Death Smiles: Countdown to North America Invasion

[dmauro]

Oh nice, I think I'm gonna be there. I'll have to give it a go.

[NR777]

I would love to go myself but I have a show on Saturday so no dice. At the very least, this definitely shows that Aksys understands the game and how to market it to core players. Let's just hope they also know how to push it to a wider audience.

[emphatic]

Awesome timing: http://guru.mameworld.info/

[dmauro]

At the very least, this definitely shows that Aksys understands the game and how to market it to core players.

Levels will be selected by us

Maybe you spoke too soon

[StarCreator]

I'll be there, but I'm terrible at scoring =/

[Kiken]

I'll be there, but I'm terrible at scoring =/

Give it a whirl anyway... it'll be interesting to see if they plan on choosing the rank for each stage as well. Then there's always the question of which version of the game they'll be playing, which I'm going to assume will be 360 Mode (goodbye slowdown!).

[NR777]

Maybe you spoke too soon

Perhaps, but I doubt it will be completely randomized or skewed toward complete newbs. Not sure which rank this will be played at. I won't be there so I can't really make a judgment.

[Square King]

nyaaah nyaaah nyaaah nyaaah

[StarCreator]

nyaaah nyaaah nyaaah nyaaah

What did he do now?

[emphatic]

nyaaah nyaaah nyaaah nyaaah

What did he do now?

Awesome timing: http://guru.mameworld.info/

[nash87]

Aksys just scored even more cool points

thanks for the link

[roker]

bah

Bawston

[icecreamyaa]

wow, I go to school right down the road, how convenient

[MachineAres 1CC]

Don't you have to pay a shit ton of money just to get into PAX? I don't think its free. I wouldn't pay to go to a shitty American shmup tournament. Maybe that's just me.

[Pirate1019]

Don't you have to pay a shit ton of money just to get into PAX? I don't think its free. I wouldn't pay to go to a shitty American shmup tournament. Maybe that's just me.

There's enough interesting stuff at PAX that if I had the time and lived a bit closer I would have gone to one of the west coast ones by now. The DeathSmiles tourney thing is like a delicious little aside.

If you're really good at it because you've played the import than it'll just be fun when you stomp all over everybody else without even trying.

[Cuilan]

I 1CC'ed Deathsmiles yesterday morning, finally. 360 mode with Rosa. Didn't do the EX stage though, but looking back now I could have, since I had like 2 lives left when I beat it. I did 4 stages on level 3 and the other two on level 2 (didn't want to deal with the suicide bullets). My final score was 113,593,576

[StarCreator]

PAX is actually really cheap for the type of show it is ($40-50ish range for 3 days, which is incredible considering how much there is to do on the floor). Sadly, if you haven't pre-registered, you're probably not going, as they sold out of registrations at least a month ago.

[dmauro]

I 1CC'ed Deathsmiles yesterday morning, finally. 360 mode with Rosa. Didn't do the EX stage though, but looking back now I could have, since I had like 2 lives left when I beat it. I did 4 stages on level 3 and the other two on level 2 (didn't want to deal with the suicide bullets). My final score was 113,593,576

I'm pretty sure going EX forces the game into death mode.

[JOW]

Didn't do the EX stage though, but looking back now I could have, since I had like 2 lives left when I beat it.

I'm pretty sure going EX forces the game into death mode.

Yes, doing the Extra level forces death mode on the Canyon and the Castle. And the Castle is a completely different beast on deathmode level 1, let alone level 2.
You may want to work on improving your score (particularly on the castle) first to preserve your sanity

That will put you in a better position to tackle the castle on deathmode.

[Cuilan]

Didn't know that about the EX stage. I've gotten to the castle with death mode active on multiple occasions, but I can't survive for very long. Sounds like I should avoid the EX stage for a bit longer.

[dmauro]

Yeah, I 1CC'd the game without Death Mode long ago, like the first week I had it, but I'm still working on the Death Mode 1 1CC let alone Death Mode 2 :0

Just got confirmation I'm going to be going up there tomorrow evening so I'll be there at the tournament. I guess I should practice up on playing single stages at level 3 to see how many points I can get

[Jockel]

I just talked to Aksys games, they're not yet decided if they make the game region free.
When i asked about future Cave games being localized if DS sells well, i was told the answer is confidential, so the guy couldnt talk about it.
... which leads me to believe that there is a rather high possibility of future games being brought over if enough people buy this; because that doesn't sound like the stock corporate "no plans at this time" answer.

[NR777]

I just talked to Aksys games, they're not yet decided if they make the game region free.
When i asked about future Cave games being localized if DS sells well, i was told the answer is confidential, so the guy couldnt talk about it.
... which leads me to believe that there is a rather high possibility of future games being brought over if enough people buy this; because that doesn't sound like the stock corporate "no plans at this time" answer.

What that says to me is that there is a high possibility of a deal already having been inked, along with a NDA. This is most likely wishful thinking, but that reply is suspicious...

[dmauro]

played Deathsmiles at PAX today. MBL is hard with a controller and never having played MBL. I only managed 2.9 mil to the 4.1 I usually get in vanilla. :/

[StarCreator]

Unless they changed it since the morning (and considering the guy had no idea what I was talking about when I asked what button "power up" was mapped to), they were running it on MBL 1.1, which no one has played before (unless it came out for Japan and I hadn't heard about it). The rules were:

- Stage 1-1, MBL 1.1, Lv999.
- One try only, no practice run.
- Have to use the Xbox 360 wired controller.

Needless to say my run lasted maybe 20 seconds, most of it dying while trying to figure out what the controls were on the fly.

Aksys are advertising geniuses, forcing everyone into the hardest and most confusing mode possible to encourage sales.

[Kiken]

Unless they changed it since the morning (and considering the guy had no idea what I was talking about when I asked what button "power up" was mapped to), they were running it on MBL 1.1, which no one has played before (unless it came out for Japan and I hadn't heard about it). The rules were:

- Stage 1-1, MBL 1.1, Lv999.
- One try only, no practice run.
- Have to use the Xbox 360 wired controller.

Needless to say my run lasted maybe 20 seconds, most of it dying while trying to figure out what the controls were on the fly.

Aksys are advertising geniuses, forcing everyone into the hardest and most confusing mode possible to encourage sales.

Kind of a dick move to not at least have a marquee displaying the control layout. Not to mention, by default, 1.01 standard doesn't set the right analog stick to familiar control.

[originalz]

Maybe they're paranoid that they won't get enough cred with the hardcore crowd if they wussed down the demos, fantastic idea with such a casual crowd attending the event. Oh well, it'll do a good job to reinforce the stereotype that these Cave games are insanely difficult and impossible to tell what's going on! Can't wait for the mainstream media to report on it! Hell, it took me awhile to figure out how to even attack properly in 1.01 without having to worry the about lvl999 nonsense, plus the pressure of a score tournament!

Still, gotta somehow admire them for not trying to dumb the game down for the mainstream audience.

[Pirate1019]

I don't think showing the game at level 2 or 3 would be 'dumbing it down'. Methinks they didn't put much effort into the showing if what StarCreator said is true, about them not even knowing or explaining the controls to anybody.

[Elixir]

lol

I know, let's advertise Futari by forcing people to play Ultra only. Yeah that'll make them want to buy it, I guess

[dmauro]

They fully explained the controls to me before I played. :/ I just got a wakeup call frm them saying I won, so I guess Friday and Saturday are separate tourneys so I'd suggest trying again today if you can.