DoDonPachi Saidaioujou coming to Xbox 360 (REGION-FREE!)

[Special World]

Even if Cave did mess up the interface a bit, I really appreciate the work that went into this package. The shop has a *ton* of wallpapers, and the challenge mode seems really cool, if I could just get a translation on what each challenge is. Plus 360 mode is really fun, as people have said. I really wish Team Score Attack was something more lively though. I had envisioned it as a take turns type deal, where two players try to score as a team and then hand the sticks over to another two people to try and beat them, in a sort of tourney fashion. As it is it's just way too abstract - what does it mean to me if all the players who have been assigned group D come in first or last?

I will also third the fact that the first boss is pretty nuts. I think you can position yourself to avoid the worst of the attack, but I'm not sure how yet. Things can get really tough if you fall into dealing with the wider waves of bullets.

[Nana]

Just got this today. I'm finding it to be a lot of fun so far! Yeah, the interface is kinda completely fucked and is incomprehensible once you turn off 'wide' mode on a CRT, but hey, the game itself rocks. Don't care for 360 mode, but I'm loving arcade.

Kinda wish I went for the SLE instead of the pleb edition. Anybody who doesn't like the game as much want to trade? My copy + $75 for your SLE B)

[hail good sir]

jive

[casualcoder]

Just got my SLE today, still have to get home and play the games. Thought about listening to some tracks meanwhile, however I was bummed by the saturation and clipping =/

I had to turn down the volume a lot, so I ripped the tracks and verified it:

Looking at the waveform you provided doesn't necessarily show audio clipping. It could just be the limiting. Check every commercialy released record from the last 10 years and you will see an even heavier mastering limit (square waveform)

It could be that the summing of the 3 tracks (voice, fx, music) is producing clipping on output. If so, that can be fixed by reducing the sound ceiling in the options menu. (set them each to, say, 70)

[BareKnuckleRoo]

It could be that the summing of the 3 tracks (voice, fx, music) is producing clipping on output. If so, that can be fixed by reducing the sound ceiling in the options menu. (set them each to, say, 70)

Setting the Voice to the same level as the Music and SFX makes them way, way louder than they should be. For whatever reason the port made the voices much louder than on the PCB relative to the music and sound effects. Would it likely help with clipping just to disable the voices altogether? It's not that bad but it'd be nice to stop it...

[CptRansom]

Anyone else experience the joy of trying to save a replay only to have it freeze your console forcing a reset?

Here's hoping they patch a lot of this shit. Phenomenal game marred by some shitty QA.

[RoninBuddha]

does 1.5 seem easier to anyone?

[Tyjet]

I've been noticing that if you press the bomb button or the button you have it mapped to during the stage clear screen, the item charts, or whatever you call it, disappears. It reappears once you press the button again. All you see are the scores, the "Please Wait," and the background image.

Is this something present on the PCB?

[CloudyMusic]

Anyone else experience the joy of trying to save a replay only to have it freeze your console forcing a reset?

Yep, happened to me twice yesterday.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Anyone else experience the joy of trying to save a replay only to have it freeze your console forcing a reset?

Phenomenal game marred by some shitty QA.

Ouch. Yeah, the interface definitely feels rushed, which is a shame because the game itself is great.

I've been noticing that if you press the bomb button or the button you have it mapped to during the stage clear screen, the item charts, or whatever you call it, disappears. It reappears once you press the button again. All you see are the scores, the "Please Wait," and the background image.

Is this something present on the PCB?

I thought I saw the score tally fail to appear once, but it never happened again to me, so I had no idea what caused it. You still get all the store totals.

[Schrodinger's cat]

Really digging 360 mode right now. Haven't played it that much yet so I could be off in my assessment but:

The rechargeable life bar mechanic while hypering reminds me a lot of 1943, which is probably my current favorite non-Cave shooting game at the moment. It feels both forgiving and unforgiving at the same time, since there's basically a very short (if any) recovery time if you get hit which makes it a lot easier to die multiple times in a row. It's my favorite mode so far.

I hope they fix the whole interface for standard TVs though. It sucks having to toggle wide mode on or off if I either want to read menus, or play the game.

[1up]

I've been noticing that if you press the bomb button or the button you have it mapped to during the stage clear screen, the item charts, or whatever you call it, disappears. It reappears once you press the button again. All you see are the scores, the "Please Wait," and the background image.

Is this something present on the PCB?

I had this happen too. I usually press the shot button to speed it up, but accidentally hit the bomb button and the score tally disappeared. I could hear it counting in the background though?

[Tyjet]

Yeah, score is still calculated. I was mashing the bomb button to get through the score tallies and stumbled on this. Thought the game was having a seizure with it going off and on until I realized it was me doing it. Maybe they mixed up replay controls with the game??

[Kiken]

Yeah, score is still calculated. I was mashing the bomb button to get through the score tallies and stumbled on this. Thought the game was having a seizure with it going off and on until I realized it was me doing it. Maybe they mixed up replay controls with the game??

Yep.. been getting that here too. I normally mash all three main input buttons to speed up the end stage score tabulation and sure enough, the tally was flickering like mad.

[NTSC-J]

My first impression of the game is that people have really blown the difficulty talk out of proportions. The arcade mode isn't really any harder than the first loop of Ketsui.

Bullshit.

First go on Ketsui and I nearly killed the st2 boss, second go onwards always died in stage 3.

On SDOJ I have to bomb the L1 boss every single time if I don't want to lose a life. That spinning attack is fucking retarded for a level 1 boss spam at low rank. That one attack has been taking a life from me all night long.

I'm with Erppo. I've compared it to Ketsui's first loop in the past, but that's not to say it isn't a challenge. You'll have to work a bit to clear this, unlike some of the recent Cave games which don't put up much of a fight (to simply clear, that is...not talking about scoring well).

