Oh man, I actually managed to forget how much this soundtrack rocks. What have I been doing on my daily walks, not listening to this. Just sent this genius some money and now I wish I could pay Famibe no Yosshin too, for all the great hours of enjoyment I got out of the game (and will get out of it in the future). The 90s were a hell of a decade for videogames, huh…
Will play Ketsui later tonight. Funny that it only got a 26/40 from Famitsu upon release and now it’s considered by some to be the best STG ever. That’s how it be sometimes…
You can get the files to play the arcade board of Akai Katana with a little googling but the site for the actual package manager gets flagged by every browser so oh no.
I’m not being coy I got that far and then went “i don’t have the free time to risk it. It’s probably fine but if not…”
For how much effect R-Type had on all shooters I wish I could remember a game I have credit-fed multiple times outside of the first boss and stage 3 (of 9?)
It would be reductive to say that stage 3 is always the battleship stage in a shoot 'em up… but if you ever have to make a blind guess as to which stage in a shoot 'em up is a battleship one put your money on 3.
BTW I’m not saying that Mushihimesama has the best battleship stage in a Cave game… but perhaps the most stylish one.
Feveron & Ibara Kuro are the only CAVE’s I can play on a semi regular basis anymore. Kuro especially exists in a weird liminal space of this Yagawa structure after trying to replicate his success with Raizing there, between the original and Pink Sweets (whose arrange mode’s also pretty good) yet Ikeda’s own meddling in it makes it work really well? The ranking system compliments the grazing mechanics and the multiple weapon options gives a flavour to it that they never replicated before or since.
It’s a shame CAVE stopped the potential M2 port because of the recent (2006) buggy PS2 port because there’s an awful lot to appreciate if you know when to tilt your head away from the completely out of place character designs.
i have a standing deal with @boojiboy7 to 1-ALL this game by the end of the year.
it’s not going great. idk what it is with ketsui but i find it much, much, much harder to survive than any other cave game. i think once i know how a game plays for score i find it really difficult not to go for broke before i’ve internalized the stages enough to survive in them
i like DOJ and futari black label another a lot, but overall i find cave games to be really kind of plastic. they dont lack for depth, i know, but they aren’t kinaesthetically engaging to me. they feel kind of like flat beer a little bit.
I don’t think I will ever 1-ALL a Cave game. The first loop is usually doable for me with practice. Also i’m old now and just don’t have the patience. I have two doj 1cc’s under my belt and that is more than enough. Good luck!
Your point about Ketsui is spot on and is why I love it so much. If I get cocky, the game will hand it to me.
STGs are a kind of palette cleanser for me. They are great to absorb after spending time with a game dependent on more complex systems.
avoid shooting when there’s nothing to shoot. also, tapping faster than your autofire-rate increases your auto-fire rate to that speed. avoid doing this until later in the game.
try to stick to a lane of enemies so medals fall to you in a line instead of falling everywhere
if you have more than two lives you might want to suicide
on stage 2, bomb the castle, bomb again while shooting, just get as many hits on flamingos as you can
avoid small powerups and pick up powers sparingly. pick up all bombs if you can tho
adding arcade-only ver.2.
Wish Darius Gaiden Extra made it on the previous comp though that probably wasn’t a Taito-sanctioned thing. It had a cool all-stage marathon mode that would have been cool to see in later games
Haven’t gotten to this myself but it’s supposed to be the closest they’ve gotten to arcade perfect including all slowdown from the original. I guess the next best home release on PS2 had been too fast.
Yeah, don’t know what the deal is there. This is apparently just the arcade version which has “events” that weren’t in Chronicle Saviors, though only having played the cabinet for a few minutes I don’t know how much of an overlap that has with DBCS, and new music from some kind of recent Zuntata collab project.
Trying to make sense of Darius The New Game is impossible. Why in PS4 from 3 years ago could I choose from 1-500 different cabinets? What did that do??
speaking of Cave games i’m playing Crimzon Clover (which i’ve had sitting in my wishlist forever but veronica mentioning it finally made me pull the trigger on buying it) and it’s so Cave-like in many ways, down to the third stage cloud level. my favorite Cave-ism
except
the soundtrack SUCKS
as far as cave games go, nothing will ever top the original DDP for me. it’s eternal and timeless, perfect. the boss music still gives me chills. also lacks the creepy maid and doll shit of later games, which is a big plus. i love mechanical designs! i’m playing this for the bullets and guns, not nude women!!!
crimzon clover channels that energy and it’s nice to just play something with bugs and robots and meticulously pre-rendered wreckage sprites that flip and rotate wildly after you blow up a battleship. the 1cc is pretty straightforward too so it seems like a good introduction to bullet hell games.
In the arcade version, there was a cabinet-level save for Chronicle Mode, where new areas were unlocked on a per-machine basis alongside saving the high scores for those areas. Virtual cabinets just recreate that experience online so you don’t have to do it all yourself. Although by now I’d imagine all the virtual cabs are fully unlocked.
