What the hell happened to Skonec?

[Skykid]

I finally got my MGCD set up in my arcade cab tonight so I could play some PS2 games in true tate - and leapt for Homura straight away.

Where are Skonec now, anyone know what they're doing?
Homura is so damn good (and so damn overlooked) and the soundtrack is incredible. Just a shame there hasn't been a peep on the shmup front from such a talented bunch in a while.

[clp]

nothing to add really apart from agreeing on the homura front infact its the only game i miss playing on my now broken jp ps2, what was there last work was it homura or the collab on shiki 3?

[Skyline]

They were doing a lot of Wii and DS stuff, Pictoimage and Tornado.

They developed a new PC-based arcade board SkoPro, which has a few games on it from Success, including an arcade version of the beautifully abstract PC shmup Exception.

I don't know of any recent games they developed aside from the Tornado sequel on the Wii.

[Skykid]

Sorry to hear they're not developing any more shmups directly - I guess they're out of the Arcade scene entirely then (I think Homura was in arcades first right?)

Either way, that game's great - and their musician was awesome. Anyone got his name?

[antares]

Arcade was first (Taito Type X) and I heard there are even some arcade versions of Homura in existence that offer red blood instead of green.

Homura 2 would be a sequel I'd really wish to see one day

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Looks like if Skonec is out of the arcade scene, then the chances of a Psyvariar 3 with Success and Skonec's input are virtually nil at this point. Of course, it was all Success' effort on the first two Psyvariar games of Psyvariar Medium Unit and Psyvariar Revision. Psyvariar 2: The Will to Fabricate was a joint collaborative effort with Success and Skonec.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[clp]

damn i wanna test out that exception game where do you get the full version from ?

[Observer]

The full version is commercial.

This is the site for the arcade (for some reason, the link on the video didn't work for me): http://www.success-corp.co.jp/software/ac/exception/

Not released yet apparently?

And this is the official site: http://i-saint.skr.jp/exception/

There you'll find the trial.

The game was for sale in stores up until Comiket 76. From there onwards, it seems he ran out of copies. Heck, I was lucky enough someone found one lost copy collecting dust in a shelf (an unforgivable sin, the disc has the music in CDDA format along with unused tracks!) at a store in Akiba.

However, you can still purchase it from Melonbooks Dojin Broadband service for 1260 yen:

http://i-saint.skr.jp/exception/buy.html

DLsite also carries it: http://eng.dlsite.com/work/=/product_id/RE038891

Ah, don't forget to check exception conflict while you are at it. People keep talking about Change Air Blade but this should be the one to try in multiplayer... if you have a good LAN, 'cause we never managed to get it working through the Interweb: http://i-saint.skr.jp/exception_conflict/

edit: About Skonec, isn't that new Success mecha shooter related to them? For some reason I thought it was. Maybe one day we'll see a third Psyvariar. Or Homura 2.