However, SDOJ is much easier than Ketsui in terms of scoring because it's essentially only a stage long. There is really no point in scoring in the first four stages with that overflow bug present in stage 5.

I wonder how long will the top Japanese players compete on this game. They must already be no missing the whole game to reach Inbachi, even at expert, and scoring doesn't look too intricate too me. It's all about timing hypers correctly and not dieing isn't it?

Well, the game is a year old now and I still see a lot of people playing it, but they seem to be mostly casual players. It doesn't seem like many players are trying to go for Inbachi, but are more interested in the overflow. Player LEN was said to be able to reach Inbachi in 60% of his runs (I watched him do it two or three times) about six months ago, but apparently he never cleared it.

[Skykid]

Maybe Cave fired all their testers in a downsize prior to finishing the product. Disappointed to hear how many little bugs there are, and any similarity to the MMP/PS menus is just madness. I would have thought they would have wanted to bury that one forever.

[kathy]

+1

They should have hired M2 again

[Drachenherz]

It's here! My RE came! I came!

[nuskool]

Apologies for my beginner question but what is the correct names for the different difficulties in Arcade mode (left/right on the ship select screen). Are they something like normal, god and maniac or easy, normal and hard?

[nZero]

Shot/Laser/Expert.

[IseeThings]

I'm amazed it made it through Microsoft certification with the bugs some people are mentioning, especially the really obvious 'instant fail' UI bugs... (the weird jittering slowdown you can understand, I doubt any tester made it that far

Guess they really set the standards low when it comes to Japanese games for the Japanese market because they're so desperate for anything to get people onto the platform

[CStarFlare]

I'm really annoyed that the game has to save and kick me out to the menu every time I fail a challenge. They would be great if I could quickly retry... I keep getting fucked up by the enemies before the stage 4 boss on the "Get the 1-UP item" challenge and I'm not willing to sit through 30 seconds of bad design before getting killed the first two seconds of gameplay.

[AntiFritz]

You hope cave are able to fix all the bugs in the patch coming out soon because with the cost of patches...

[nuskool]

Shot/Laser/Expert.

Thanks.

Is there a specific reason why they are named Shot and Laser?

[Nana]

Shot/Laser/Expert.

Thanks.

Is there a specific reason why they are named Shot and Laser?

In shot mode, your shot is stronger. In laser mode, your laser is stronger.

[AntiFritz]

Shot/Laser/Expert.

Thanks.

Is there a specific reason why they are named Shot and Laser?

They aren't actually difficulties. Shot should give you an stronger shot, laser should give you a stronger laser and expert is stronger shot AND laser. At the cost of much much tougher bullet patterns.

If its anything like daioujou they all have different amount of bombs that you can carry.

[Muchi Muchi Spork]

My first impression of the game is that people have really blown the difficulty talk out of proportions. The arcade mode isn't really any harder than the first loop of Ketsui.

Bullshit.

First go on Ketsui and I nearly killed the st2 boss, second go onwards always died in stage 3.

On SDOJ I have to bomb the L1 boss every single time if I don't want to lose a life. That spinning attack is fucking retarded for a level 1 boss spam at low rank. That one attack has been taking a life from me all night long.

I'm with Erppo. I've compared it to Ketsui's first loop in the past, but that's not to say it isn't a challenge. You'll have to work a bit to clear this, unlike some of the recent Cave games which don't put up much of a fight (to simply clear, that is...not talking about scoring well).

However, SDOJ is much easier than Ketsui in terms of scoring because it's essentially only a stage long. There is really no point in scoring in the first four stages with that overflow bug present in stage 5.

I wonder how long will the top Japanese players compete on this game. They must already be no missing the whole game to reach Inbachi, even at expert, and scoring doesn't look too intricate too me. It's all about timing hypers correctly and not dieing isn't it?

Well, the game is a year old now and I still see a lot of people playing it, but they seem to be mostly casual players. It doesn't seem like many players are trying to go for Inbachi, but are more interested in the overflow. Player LEN was said to be able to reach Inbachi in 60% of his runs (I watched him do it two or three times) about six months ago, but apparently he never cleared it.

So the thing that the west whined about wanting fixed is the thing that kept Japan interested.

My opinion is you and Erppo are of such a higher skill level than the average player that you aren't really the best choices to judge a difficulty level. If you day 1 clear SDOJ arcade then you aren't a normal human.

[ACSeraph]

I'm really annoyed that the game has to save and kick me out to the menu every time I fail a challenge. They would be great if I could quickly retry... I keep getting fucked up by the enemies before the stage 4 boss on the "Get the 1-UP item" challenge and I'm not willing to sit through 30 seconds of bad design before getting killed the first two seconds of gameplay.

Seriously this x 1,000,000

Such a waste of time and I find it really irritating to have to keep going through the load screens over and over again.

[Erppo]

So the thing that the west whined about wanting fixed is the thing that kept Japan interested.

I don't think you can draw that conclusion from the info. In the broken game, triggering the bug is simply the only way to score really well so obviously people are going for it when it means you will automatically beat anyone who hasn't done it.

What it does do is make the scoring very unflexible, since the score from the bug is essentially 100% of your score. I've seen a video of someone spending 3 full hypers in the state in Expert and unless there are some huge improvements possible that can slip in even a moment of fourth hyper in there, the scores really aren't going to improve much anymore.

[Cuilan]

So, according to Famitsu, SDOJ sold about 12,440 copies this past week. Not bad, but not great. Hopefully it reaches the same numbers that Futari and Galuda 2 managed.

As for myself, I went with air mail shipping from AmiAmi for my copy, so I should have it by the time the patch is out.