You really need to play Mecha Ritz

[Legendary Hoamaru]

Oh wow wish I'd have tried this before I started practicing stage 2's boss today, seems to work great! Normally takes like 7-8 boss kills in training at 120 to drive the rank where I need it, this is a major time saver for practice.

Seems like there is some slight visual stutter but its nothing major since using only for practice anyway. Major thanks for this.

[Legendary Hoamaru]

It's an i7-4770K @ 3.50ghz. GPU GTX 770.

Maybe something else was going on at the time, I did have some streams running while testing it out lol.

[qmish]

Oh, what an amazing game. Just was playing it, died on boss with snake-like patterns in 2nd form or smth.
Art style and music are charming, and controls feel so well.

Though, pacing seem a bit slow or levels seem a bit too lengthy unless you count each from midboss to midboss section on its own

p.s.
and yes keys are rebindable thats wow

edit:

so, you need to shoot powerup first to choose?

[Shepardus]

Pacing is only slow if you start at a low rank or let your rank fall from getting hit a lot. If you crank up your starting rank (especially over 100, which causes the game to enter "hell mode," treating 100 as the minimum and 300 as the maximum, instead of 0-99), the game is a lot faster-paced all the way through (faster bullets, suicide bullets, more firepower to destroy midbosses quicker, even faster scrolling). It takes a while to unlock higher starting ranks, but Squire Grooktook has a savefile with everything unlocked you can download if you want that (it's in the high score thread).

so, you need to shoot powerup first to choose?

The items dropped from powerup ships depend on how close you are to them when you kill them. Green ships drop 2k, 5k, or 8k items (2k from being far away and 8k from being close to the ship when you destroy it), and higher-value items decay into lower values if you don't collect them for a while. Purple ships drop bomb, shield, or double (bomb and shield) items, with double from being point-blanking the ship. Shield and bomb items switch back and forth between shield and bomb if you let them sit around before collecting them. White ships drop 1-ups.

Here's the manual fed through Google Translate if you're interested.

[Ikazu-san]

OH SHIT OH SHIT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOJK8I1USBw

[Durandal]

OH SHIT OH SHIT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOJK8I1USBw

OH GOD YES

[Despatche]

please notice me sempai

[Shepardus]

please notice me sempai

"And show my heart the way of love." - Bashful Souffle P. Cake

This is looking really good so far. There's a bunch of welcome UI improvements (English language option, actual ship selection screen with high score saved for each ship, time taken being displayed at the end of each stage), though it's strange that the calculations for the additional time received isn't displayed anymore (maybe it's a different system now? It still looks the same to me though).

There seem to be a number of changes to the gameplay too. Most obviously there's some sort of branching stage choice after the first stage (this video has the other branch, which should look and sound more familiar to Mecha Ritz veterans). I wonder if there will be more branches in later stages or if this is the one fork. I also wonder what that "heat" thing is under the shield gauge. There's now a timer next to each enemy which I assume is for speedkill bonuses, and I think that's also connected to the short/tall/grande (what is this, Starbucks?) words appearing above enemies. It looks like the maximum rank was changed from 99 to 100 + starting rank, either that or it was just raised to 150. I'm really liking the destruction bonuses added to bosses and midbosses - it gives more to do on bosses than simply kill them as quickly as possible and forces you to think more about where you're aiming and how to position yourself, and whether you've got time to go for the destruction bonuses without losing the time bonus.

[Legendary Hoamaru]

Oh good I don't have to change my strategy for Stage 1 it looks like as I've been in a perpetual state of suck (forever) for the last week trying to consistently push rank to 211. At least I'm starting to improve and develop a route on Stage 2

I notice I really get sucked into games with a good amount of (balanced?) RNG. The suicide bullets in this game always keep you on your toes because getting close/killing quick doesn't guarantee that there wont be suicide bullets, it just lowers the chance of it happening.

Stage 2 is completely different though. Wonder if they'll actually allow you to practice the stages this time instead of just the bosses and midbosses.

Also we can finally understand what the story is about now lol. I just decided it was about a cute crazy Miku that stole a teddy bear from glasses doctor.

[Kobayashi]

Interesting tip! Thanks!

[Shepardus]

BTW I think Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo has been released for 1,296円 and you can get it here. There's also a soundtrack. Some more info, and a soundtrack preview.

[horaceappleton]

Ordered. I'm excited!

[Squire Grooktook]

Rancor pls get on this

[microfolk]

Is this the final version?? How much do shipping cost from that site? And why this should matter I need this game and the OST as soon as possible oh my god

EDIT: ok it's past 1am here and I had a really tiring day so I'm not going to splurge money right now but can someone tell me what the best shipping option for Europe would be? EMS, SAL or International Mail?

