: a) die a lot, get frustrated and call the game impossible, and quit; or b) credit-feed through the game, declare victory, and move on.

Admittedly, fighting games have had a huge resurgance, but I just don't see that happening for shmups--even if Cave starts localizing--as much as I would like it. It still might be economical, if the sales for RFA are as high as they seem to be, but they'll never be 'mainstream'.

[Cuilan]

Does that mean no insect queens or gothic lolita girls? Well, not exactly.

"If we lost that, we would sort of lose what makes us Cave, so we'll have to keep that," Asada said.

Oh, thank god. I was worried for a moment there.

[agustusx]

links to these old gun Valkyrie reviews?

i really liked that game but it seems like no one else did.

loved me some gunvalkyrie, but it did take time to "click"

Regarding mainstream understanding of shooters, the challenge tends is if they think move with stick and shoot is whole game. People think the games are simplier than they are. The sublte elements go over peoples heads.

[Enhasa]

The really funny part about that is how that relates to Ikaruga and mainstream acceptance.

Ikaruga is actually a very intentionally minimalist shooter. Yet its core mechanic is blatantly obvious to understand, so all the mainstream Gamespots and artwank Tim Rogers and such, think it's more complex and evolved compared to shmups by say, Cave, where they don't see anything beyond move, shoot, bomb, and hit continue.

[Observer]

Sadly, you can't expect them to see more because they give a flying fuck about the mechanics. For them they are indeed just "shoot, bomb, die, continue" ad nauseam.

They are there for the ART. They are there to bloat about how epic it is, how the formations show up, how everything is so awesomely ahead of its time like some literary milestone.

They forget that part of "it's a game" and "have fun, goddammit".

Why would they care about entering Kakusei mode, chaining the living hell out of everything, transforming bullets into rings, bullets into gems and cashing in, hunting disco men (FEVER!), etc., etc.?

Anyway, fingers crossed and hoping to hear more news from the now officially drunk Cave staff.

[Rob]

think it's more complex and evolved compared to shmups by say, Cave,

To be fair, Ikeda thinks the same thing. Part of translated interview

We also had Treasure unveiling Ikaruga at the same time, and so in addition to that question I was also struggling with the dilemma of “I know that we can’t do better than Ikaruga, so why are we making a game for the same platform, and of the same genre?” I really worried about this. But finally, I resolved it by rephrasing the problem: “the hardware’s graphical power is not going to improve no matter how much I struggle with it, and I’m never going to be a genius that can make a game like Ikaruga, so worrying about it is just a waste…”

[evil_ash_xero]

think it's more complex and evolved compared to shmups by say, Cave,

To be fair, Ikeda thinks the same thing. Part of translated interview

We also had Treasure unveiling Ikaruga at the same time, and so in addition to that question I was also struggling with the dilemma of “I know that we can’t do better than Ikaruga, so why are we making a game for the same platform, and of the same genre?” I really worried about this. But finally, I resolved it by rephrasing the problem: “the hardware’s graphical power is not going to improve no matter how much I struggle with it, and I’m never going to be a genius that can make a game like Ikaruga, so worrying about it is just a waste…”

Wow, i've never seen this before. That's really interesting.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

If cave brought their shooters to the west it would be enough to make me go out and buy a 360

Even better if they brought them to the PC then atleast i would still beable to play them in years to come when nearlly all of the 360s have melted or in some other way been reduced to red nightlights.

[lgb]

the people who defend this particular genre to the death and just as bad as the people who despise this particular genre for everything it stands for

[Enhasa]

think it's more complex and evolved compared to shmups by say, Cave,

To be fair, Ikeda thinks the same thing. Part of translated interview

We also had Treasure unveiling Ikaruga at the same time, and so in addition to that question I was also struggling with the dilemma of “I know that we can’t do better than Ikaruga, so why are we making a game for the same platform, and of the same genre?” I really worried about this. But finally, I resolved it by rephrasing the problem: “the hardware’s graphical power is not going to improve no matter how much I struggle with it, and I’m never going to be a genius that can make a game like Ikaruga, so worrying about it is just a waste…”

None of that has to do with how complex or evolved Ikaruga is in terms of mechanics, he's just in awe of how beautiful and epic and artistic and elegant and whatever it is. He's like, I can't do that shit, all I know is lolis.

[Rob]

The only way to make sense of it is to look at the chaining systems. In that regard Ikaruga almost seems genius compared to 'Pachi.

[Solarus]

The only way to make sense of it is to look at the chaining systems. In that regard Ikaruga almost seems genius compared to 'Pachi.

I personally find the chaining system in Ikaruga to have a ton of flaws. It's pretty much the sole reason that the entire game can be reduced to memorization.

The big problem is that if you don't kill the right enemies in the right order, even once in the level (killed 2 white guys instead of 3 before that swarm of black guys came along? BACK TO ZERO CHAINS), it reduces your potential score by hundreds of thousands. Minor mistakes result in your score going to complete shit.

Don't get me wrong, I love Ikaruga, but the scoring system in that game seemed like it could have been so much better.

[Rob]

Minor mistakes result in your score going to complete shit.

This is far more of a 'Pachi thing, where the player is given a time limit and the multiplier doesn't level out (as early?). In Ikaruga you can stop shooting to save your chain, selectively picking off enemies.

[Acid King]

The big problem is that if you don't kill the right enemies in the right order, even once in the level (killed 2 white guys instead of 3 before that swarm of black guys came along? BACK TO ZERO CHAINS), it reduces your potential score by hundreds of thousands. Minor mistakes result in your score going to complete shit.

As Rob said, if you kill 2 whites instead of 3 you can just wait for the next round of enemies to come up, pick off another white and start chainging again. It's much more forgiving than DDP and the penalty to your score is far, far less relative to DOJ or DDP.

