Doujin Shmup reviews for newbies

[Mischief Maker]

With Shoot the Core gone and other sources for info on doujins scattershot and sporadic, I've decided to fill the vacuum with a short series of reviews of the biggest non-Touhou Doujin shmups aimed at newbies; complete with links and instructions to get them running on English windows.

I've just put up my first review, for Siter Skain's Tale of Alltynex trilogy:

http://www.caltrops.com/review0066.php

Feedback and suggestions for future articles appreciated!

[Otai]

May I request for a review of games by X.X (Green Wind, Blue Wish, Eden's Edge, Blue Wish Resurrection/Plus and Eden's Aegis)?

[Reaper gI]

How to run Japnaese PC games for idiots would be useful.
Applocal only works for running some software, often not for instaling it. It still can't deal with non-unicode characters in directory paths.
Include the point to change install directory to something ASCII when instaling (if aplicable). Obviously if there's any sub-folders within the game folder that are S_JIS you have to run it in actual Japanese language (complete with restarts to change setting etc.)

Slightly scathing hate of touhou, the gameplay has a lot of parody, non-shmupers would miss that. The sprites seem intentional, the original The Highly Responsive to Prayers doesn't look like they're stand-ins for anything else.
Doujin soft in general is littered with cute girls anyway, there's large amounts of parody of bishoujo games and anime. No need to blame touhou for it.

[Mischief Maker]

How to run Japnaese PC games for idiots would be useful.
Applocal only works for running some software, often not for instaling it. It still can't deal with non-unicode characters in directory paths.
Include the point to change install directory to something ASCII when instaling (if aplicable). Obviously if there's any sub-folders within the game folder that are S_JIS you have to run it in actual Japanese language (complete with restarts to change setting etc.)

Ah, good point. I never install games to their default position so I've never had that problem. I will add that to later articles.

Slightly scathing hate of touhou, the gameplay has a lot of parody, non-shmupers would miss that. The sprites seem intentional, the original The Highly Responsive to Prayers doesn't look like they're stand-ins for anything else.
Doujin soft in general is littered with cute girls anyway, there's large amounts of parody of bishoujo games and anime. No need to blame touhou for it.

Oh dear, I didn't mean for that to come across as scathing hate. My point was much the same as yours, that the little girls are a joke and the meat of the games is the bullet hell. The fact that people who don't play the game obsess over the joke sprites is the ultimate example of missing the point. I'd have thought the cosplay caption and Beavis and Butthead reference would have made that clear.

I don't hate Touhou, in fact I wrote an article praising Touhou for Caltrops a couple years past. My point is that Touhou gets all the attention, so I wanted to draw attention to some of the other great developers in the doujin scene.