I played both Mushihimesama and Mushihimesama Futari.
I like both equally. They also seem very similar to me… why is Futari said to be “much superior”?
Futari is more modern in terms of level design and the scoring systems are much better, or at least easier to understand. Mushihimesama was meant to be more of a throwback to Raiden, with the different coloured shot upgrades. The stage 3 giant beetle is meant to be a throwback to the classic shmup ‘destroy the giant ship piece by piece’ stage, etc. Futari is mainly just tap dodging and bullet cancelling, I think the level design is less interesting, personally. Fantastic music though. Mushihimesama’s scoring system is weird, I’ve actually got no idea how it works.
I prefer Mushihimesama.
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Futari starts with killing a dinosaur then ends with killing god.
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futari original has a more involved scoring system than the first games original.
the color of your gem counter determines which of your two shottypes spawn more gems. i kinda like it even if it doesn’t afford much creativity, just as this little extra thing to focus on
both games add some extra systems on maniac mode. not entirely sure how it works out for futari, but the chaining system in the first game is harsh and imo kinda annoying
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Putting on my gamer hat to explain this, I hope that’s okay (I recently learned how the scoring works, before I just did 1cc attempts)
First, it’s got the basic “combo counter” most Cave games of that era do. Shooting enemies makes the counter go up. Simple.
The complexity comes from the “counter banking” system. Here’s how it works:
- Laser adds large amounts of “sub-counter” on the enemy it hits. You can see this as a tiny floating number next to the enemy while they are still alive. The number will be either red or white, depending on if it’s banking to your counter or not. When you are not attacking the enemy with lasers, the sub-counters will drain to the main counter.
- Shot “banks” counter on enemies it hits by transferring it to the enemy’s main counter, and then setting your combo to the enemy’s main counter and stopping the main counter from draining. This manifests as a flickering between red and white numbers on the main counter total.
The optimal way to score in Mushihimesama is to feather your shot so you are hitting an enemy with just lasers, and then once the banked amount is at a reasonable level, switching to shot-only. In arcade this difference is done through tapping the button in a particular rhythm (which happens to align nicely with the BPM of many Mushihimesama songs, at least I feel it does. music video the game!), but the ports have auto-fire options to let you do it without having to master the button timings. There’s guides for it online. This is also why there’s Formation and Trace; Trace is much better for trying to go for counter banking, where formation is much better for pure survival.
You can only really effectively use this strategy on minibosses and other large, difficult-to-kill enemies, though, because most enemies die too quick, and destroying one part of a multi-part enemy fucks with the process. The first enemy you can comfortably do this on is the scorpion miniboss in Stage 2, but you can also do it on the flowers that open if you shoot them while they are closed (on top of the hidden gem fountain property they have)
It’s pretty cool when you get it to work. Your counter skyrockets to absurd numbers VERY quickly, and if you can maintain the combo it leads to big big big big points. Some people apparently think it’s a bug, but I think it’s definitely intentional; if it’s a bug, why is so much of the game constructed to encourage you doing it?
Here’s an extremely poor-quality video of the PS2 port which shows just how silly it can get. Timestamped to 49s.
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they cost a pound more than the saturn cotton games that have been rereleased
That’s weird, because in the US, they are like 4 bucks cheaper than the Saturn ones individually.
the hits keep coming
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Perhaps the most 3d 2d game of all time
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November 12th.
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Tomorrow.
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Switch port of the best donpachi game (DaiOuJou fans do NOT interact) contains all the stuff from the steam release along with a cool new training mode that lets you beat stuff like the secret boss while listening to Kohta Takahashi getting RSI through the drum solo in this
Hope they do more of these (Ibara ;_; )
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I wish they were on the good console (ps4) ;_;
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hell yes. i played this on groove coaster recently in a crazy loud arcade. it still cut through the noise and i passed.
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They had a PCB of this at a round 1 in LA except the sound was really low so I spent like 45 minutes playing it while the cab over shouted MARVEL VERSUS CAPCOM TWO: NEW AGE OF HEROES on loop
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