Gigantic Army

[Gespenst]

New stuff from Astro Port
http://www.interq.or.jp/saturn/takuhama/ga.html
Guess it's more Valken/Cybernator-ish

Looks like Armed Seven's sequel/prequel

[sven666]

cool, heres hoping its priced a little better.

was looking to buy gun hounds when i was in japan and yodobashi camera was the only place i found it, they had a whole pallet, priced at 10000JPY a piece!! screw that, spent it on 20 awesome doujin games instead..

[Observer]

Funny how one of the recent series I've been watching was Kishin Taisen Gigantic Formula. Japan surely does love "Gigantiku" stuff, heh.

There is a Vector download link with up to stage 2. Did anyone try it?

edit: I guess the price will be around 1.5k yen or so, probably 735/1000 yen for the download version via DLsite or wherever Astro Port is distributing now. Still, it'll be quite accessible.

Looking forward for some awesome mecha action.

Gunhound is about 6k yen in Amazon Japan

But yeah, for 10k yen it's freaking insane... especially because the game does feel really doujin despite having the Castlevania composer doing the music. Thank god for all the doujin stuff, heh. Hope you picked Hellsinker.

[Dragoforce]

screw that, spent it on 20 awesome doujin games instead..

Yeah, that Evangelion game sure looked awesome. I'd like to try it the next time we visit.

[Ghegs]

Just gave the trial a run, very fun stuff. Different weapon layouts to choose from like in Armed Seven and I expect there to be more in the final release. You unlock more difficulty levels as you clear the earlier ones, it wasn't until Insane where I died the first time. Not a terribly difficult game so far even on Insane, the mech can take quite a lot of hits before kicking the bucket. The bosses are suitably big and menacing and there's even minibosses to go around.

Looking forward to this one. Shame the page doesn't say anything about a release date.

[Observer]

Mmm, according to Liarsoft, release will be during Comiket 78. Can't be sure but seems likely since they will be there.

How different it is between difficulties? Just bullet density/less armor on your mech or the enemies speed and strength is increased too?

[Ghegs]

Hey, that's pretty soon. Nice.

I noticed in the higher difficulties there were some additional enemies and mines, the enemies shot more often and the bosses had some additional attacks. The hitpoints of enemies and the player mech seemed to be the same.

[Observer]

Damn, I just played the trial and it's really well done! (including the odd music)

The whole graphics pour mechanical love and the backgrounds, with those Macross-like battles... Great. Can't forget to pick my own portable Itano Circus weapon. Either way, now I'm really looking forward for this one. Heck, I might even go for Armed Seven in the meantime.

[JoshF]

Wow, this seems like it's going to be better than Leynos 2 even. You actually have to aim and the controls would work well with a joystick.

[sven666]

screw that, spent it on 20 awesome doujin games instead..

Yeah, that Evangelion game sure looked awesome. I'd like to try it the next time we visit.

lulz, it really was a present for you tho.. i dont even like evangelion.

[Dragoforce]

Oh wow, thanks!

[Ghegs]

Man, I may have underestimated Insane difficulty. The first time I tried it I got pretty far so I thought it was still fairly easy, but it took me ~10 runs to actually clear the demo on that difficulty and that was by the skin of my teeth. Could've been better though, I made some mistakes. I used the grenade gun/beam cannon power combo which makes short work of anything but isn't a good match against the flying drones in the second stage. Doing the whole game (seven stages, probably) on Insane feels certainly that...so much enemy fire to go around, so little health recovered between stages.

I did discover few issues as well. Couple of times, when trying to open a goodie box, I found myself in a spot where the melee attack wouldn't activate and the shots just went right through the box. Bit of a bummer when you've got enemies closing in and you just want to move on as fast as possible. The first stage miniboss can attack you off-screen, if you position yourself so that the boss' main vulnerable section is next to the screen's edge and one of the missile-shooting parts is off-screen, it still fires the missiles from the off-screen part and you'll suddenly have a wall of fire coming your way with no warning and practically no time to dodge it. Of course this can be avoided by just fighting the boss in the middle of the screen.

