∀kashicverse -Malicious Wake

[Captain]

What is this about a summer patch?

Is it available for download anywhere?

[Cadrin]

Oh, I completely missed Jade Lingo's post somehow before posting my previous one. What an unexpected and pleasant surprise... Thank you so much! This feels like a really good translation. That's a very interesting read indeed. I wonder who Yamakou is. Is it Chill's real name? It must be, right?

It may sound a bit unstable at first, but once you get used to it, this track gradually makes you feel like you're being brainwashed.

I kinda get where he's coming from. Last week I listened to it a lot because I was trying to play that track on the piano, but I just couldn't nail the right notes. It's too fast and blurs together into a very hypnotic melody.

The main theme of this song is "a stillborn baby." (...) In other words, this song is an expression of "the lingering grudges of a miscarried fetus." Afterwards, to enhance this bizarre feeling, I added an irregular rhythm and mixed in a pulsing heartbeat and a baby's cry played in reverse.

Oh my god.
That's what the weird cry was. Maybe that's why Subaru is dying during Malicious Wake: Infectus (her health decreases on its own as the attack becomes gradually more overwhelming).
So we now play The Binding of Isaac: the Bullet Hell. No wonder listening to that track almost makes me feel physically sick if it was designed with such morbid imagery in mind.
Now I really want to get all the encyclopedia entries so I can share them and hope the translation of the documents contained therein sheds some light on the situation; who Subaru is, and why she has those miscarriage themes going on!

What is this about a summer patch?

Is it available for download anywhere?

Not officially. It was only distributed on the CD version of the Akashic Box. Regrettably, I don't know Japanese. Otherwise, I could ask one of the players to upload it somewhere. I wonder if the circle would be okay with that. I think they wrote something on the dev blog explaining their decision against it. Well, if machine translation is any clue...

The summer patch introduced a few new methods. They aren't all that groundbreaking, mostly game-breaking, like an alternate Banish Blast that can store up to three charges, each one for 3 gauge, and unleash a screenwide explosion that almost one-shots bosses.
It also added three new game modes. Abnormal and CHAOS are quirky modes in which you can gain unlimited amounts of shield energy by destroying/damaging (not sure) enemies, and your method gauge regenerates rapidly as well. Basically the mode removes almost any need for dodging or cancelling bullets, and allows you to continuously launch various methods to obliterate every enemy on the screen for very high scores. Here's an Abnormal run on YT.

I just wish Abyss mode was released separately, because from what I saw on Niconico, it's basically a new difficulty level. The bullets are even faster than on Akashic, and some patters are made tougher.
(CHAOS is basically Abyss played with Abnormal's alternate game mechanics.)

I don't care all that much about the new methods or the game modes. But higher difficulty would be nice.

Do you know which one of those tracks is the Tutorial BGM? I've identified all the tracks except that one.

It's not in the OST.
I don't think it was supposed to be an actual track, just background ambience that plays in tutorial mode. It was designed to keep changing as you progress through the tutorial.

This game's soundtrack got a lot of attention, it's strange no one is talking about Chillaxing Monkey's label and their CDs.

I wasn't sure if it was okay to talk about something so tangetially related to the game. I don't think Chill did much besides providing some help with the music and maybe the SFX. He wasn't even in that interview Shinimai did with the circle!
But yeah, I did stalk Nicolai, Hart, LuCK, and Chill for a bit. Only Chill seems to be actively making music, as DJ TURNB3RRY. LuCK and Nicolai don't have much on their Soundcloud accounts. I'm not a big fan of Chill's stuff, a bit too pumping and too hard for me, but his remix of Imperishable Night's Voyage 1969, "Space Dust Candy", is alright.

Alright, let's talk about fan stuff for a bit. Nicolai's profile on Pixiv is interesting. It is a real gold mine of Akashicverse-related stuff. It contains large resolution art works of Ageha, Himeno, and Aranya, which... let's say they are a tribute to ZUN's drawings in terms of anatomy, eheheh. (Aranha's misshapen right leg still haunts my nightmares.) He also made some Hellsinker-related art around 2009-2010. Most of his art seems to be low-res, 16-bit kind of thing. LuCK seems to be doodling a fair bit as well, but it's mostly Touhou stuff.

And what did you guys think of the arrange album, Amor Platonicus?

To me, it's a mixed bag, as expected of remixes of an already rather heavily remixed OST, but in general well worth spending about 1000 JPY for, if only to support the circle. I really liked the piano arrangement of Stage 5 and both of Hal's themes. Nicolai's arrangement of Stage 2 BGM is very neat as well. He also reuses his voice samples from Alternative Arguments. "Every (?) until we go / (???) / I never wanted you to stay / Whatever can I say / But every time (???) / It's like magic what you do / Touch me now and say my name / No one needs to blame"... Where did he get that from?
The boss theme remixes, except for Inconxlenble/Fastymth and Akashicverse, are rather off-putting. The remix of Stage 1 BGM feels particularly rushed and uninspired. The rest is meh to somewhat nice.

[Captain]

Too bad, I'd really like to try the other modes.

And am I the only one who thought the stage 3 boss was a guy?

[Jade Lingo]

Oh, one last thing before I forget: I must thank you thousands of times over, Cadrin, for your excellent work in gathering the names of the bosses of ∀kashicverse: Malicious Wake as well as all of their Methods! They were extremely helpful in enhancing the quality of my translations!

[Lord Satori]

Translations? Is there a translation patch for this game?

And am I the only one who thought the stage 3 boss was a guy?

