はじめまして。僕はドミニック（Dominic）で。でも、ドッム（Dom）がいい。僕は二十二歳で、男の人だ。僕の誕生日はシークレットだ。

今サイモンフェア−ジア（Simon Fraser）大学の五年生だ。せんもんはコンピューターだ。コンピューターのトピックの中で、ウェッブデベロップメント（Web development）が一番上手だ。

今コ−オップ仕事がある。サイモンフェア−ジアのコンピューターのデパートメントではたらいている。この仕事はぼしゅうだ。後日、日本ではたらきたい！

よろしくおねがいします、みんなさん。

And so begins another semester. This one is a bit different because I am actually doing a co-op work term while taking classes.

Yay co-op and making monies!

As far as I know, I am only allowed to take one course while doing co-op. Since I am working at SFU, I can get to my class without much trouble; I just need to make up the time for it (two hours a week that go into my work time).

What course am I taking in addition to CMPT 427? Why JAPN 200 of course!

To be honest, after my first class in JAPN 200, I feel like I am going to get my ass kicked unless I study hard and review all the stuff from JAPN 100/101. At the present time, since there was a semester-long break between JAPN 101 and this class and I did not exactly find time to review content for this class despite having the resources (I have the textbooks and the CDs already), I feel under-prepared and everyone else seems like they are coasting.

Theoretically, I should have enough time, but there are lots of commitments outside of work, like more work (in unpaid forms).

One very interesting thing so far was when people were sharing study tips, one student said that he recently started blogging in Japanese. Maybe I should start doing something similar..

As well, I heard over the holidays from quite a few people that I know that they are taking CMPT 475. It’s an evening class (starting at 5:30 on Tuesdays going for three hours) and from what I hear, the instructor is a person in the industry and will be quite interesting. I am thinking of checking the lecture out next week, since there was no lecture during the first week. Although if I do end up finding the course interesting enough, I will be stuck in a pretty tough spot, unless I somehow manage to squeeze in two classes, along with a full-time co-op job and volunteer work (Scouts).

I’m pretty sure some form of intervention is going to take place should I ever make that decision, so I best find out what I want to do for this semester soon. Of course, I will need to wait untl Tuesday before I get sufficient information to make this decision.

ねこみみのかけら (Nekomimi no Kakera) released DieFeen, which is a shooting game (like most other games I have been talking about these past couple of days). Unfortunately, there are no trailers and there are no gameplay videos to leech, so I will have to provide screenshots instead, which fortunately enough for me are available on the website.

It is a very pretty-looking game and quite different from the general STG. For starters, your two characters have three different firing modes, just like Ether Vapor.

Both player controlled characters have four Feens (at least, that’s what I think they are in-game; the general term are satelites or options I think). Depending on what firing mode you choose, they form a different formation. It appears that they do take damage if hit with enemy fire, but I don’t know if they actually can die. I never tried it but you, the reader, can and let me know afterwards.

Ariel, the 猫耳少女 (nekomimi shoujo) is a catgirl that flies on a broom. She can put her Feens out in front of her (front), get them to follow her around, like Marisa’s first choice in Mountain of Faith (follow), or fly around her with the shots going around like a windmill (rolling).

Nebel, the うさみみ少年 (usamimi shounen – not really sure what it means although Gjiten says sad-earred boy, which does not make any sense) is a boy with dark rabbit ears that has little wings on his back, which are used to fly around. His firing modes have him putting his Feens to the side (side), facking backwards (back) or overlapping himself to get a wide firing arch (hide).

Personally, I like using Nebel more, since the side and back formations are really effective in taking out enemies in the front and back respectively.

Another thing that makes DieFeen a bit different is the fact that you have a ridiculous number of bombs. In this game, Feens are also your bombs, although they are inside a bag and you start off with 16 inside.

Actually, now that I think about it, maybe the Feens get replaced by the ones inside your bag if they die…

Oh well, like I said, you readers can find out and let me know.

