Upcoming Cave arcade title (Akai Katana)

[z0mbie90]

Looks awsome. Just hope I can play it someday

[TonK]

Is it safe to assume SH-3?

[Square King]

I'm...underwhelmed. I don't want to judge based on a shaky video at a location test, but it looks a little uninspired. Probably a personal thing more than anything else, but I've always hated humanoid/peeple bosses. Always feels like a cheap cop-out to me. Ketsui takes a pretty generic military platform and makes it work, but I'm not feeling it so far here. I'll wait and see how it turns out. Not like I'll be playing it soon, anyway.

[Kiken]

I agree with you guys. When I first aw the youtube video I was shocked because from a perspective view point it looks like a vertical shooting but it is very well implemented with the action.
I really hope a soon home port since DS IIX has been ported so quick.

Add me to the list of people shocked by prespective. It almost looks like the background is isometric.

Looks very much like Progear's skewed backgrounds... or better yet, like those in Chotetsu Brikin'gr.

[Observer]

I'm not liking the human shaped bosses... But that's because I feel they look and move creepy. Suddenly you are piloting a green plane and then it turns into this huge dude twice the size of the plane. Other than that, typical Cave fare?

There are trains so a lot of people will be happy. And it looks like they mishmashed the water and firing stuff from Ketsui with some lighting effects from DDP DFK and some of the missiles of DOJ and the Progear ships.

And am I seeing golden cubes and some sort of reflecting barrier? Is this Cave's take on Mars Matrix? Can we expect another review from Rob? See this an more on the next episode!

(actually, those chips looks like they were lifted straight from Espgaluda)

[sven666]

looks goofy as hell.

fantastic looking backgrounds tho.

[Dragoforce]

It looks moderatly cool, seem to be a few areas where nothing happens.

[Dave_K.]

Fools! Its a diagonal shooter!

[TonK]

I'm interested in the hardware.

Personally, I think SH-3 can pull that off, considering DFK.

Anyone know anything about it yet?

[NR777]

Looks interesting...I actually really like the huge humanoid bosses summoning bullet-barfing planes. I expect a typically complex scoring system.

[evil_ash_xero]

One thing i'm concerned about is the reflect barrier. I hated what they did with it in the Futari Arrange Mode. As long as there is a strict limit, that's fine. But so far, Cave have not been able to get it quite right.

[Observer]

One thing i'm concerned about is the reflect barrier. I hated what they did with it in the Futari Arrange Mode. As long as there is a strict limit, that's fine. But so far, Cave have not been able to get it quite right.

They need to play more Mars Matrix.

[Skykid]

Damn you Cave if you can really port your games in 3 days don't make us wait to long for an Xbox 360 port.
Amazing game.

It only took a year to port DDP DOJ to PS2 iirc. I reckon we'll see DFK next and then this shortly after (fingers crossed.)

[Zeether]

Looks great.

[Gwyrgyn Blood]

One thing i'm concerned about is the reflect barrier. I hated what they did with it in the Futari Arrange Mode. As long as there is a strict limit, that's fine. But so far, Cave have not been able to get it quite right.

The 'limit' is your green meter. Which you can build up by grabbing the green items, which you can get from killing normal enemies or point blanking with your option (similar to how you build up your item counter in MBL during boss fights). So far it looks pretty easy to stock up on green meter, power through hard patterns, then point blank for more green items during the calm parts, especially on the second boss. Right now it looks like your points almost entirely come from reflecting bullets and killing enemies while still in your invincible mode though, but there's no telling how it will work when really pushing for score.

The size of the green meter is inverse to the number of lives you have. So if you have less lives, your meter is bigger. Might encourage suiciding down in lives, might not. You don't seem to lose your stage end bonus for dieing right now either.

Also the items seem to work a bit like Triggerheart, the longer you don't vacuum them in, the larger they get. Might be some other dynamics to that though, like it looks like they might build a lot faster in ninja mode. This seems to be a huge part of scoring though, small items are only worth 100 each, the biggest are worth 10,000. The end stage bonus is gigantic for the big items too. You can do the same for the E-Items (the ones that build the green bar) but they seem to fizzle out if you hold them too long.