[Immryr]

hmm. I don't think I like the changes made to the soundtrack -_-

[d0s]

Trying to play this with a Hori 360 RAP VX SE Kai and having a weird issue where the menu selection is constantly scrolling and when the game is started the ship constantly tries to move to the upper left corner on it's own. The stick works fine in other games and the game works fine without the stick, and with a normal 360 pad, but I'd like to be able to use my stick. Has anyone else had this problem?

[Legendary Hoamaru]

Wow already? I'll be sticking with the original until I get a decent clear in hell mode but I'm definitely ordering this now. Looks like they offer overseas shipping.

Trying to play this with a Hori 360 RAP VX SE Kai and having a weird issue where the menu selection is constantly scrolling and when the game is started the ship constantly tries to move to the upper left corner on it's own. The stick works fine in other games and the game works fine without the stick, and with a normal 360 pad, but I'd like to be able to use my stick. Has anyone else had this problem?

I remember having this issue with other games and having to download a custom driver.

Found it: http://vba-m.com/forum/thread-668.html

If your stick is on the list it should fix your issue. A quick glance I don't see yours in particular but I see a bunch of other hori sticks so it may still work out.

[Elixir]

Trying to play this with a Hori 360 RAP VX SE Kai and having a weird issue where the menu selection is constantly scrolling and when the game is started the ship constantly tries to move to the upper left corner on it's own. The stick works fine in other games and the game works fine without the stick, and with a normal 360 pad, but I'd like to be able to use my stick. Has anyone else had this problem?

If it defaults to using POV hats like most 360 sticks I've had (Madcatz TE1, VX-SA, VLX, EX-SE) that's probably the problem. Use joy2key or an xinput wrapper, like x360ce

[Shepardus]

Some Japanese players have already been playing Steel Rondo for several days now; from what I've seen, Seldia_K (who you may know for holding the WR in CC:WI Unlimited) has the score to beat, 11,124,630. From that screenshot you can see several changes, namely that the massive end-game multiplier is gone, there's some sort of no-miss bonus (in addition to the bonus for remaining lives), and the rank value can go up to at least 700 (though it probably scales differently).

[d0s]

Wow already? I'll be sticking with the original until I get a decent clear in hell mode but I'm definitely ordering this now. Looks like they offer overseas shipping.

Trying to play this with a Hori 360 RAP VX SE Kai and having a weird issue where the menu selection is constantly scrolling and when the game is started the ship constantly tries to move to the upper left corner on it's own. The stick works fine in other games and the game works fine without the stick, and with a normal 360 pad, but I'd like to be able to use my stick. Has anyone else had this problem?

I remember having this issue with other games and having to download a custom driver.

Found it: http://vba-m.com/forum/thread-668.html

If your stick is on the list it should fix your issue. A quick glance I don't see yours in particular but I see a bunch of other hori sticks so it may still work out.

Tried this and it doesn't detect my stick sadly.

Trying to play this with a Hori 360 RAP VX SE Kai and having a weird issue where the menu selection is constantly scrolling and when the game is started the ship constantly tries to move to the upper left corner on it's own. The stick works fine in other games and the game works fine without the stick, and with a normal 360 pad, but I'd like to be able to use my stick. Has anyone else had this problem?

If it defaults to using POV hats like most 360 sticks I've had (Madcatz TE1, VX-SA, VLX, EX-SE) that's probably the problem. Use joy2key or an xinput wrapper, like x360ce

A joy2key style thing doesn't work because it's still detecting whatever input the stick is giving that's throwing it off while it's plugged in, so I can have the hat mapped to arrow keys (I have to do this for many doujin games and it works fine) and can move the ship around but the game still thinks there's a 360 pad with a diagonal analog direction being held plugged in so when I let go it floats back up to the top left (hope that made sense). x360ce doesn't seem to detect my stick either.

I think I'm just going to wait until I can get a universal fighting board, thing seems awesome

[Legendary Hoamaru]

Tried this and it doesn't detect my stick sadly.I think I'm just going to wait until I can get a universal fighting board, thing seems awesome

Another trick you can try is to plug the stick in after you launch the game. Some games don't constantly check if you have a controller connected after launch.

[Legendary Hoamaru]

Yakamino is streaming Steel Rondo right now

http://www.twitch.tv/yakamino

Seems like the difficulty in general went up. He is using this purple ship that can gain power from grazed bullets and use it into a screen clearing/cancelling bomb it seems.

