Who like 2d shoot em ups?
I do!
That being said, Castle Shikigami 2 is being released in the USA. Yay!
But’s it’s being released by XS games, who gave us the the totally screwed over Mobile Light Force Games. Boo!
But look! Strangely, they have decided not to screw with it for the US release, and are giving us all the original artwork, and strange Engrish subtitles. Yay!
And, they are going to sell it for 10 bucks. Double Yay!
An image:
Removed dead image.
Which system is it for? Looks fun.
PS2. In Japan, their are GC and Xbox versions. Supposedly XS Games is going to put out the Xbox version sometime.
Over on the GAF they were talking about the PS2 version being the worst of the three with some really nasty slowdown. True?
–Dave
Probably. I heard they made it a part of the game, and that the slowdown can be turned off. More in the fact that the slowdown is choppy, and not that there is slowdown.
Well, I finally got the game, and I have some impressions, as well as longing for mispent youth.
Attack of the million billion killer sprites. Missles, and shots, and green things, and blue things, and thousands of purple things. All of which can kill you. I know this is the standard M.O. of shooters these days, but crap.
One of the really neat things is that there are multiple characters, and the game really plays differently with them. Some of its respective strengths in terms of bombs, regular shots, and secondary shots. The main difference is the secondary shot. This is usually completely different in each character. For some it’s a heat seaking missle, another is a shield that absorbs and shoots back enemy missles. All of which greatly slow down your character.
This is a budget title. English only dialog, with a translation as bad as an SNK fighter. With spoken dialog in English, by people phoning it in. The rest of it’s fine.
Now, for deep ruminations. I suck at this game. Five million enemy missles heading at me. Can’t run, can’t hide. I used to be good at these games. The first home console game I ever had, besides the requisite duck hunt and that rob game, was Star Force. An ancient and simplisitic shooter:
I used to sit there and play and play until my legs were numb from sitting cross legged. I never did finish, but I still did a hell of a lot better than I do now. And looking back on it, that game’s ship moved like bus compared to the quick speeds of modern shmups.
But I still play them, and I still suck. Mainly for the memories.
…the fuck is going on in that picture?
I’ve had this for Dreamcast for awhile, and it’s freaking awesome. If you like shooters at all, you have to get this thing. It’s great.
…except that I’ve vowed to hold out for the XBox version.
I can sympathize. I got into shmups again in late august or so I think, and did the MAME thing, and they were kicking my ass. But I got better as I kept playing. Got distracted, but need to go back. Part of it is just these games have gotten harder. I remember when it took all my concentration to play megamania on my Atari 2600. I broke it out a few years back to play it and the game was horribly simple to play.
The rest of it is that we haven’t had this type game in a while, so a lot of people who used to like this stuff are rusty. I got better playing on Mame because I got back to the point where I could move without thinking about it as long, where I could see most of the board at once, etc.
I’m really looking forward to this game because I love shooters, and it’s cheaper than the copy of Gradius V that’s still calling to me. (Plus it’s vertical overhead vs. sidescrolling which I like slightly better.)
Here’s something I think I should say: this game is better than Ikaruga. If you’re a shooter fan, that probably means quite a lot.