The general impression that I got when I heard about this game from the various places I look around for Comiket games is that this is hard.

After playing this, I concur. And it’s only the trial! The actual game itself is not finished!

RefRain ~prism memories~ is from RebRank. From my limited knowledge of Japanese and skill of observation, they are a doujin group focused on STGs.

Due to the lack of trailers from RebRank, I present a gameplay video instead (stolen from here).

Please note: this guy makes it look easy -.-. However, it provides one thing that people should note when playing STGs: use your bombs!

Pretty awesome techno-based soundtrack as well. In any case, I think I will need to try out their previous game 五月雨 ~samidare~ while anticipating the complete game. Good luck for me finding it though; finding games from previous Comikets is near impossible, unless they are extremely popular like the 東方 games.

If you have 20 minutes and 40 seconds of time, please take a look at The Story of Stuff.

I will not going into it in much detail because I do not want to accidentally ruin the message, which I believe is very true and something I absolutely believe in, even before watching the video.

At first, I did not know what to make of this game. After getting it and playing around for a bit, I only need to say these three words.

So. Much. Fun.

Twilight Frontier presents ぱちゅコン! Defend the Library! These guys are apparently well known for their derivative works of other games, such as the very awesome 東方 (Touhou) series, which is what Defend the Library! is based off of.

If you need an idea of what this game is, think of one of those tower defense games out there. Now instead of towers, you are training one of five different units to defend a bookcase of 20 books. These units can be upgraded just like a typical TD game, except when you upgrade, you upgrade all the units of that type. Also, since your units can move around, they can also be attacked and killed; however, they are respawned after a short while.

There are six teams available, with only one that you can use at first. You can easily unlock them just by playing and beating the game at any difficulty with any team. Once you unlock all six, you can create your own custom team (and unlock two extra characters you can use for the team).

If you enjoy playing tower defense in its various forms, this game is for you.

So for those of you out there who watched Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and wondered just how fun it would be to befriend people with all-out maximum power, here’s your chance.

fly-system presents Magical Battle Arena, a 3D fighting game featuring magical girls from various series.

So far, they have announced four characters:

• Fate Testarossa from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A’s
• Kinomoto Sakura (木之本さくら) from Cardcaptor Sakura
• Lina Inverse from Slayers
• Takamichi Nanoha (高町なのは) from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A’s

The C73 release is just a demo and the game itself is still not finished. However, you can play as either Nanoha or Lina and from the looks of it, their move sets are complete.

In my opinion, the attacks and all are kind of simple, which may or may not be a good thing. I am not much of a fighting game person, so I cannot say too much about fighting game mechanics without embarrassing myself. But Nanoha pretty much gets all her attacks from A’s. Her special moves are the following:

• Accel Shooter
• Divine Buster
• Round Shield
• Starlight Breaker (ranged super)
• Excellion Buster ACS (melee super)

From what I can read, Fate is only missing her supers and voice actress. Her move set so far is the following (correct me if I’m wrong as well):

• Plasma Lancer (ブラズマランサー)
• Thunder Blade (サンダーブレイド)
• Haken Saber (ハーケンサイバー)

They need to get Fate ready for the next demo just so we can see (and possibly repeat) the epic Nanoha VS Fate battles from the original series, except this time, they’re more powerful.

Just for the record, I think that Fate’s supers would involve Bardiche Assault in Zamber form.. perhaps Plasma Zamber Breaker for the ranged super and Jet Zamber for the melee super?

It’s that time of year (well, the second time of the year) when Comiket rolls around and that means scouring the Internets for Japanese doujin game torrents (otherwise known as indie games).

If you remember one of my two posts on C72, you would have noticed that Ether Vapor was still in production. Well, it’s officially released now and it’s still awesome. If you have no idea just what Ether Vapor is, just watch the YouTube video below and all questions will be answered.

Haven’t seen anything else on the shmup front yet, but when they do, I’ll be posting.