[Taylor]

Ikaruga's strength is that it's polarity system, and to a lesser extent chaining system, is easy to understand and use. Progear, as an example, has a much more complicated and flexible mechanic with its bullet cancelling system - but it's not obvious what's going on, hard to explain, and harder to use. In fact most people don't even use it until stage 3 comes along and suggests it might be an idea.

The Cave games mechanics are esoteric to onlookers, whereas switching between black and white and having a robot shout max chain every second is not. Watching a super-play, peoples first experience with most of these games, people don't understand why the screen is permanently numbers in Espgaluda 2, why it keeps turning into diamonds in Progear, what a full chain means in DOJ, and how these are impressive. So they look like up, down, left, right and shoot.

[Enhasa]

The only way to make sense of it is to look at the chaining systems. In that regard Ikaruga almost seems genius compared to 'Pachi.

I agree totally, that's just not what Ikeda is talking about though.

[adversity1]

Good point Taylor. Perhaps that's one reason why the post-Daioujou, Ketsui generation of games made such an effort to have really gaudy point items, to really show off the skill of a player. For instance in Deathsmiles good players are going to have skulls and crowns bouncing everywhere. In Muchi Muchi Pork it's huge slices of pork. With Daifukkatsu you've got the eye-catching bullet cancelling plus gold medallions (although these aren't worth much points).

I think Ikaruga wins out in the immediacy of the play mechanic which is pretty obvious to anyone watching even for a minute or two.

[Solarus]

Good point Taylor. Perhaps that's one reason why the post-Daioujou, Ketsui generation of games made such an effort to have really gaudy point items, to really show off the skill of a player. For instance in Deathsmiles good players are going to have skulls and crowns bouncing everywhere. In Muchi Muchi Pork it's huge slices of pork. With Daifukkatsu you've got the eye-catching bullet cancelling plus gold medallions (although these aren't worth much points).

I think Ikaruga wins out in the immediacy of the play mechanic which is pretty obvious to anyone watching even for a minute or two.

Yeah, admittedly if you're doing things correctly, you look like a well and proper badass while playing.

[Rob]

I agree totally, that's just not what Ikeda is talking about though.

The pudding swirl graphics make game designers sad.

[sunburstbasser]

Capcom vs. Cave?

Sounds like Ryu is gonna have to learn some new projectile spamming tricks.

[nash87]

capcom vs cave would be fucking win as long as it's not mahjong like taisen net gimmick (AKA psikyo vs capcom) was. I was so psyched about until i found out it was mahjong. capcom is goes far beyond silly sometimes

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/bi ... _front.jpg

fingers crossed, unless the entire cave roster is lollis. in that case, i hope it never sees the light of day. There's plenty of none loli characters they could throw in there, like Alice (from ketsui) having some crazy 5chip hyper, mother teresa (ibara boss), dyne, or the guwange dude.

I'll never understand pedophiles

[GaijinPunch]

The only way to make sense of it is to look at the chaining systems. In that regard Ikaruga almost seems genius compared to 'Pachi.

I agree totally, that's just not what Ikeda is talking about though.

If you read around some of his other stuff, he bashes all of his games for the most part, and praises everyone elses. It's a Japanese thing for the most part, but he was especially hard on ESPRade & Guwange if memory serves. He also ranks Battle Garegga up there w/ the tops, and there's nothing amazingly pretty about it.

[Van_Artic]

whoa, this is great, they're also still talking about XBLA after microsoft rejected Ketsui? awesome shit right there

i don't really care about Capcom vs Cave right now (i'm excited about a fighting game with Cave characters anyway), but i want more Cave shumps ported, and Steam is a great choice

[Rob]

He also ranks Battle Garegga up there w/ the tops, and there's nothing amazingly pretty about it.

Is he always talking strictly about graphics? Is he trashing the poor guy doodling on his etch a sketch while not talking about his own work as "chief programmer"? I'd think graphics would be the one thing they could be confident in - that's why they're loved so much around here.

[GaijinPunch]

Is he always talking strictly about graphics? Is he trashing the poor guy doodling on his etch a sketch while not talking about his own work as "chief programmer"? I'd think graphics would be the one thing they could be confident in - that's why they're loved so much around here.

No, he always talks about the system. With ESPRade specifically, they were punching themselves in the balls w/ the boss milking. W/ Guwange, at least from what I read, it seemed they weren't 100% sold on the system they ended up with (there were a few different ones they tried). He has said many times though that DDP is his baby... at least that he had enjoyed making it the most. Take that as you will.

[undamned]

The only way to make sense of it is to look at the chaining systems. In that regard Ikaruga almost seems genius compared to 'Pachi.

I agree totally, that's just not what Ikeda is talking about though.

If you read around some of his other stuff, he bashes all of his games for the most part, and praises everyone elses. It's a Japanese thing for the most part, but he was especially hard on ESPRade & Guwange if memory serves. He also ranks Battle Garegga up there w/ the tops, and there's nothing amazingly pretty about it.

Yeah, can't recall which article I read of your translations, but in one of them I recall them saying that when they saw Garegga, that was their inspiration for trying to make an awesome high bullet count game.
-ud

[bcass]

whoa, this is great, they're also still talking about XBLA after microsoft rejected Ketsui? awesome shit right there

Hopefully the new XBLA management will have a more open mind now that David Edery has gone (good-raddance):

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_i ... tory=25435

[GaijinPunch]

Garegga, that was their inspiration for trying to make an awesome high bullet count game.

Yes. And IKD's original inspiration for danmaku games was Salamander.

[kid aphex]

we talked a lot about this in our podcast. plug.