There's also a 'hit' counter at the top. It seems to indicate how many items you've vacuumed in. It will fade if you don't grab any items for a while or if you leave ninja mode and snarf them all up. No idea if that's actually a multiplier or if it's just for show.

[BIL]

I got the impression from EOJ's translation at Cave-Stg that the "huge people" are projections of some sort (the term "Phantom Ninja" is used).

Whatever. Looks nice, glad it's not confined to humanoid avatars though (much prefer horizontally-oriented crafts in horis).

[Cers]

WOW - that 2nd vid looks amazing !

[1up]

is it me or does the plane vs background look completely wrong? looks like a vert background scrolling the wrong way? and the planes angle compared to the angle in the background makes it look like the plane is banking hard left all the time?

[dmauro]

An option that has... options!

Really glad this is 2D, it looks awesome. Is this Yagawa?

[linko9]

So is this the game that Cave said they were developing with the western market in mind? I can't find that topic that discusses all of Cave's upcoming games. It's got a military theme (sort of), and is a hori, so it seems to be as western-oriented as you could get from Cave. If this is indeed that game (and I have my doubts), we should expect western localizations, no?

[Square King]

OK, the second vid is winful. That's the sort of madness I want to see in stage 1.

[Rob]

And am I seeing golden cubes and some sort of reflecting barrier? Is this Cave's take on Mars Matrix? Can we expect another review from Rob?

When Takumi releases a new shooter, I'll review that. The reflecting looks really lame - bullets bouncing back? What is the point?

[Skykid]

OMFG (just seen the videos) it really IS Progear 2. Where the hell is Spadgy, he'd be creaming himself over this!

This looks utterly incredible.

Progear 2, never thought it would happen... Thankyou God.

[kid aphex]

looks bizarre, interesting, good
was crossing my fingers [unrealistically] for 16:9

[undamned]

Ripped straight from the Cave STG forums...a longer vid that shows stage 3. So new, even I haven't looked at it yet!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3xGgxWKo80

Maybe I'm just being a grump, but unless the levels we haven't seen are completely different, this game offers nothing, aesthetically, that we haven't already seen from Cave (run-on-sentence ftw). Might as well just call it "Cave Remixed!"
-ud

[kid aphex]

Ripped straight from the Cave STG forums...a longer vid that shows stage 3. So new, even I haven't looked at it yet!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3xGgxWKo80

Maybe I'm just being a grump, but unless the levels we haven't seen are completely different, this game offers nothing, aesthetically, that we haven't already seen from Cave (run-on-sentence ftw). Might as well just call it "Cave Remixed!"
-ud

i feel the exact same way, but am currently digging the mess, for whatever reason ...
the entire genre is pretty ouroborosian ...
still, the remixed vibe is typically a bad sign for any product ...

(conflicted emotions, cognitive dissonance, my love for the genre, this post is a trainwreck)

just give cave Gradius

(post validity renewed)

[eckart]

Cave is a moneytrain.- Don´t accept any originals or realy cool new stuff to the 2d shmups genre from them.
- Look the character design.- All seen bevore.

[Skykid]

the entire genre is pretty ouroborosian ...

Great word, although I'm not sure if it's being used correctly. If the shmup genre is really cyclical we'd be going back to memorisers rather than reflex based danmaku's.

Maybe I'm just being a grump, but unless the levels we haven't seen are completely different, this game offers nothing, aesthetically, that we haven't already seen from Cave (run-on-sentence ftw). Might as well just call it "Cave Remixed!"
-ud

Yes, you are!

It's bloody 2D, on SH3, there are no frickin' loli's and it looks stunning. After the worrying debacle of Deathsmiles 2, this is progress!

[Strider77]

Cave is a moneytrain.- Don´t accept any originals or realy cool new stuff to the 2d shmups genre from them.
- Look the character design.- All seen bevore.

umm.... if not from them then who? and what's bevore mean?

[Elixir]

Great word, although I'm not sure if it's being used correctly.

Do you remember Icycalm? It's not used correctly, but let him disguise himself.