Why do you forget about STG Builder and STG Creator? Both are japanese.mamboFoxtrot wrote: No, it's definitely closer to Dezaemon than Unity. I wonder what the Dezaemons sold for back in the day?
I would again compare it to RPG Maker, but only if you ignore the scripting capabilities of that series since XP. Some level of "programming" is possible here via drag-and-drop connectable "triggers" and such but for the most part you're only going to be laying out the bullet patterns (player & enemy), enemy waves, and background scrolling and such. To that end my initial impression is that this part of the process is indeed as quick and approachable as you can make it to a non-programmer, so if that's all you really want then it seems you'll get what you paid for here.
I know many good games were made with STG Builder. Dunno which ones were with Creator.