Can't wait to see the rest of the stages.

[Nasp]

great game... i love it

[Ghegs]

Made a video of my best Insane playthrough.

[Dale]

Good game but the time limit sucks a lot of the fun out of it.

[sven666]

Made a video of my best Insane playthrough.

great vid

man valken/cybernator really set the benchmark for this type of game huh.. gotta fire up ye'ol'snes sometime soon methinks!

[P_HAT]

wow, game looks great.
Cool video, Ghegs!

[Ghegs]

The full game's out now, but the usual suspects (Himeya, Paletweb) aren't stocking it, at least not yet. I went and ordered mine through rancor's store. Gotta get my mech on.

[rancor]

I went and ordered mine through rancor's store. Gotta get my mech on.

Thanks for the plug..

I'll be shipping on Friday morning and Monday in case anyone else is interested. It saddens me that I had to charge a bit more for this game than my other titles, but for some reason genres other than shmups are always more expensive (fighting games are ridiculous!!) This particular title is $30.00. All other titles remain $25.00.

Heres the cover scan.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

I dont know if someone has already mentioned it but this game looks really good http://gunhound.dracue.co.jp/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWp52pMxc_w

[Ghegs]

Got my full version a few days ago (thanks, rancor) and cleared Normal mode on my second attempt. Working through Hard now which shouldn't take too many tries either, Insane is clearly where the game's at. The Beam Cannon is kind of overpowered, since you can destroy most bosses with one of those + few normal shots so you don't need to learn their attacks at all. And if you use the Assault Rifle for main weapon you get three shots of the Beam Cannon so there's enough to destroy all the minibosses as well as the boss in all the stages. I was a bit disappointed there weren't any new weapons in the full release, but oh well.

The game's now also available at Eurotaku, hopefully that will encourage more people to pick it up.

[Specineff]

screw that, spent it on 20 awesome doujin games instead..

Yeah, that Evangelion game sure looked awesome. I'd like to try it the next time we visit.

What Evangelion game?

[ST Dragon]

So how does this compare to:
Assault Suits Valken & Ranger X

[rancor]

So how does this compare to:
Assault Suits Valken & Ranger X

Graphically Gigantic Army is better, but theres no on-going story like ASV. I still enjoyed GA very much. You can download the demo at my site in the "Free Software" section if you really want to get a feel for it.

Hopefully in a week or so, Ghegs will let us now how Gunhound is. I must say it arrived today nicely packaged, and awfully large for a software title.. Maybe theres something extra in the box..

[ST Dragon]

Gunhound?

Is that another Mech Shooter like GA, Ranger X & ASV?

[rancor]

Gunhound?

Is that another Mech Shooter like GA, Ranger X & ASV?

yup. Check the video - It looks amazing!

http://gunhound.dracue.co.jp/

Ghegs got his copy through me and I'll be shipping it tomorrow - Hopefully he can let us know his impressions soon.

[Ghegs]

Booyah, Insane difficulty cleared. Very fun stuff. Pardon the first stage, I must've been temporarily blind for taking all those stupid hits.

I wonder if I could clear Insane without using any secondary weapons. That would require me to actually learn how to fight the bosses, instead of just, y'know, Beam Cannoning them to death before they even get a shot off.

[rancor]

I found another (simple) doujin game in the same style as Gigantic Army / Gunhound. It's fun for a few minutes and is very "SD" style..

Bolt Armor
http://www.sk8tokyo.com/shmup/software/bolt_armor.zip

edit - Link fixed - Thanks Demetori!

[Demetori]

Link is broken bro.

[sven666]

Booyah, Insane difficulty cleared. Very fun stuff. Pardon the first stage, I must've been temporarily blind for taking all those stupid hits.

I wonder if I could clear Insane without using any secondary weapons. That would require me to actually learn how to fight the bosses, instead of just, y'know, Beam Cannoning them to death before they even get a shot off.

nice vid, great looking game, damn annoying sounds tho, is that "explosion" sound really always on or is it something with the recording?

a little sad too that after 15 years this genre has absoluteley nothing new to offer over Valken..