The new stage 3 is some kind of glitched area with visually glitched bosses. Reminds me of M-Kai's Pleasure Hearts in a way lol.

Edit: Actually his game got glitched somehow LMAO. That was interesting.

Also, looks like you can choose the last boss stage now, so maybe the fight with the teddy bear will be see-able without sucking .

[cave hermit]

Yeah, there doesn't seem to be a way to fool the game (the original freeware version) into using a fightstick, even with joy2key and plugging the stick in after bootup; having the same issues as d0s here

Kind of slowly getting back into shmups (>implying that I was ever into them to begin with), and I'm toying around with mecha ritz a bit; haven't sat down for a serious play session yet though.

[horaceappleton]

Got my copy of Steel Rondo in the mail! spoilered for big:

Spoiler

I've only gotten one credit in before I had to leave, but I've noticed a few changes so far:

The visual design is the most immediately noticeable change; ship outlines are much clearer, there are a lot of quiet glow effects & a lot more oranges, yellows, and greys. Stage backgrounds seem to be redrawn, and they look nice. It's much easier to see and identify ships that appear.

The music has slightly different instrumentation, which is obvious enough from the videos already going around. The SE/BGM levels are balanced more in favor of the music.

There are a few new enemy designs, and most of the old ones are tweaked in some way.

Low rank is noticeably harder. I never put much time into the original, but my first credit here didn't even reach the 90s. I think enemies might have more health.

There is maybe a little more slowdown in this version. I had a little slowdown mid-stage in stages 3 and 4, whereas in the freeware version I only noticed it in the fast popcorn rush and certain boss attacks.

Bosses will now freely spawn while enemies are still on screen. I don't know if this is an actual change or if I was just playing badly, but the game seems to have a more aggressive pace.

I encountered one branching path after stage 2. The stage I chose turned out to be the stage 3 from the freeware version.

Stage 4 seemed to be missing the second part, with a few elements from the second half like the block walls and the fast popcorn incorporated into the first. Given this, and that Yakamino encountered a branch I didn't, I suspect branching paths may open up depending on your performance in a stage.

The English ReadMe includes a full description of the game system. I'll post it here when I get a chance.

Veloce is voice-acted, and speaks to you over the course of the TLB fight.

The English translation in general is very nice, and extends to the ReadMe and the configuration screen. Text in the story screens was changed, too; Veloce is shown reading Agatha Christie, which i assume is a nod to EoSD.

The plot is... well, I had thought you were playing as Veloce

[Shepardus]

I remember seeing it in the credits in yakamino's stream, so yes.

[horaceappleton]

Programs Utilized:
I would like to express my appreciation for these programs,
all of which were used in the creation of this game:

ShootingGameBuilder - http://blog.livedoor.jp/stgbuilder/

KeyConfig - http://akuma.2-d.jp/

iYM2151 - http://www.detune.co.jp/iym2151.html

Audacity - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/?lang=ja

EDGE - http://takabosoft.com/edge

SAI - https://www.systemax.jp/ja/sai/

[Despatche]

Gekidan Machina is neat. Maybe not as interesting as Mecha Ritz.

The English translation in general is very nice, and extends to the ReadMe and the configuration screen. Text in the story screens was changed, too; Veloce is shown reading Agatha Christie, which i assume is a nod to EoSD.

Agatha Christie is just a big deal in Japan. Her name is invoked a lot and there are a lot of milestones involving some work of hers.

[Domino]

I personally buying digital but I thought Mecha Ritz was pretty cool and the music got da FM sound. Really strange mixture of stuff.

So I went ahead and order a copy of the game plus the OST. Personally I prefer buying Digital but I can make copies of disk for my personal use no problems.

[Legendary Hoamaru]

Got my copy some days ago. The increased level scroll speed at high rank makes this notably harder to play lol. Trying to not only point blank item carriers but spawning extras is vastly harder. Feels like you have to use bombs more in this but I'll just assume it's because of my inexperience with it. Outside of the old bosses the levels play out completely different, pretty much a different game.

I somehow got a CBP clear with ship 6 though, it's a weird one. Haven't tried out any of the ships on the second select screen, I'm really hoping there is an equivalent to the original's Ship 5 since that's my favorite.

[microfolk]

Finally got my copy after an eternity and a half and now I'm stuck at home with a Mac for the next two weeks orz
Playing in wine introduces a lil bit of input lag and I can't really navigate the config because it just displays gibberish, but from the little time I spent with it it looks like everything I dreamt of and maybe more, I can't wait to play it on a more proper setup.