Yes.

[Aisha]

Translations? Is there a translation patch for this game?

Not that I know of. A translation patch would be best, but I wonder how difficult it would be to create a patch that fixes the text issue for non-Japanese versions of Windows.

[BulletMagnet]

Forgive me if this was already covered someplace in here, but this game just arrived at my house today and I'm having some trouble running it: when I first started the game up I got a "there was a problem and the program will close" message once I arrived at the main menu, but when I tried again the game ran fine. A little while later I tried several times in succession to get past the main menu to no avail; this is especially odd since the demo played fine for me before I took the plunge on the full version. I'm using Windows 8.1, if that helps: any ideas on how to fix this would be appreciated.

EDIT: Before I forget, I already have the computer's non-unicode language set to Japanese; several other doujin titles arrived along with Akashicverse and all of them have installed and run with no problems, so I'm not sure what it is that's giving this one a bellyache.

[Aisha]

That happens to me occasionally on Vista as well, but I'm not sure how to fix it; I just keep trying until the game goes.

If your copy of the game comes from an older print run, you may want to try installing the latest patch, which is version 1.31. It includes a Windows 8 compatibility executable, which may help. According to the readme, you might also have to run the game with administrator privileges.

[CKR]

jimmykudo1 Says:

Jun 7, 2013 - I resolved it actually. I have to turn off DirectDraw (only), and I have to download DirectX9's control panel to do it.

I found this. He had problems with crashes at the menu screen, and this resolved it.

[BPzeBanshee]

For what it's worth, the v1.31 Win8 executable worked for me. Text is also visible but where Japanese symbols should be is garbage, most likely because I either didn't use AppLocale or have Japanese fonts installed.

[BulletMagnet]

If your copy of the game comes from an older print run, you may want to try installing the latest patch, which is version 1.31. It includes a Windows 8 compatibility executable, which may help. According to the readme, you might also have to run the game with administrator privileges.

According to the CD case this one's already patched to 1.31, and I'm the only one who used this laptop so the adminstrator thing shouldn't be an issue. Thanks for responding though.

I found this. He had problems with crashes at the menu screen, and this resolved it.

Hmm, I'll hafta look into this...is anyone aware if there's any way to do the DirectDraw off thing via the "AConfig" file? I don't know if that's one of the options, as I can't read Japanese.

[Captain]

On my winxp machine, the normal version would crash....but the win8 verison would run fine.

This is strange irony.

[BPzeBanshee]

There's a translation of the AConfig in the ST thread and there is no such function. If you're patched to v1.31 there should've been an Akashicverse_win8.exe included. If there's not download the patch anyway and use that.

[Captain]

Can i get a link to the translated config?

[BulletMagnet]

If you're patched to v1.31 there should've been an Akashicverse_win8.exe included. If there's not download the patch anyway and use that.

Thanks, this seems to have helped - despite the labeling on the package there was no Win8 launcher on it, so I DLed the patch and used that, and the game seems to work. Now to return to being utterly awful at this game (surprise, surprise)...oh, one other question. So far I haven't used any continues, and quit out whenever I bite the biscuit, but the game doesn't seem to save my scores when I do that...how do I "properly" end the game?

[BPzeBanshee]

Not too sure with the highscores, there seems to be something up with that where it only saves highscores if you actually beat the game, which makes scoring quite pointless as it's not easy to track your scoring progress.

Can i get a link to the translated config?

Sure.

[Captain]

Not too sure with the highscores, there seems to be something up with that where it only saves highscores if you actually beat the game, which makes scoring quite pointless as it's not easy to track your scoring progress.

Can i get a link to the translated config?

Sure.

Not sure if irony or fail.

[BPzeBanshee]

My apologies, I must've gotten the link wrong. This one should be more straightforward.

[Captain]

I like how everyone didn't notice this amazing fact that is killer for scoring/survival.

Using annihilator 2 (whatever it is) makes you invincible for like a second, you can avoid entire waves with this for the same cost of a bomb that does next to no damage.

Dread scissors 2 destroys any bullets it slashes through.


This means that every method is officially viable for bullet evasion.

Also just realised that the stage 5 boss has an attack refferencing ESPGaluda (it's even called Stimulant Galuda)

[nasty_wolverine]

(it's even called Stimulant Gatorade)

[Captain]

What. how.

[murquiel]

Annihilator Seed Act 2 has invincible startup frames? Or is it somewhere after the start?

[Captain]

as soon as act 2 (stinger) commences you get 1 (a bit longer?) second invincibility.

Act 3 (chaser) does not have this, so I suggest you spam act 2 without going into 3.

[Captain]

I finally beat asterism akashic but I could not trigger the final thingy after infectus.

HALP.

[SuperSoaker360]

Did you input Innocent Affection when prompted?

[Captain]

Can you translate that to engrish?

yea that means no, and I have no idea how.

[SuperSoaker360]

When all your methods have been blotted out by Infectus, die and a new method will pop up in the bottom left: Innocent Affection (↓←↑→/↓→↑←)

[Captain]

OH SO I HAD TO DIE.

I KNEW I WAS TOO GOOD.

[SuperSoaker360]

So I was playing beatmania IIDX a bit today and I played a song called Elisha that uses the same voice samples from the first stage of ∀kashicverse's ∀lternative ∀rguments.

[BPzeBanshee]

Any ideas as to where that song pulled the voice samples from? I'm guessing Akashicverse and the creators of Elisha both pulled it from some library somewhere, but the Japanese keep their secrets deep.