Like exception, this is something else that kind of slipped the cracks.

So what is 黄昏酒場～Uwabami Breakers～? (the kanji says たそがれさかば, which means something like “twilight bar room” from looking at some places online about the game). It is yet another 弾幕 (danmaku) game, but this one is about a pub crawl, where your player goes from one bar to another without getting kicked out of the establishment by running out of time.

But enough of background stories for a shooting game – the important thing really is the whole challenge of these games. On that: this is not easy, but there is one thing that makes life easier. There are no lives; instead, you have a clock to race, and every time you die, the time gets moved up. So don’t die too much, or you will lose.

However, one of the most frustrating part about the game is that there are no continues. If you die (by running out of time by either not reaching the boss before the last order time or dying at the boss when it is already last order time, therefore kicking you out), then you will have to start again from the very beginning. Luckily, the game is only three stages, but still, it’s not an easy game.

Uwabami Breakers was made by a 同人 (doujin) circle known as 呑んべぇ会 (のんべぇかい), which roughly translates as “The Drinking Party”, again from various sources online. The group includes ZUN, who is part of (or the only member of) Team Shanghai Alice that makes the 東方 (Touhou) series. But basically, the game, and the circle, was conceived in a bar while drunk.

Kind of funny how some of the best ideas usually come from bars and drunkenness, like the CSSS Frosh Week theme for 2006.

One day, while looking around for anime/manga updates on Tokyo Toshokan, I spotted a game known as exception. Apparently the full version was posted around a month ago, but tagged as something that I have not set my filters to see, so it was ignored.

So what is exception exactly? Well, it is yet another doujin shmup game, this one produced by primitive and is the third game they released. But what makes exception special?

Well, first off, it seems to be inspired by programming, which may or may not make it appeal to people in CS like myself. Bosses are named after common things like constructors, functions, iterators, threads, and more. I would be listing off more, but the game is pretty challenging and I only got up to level 4 (with thread as the boss) before I got the game over.

The visual theme is 3D abstract, which is reminiscent of noiz2sa. However, some of the concepts are different.

For one, the control scheme is different. Players can have their ship face any direction they want, shooting at blocks on a 2D plane, so as a result, using the mouse for aiming and keyboard for movement makes gameplay quite natural.

As well, the concept of dealing damage is quite different as well. Players can dish out damage the usual way with a normal shot, which is a blue stream. You can also do a massive lock-on shot which you can hold onto to aim at enemies, then release to shoot out a lot of blue lasers to kill the enemy. Now, depending on the difficulty level, when you destroy an enemy, they leave a bunch of blocks floating around in space. The third way to deal damage, which is by far the most effective thing to do in exception, is to propel blocks at enemies at a fairly reasonable speed. However, this attack requires a charge up, which does so automatically, but is increased faster when you destroy more stuff.

The thing that really makes this game stand out is that it is something you can play with friends. exception has a co-op multiplayer mode, where a group of players can take on the game together, because, you know, Japanese shmups are insanely hard.

And here’s obligatory videos – these are the same ones that are on the exception website.

At the moment, I am only following two series:

• Bleach
• Rental Magica

The lack of disk space is the key culprit in preventing me from watching more stuffs; the absolute lack of time due to a busy life comes in at a very narrow second place.
It honestly seems that I have this thing for anime that deals with magic to a certain extent. Looking back at some of the series that I followed in the past, a somewhat large majority of it had elements of magic in it…

Bleach (ブリ－チ）

If you follow Bleach, magical elements are made obvious with dealings in the supernatural (life after death, shinigami) as well as the whole kidou stuff. Fairly stereotypical shounen series though.

Death Note (デスノート)

Like Bleach, dealings with the supernatural. The exception here is that the concept of shinigami has them carry around a Death Note, where one to “accidentally” drop one on Earth because he got bored. Very enjoyable, although some people have said they got bored with the series; too much talking, not enough action. However, the action that really takes place is psychological warfare.

Fate/Stay Night (フェイト／ステイナイト)

Well, the entire premise of the entire show is based off of magic. It’s kind of hard to miss just what the elements of it are. The Holy Grail War, where seven masters (with magical talent) face off against each other with their summoned servants for the Holy Grail.

Mahou Sensei Negima (魔法先生ネギマ！) / Negima!? (ネギマ！？)

Since I enjoyed Love Hina, I figured I should check out Negima, since they are by the same author. That was not a bad decision because the series has been quite enjoyable, with its epic parts (the various story arcs involving magical combat), the RPG references (in the current part in the manga), and fair amounts of comedic situations.

Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha (魔法少女リリカルなのは) and sequels A’s and Strikers

I came across this series by complete surprise. I don’t even quite remember how I found it these days, but it is a pretty cool concept, with high technology as magic. The combat scenes are awesome. If you need a quick summary of what to expect, refer to this quote from an old blog post: “The best way to describe the series is that it’s like a magical girl series with various deviations into mecha anime (your typical beam attack), pretty good combat sequences, and gun mechanics (from A’s onward).” Not your typical mahou shoujo.

Rental Magica (レンタルマギカ)

Revolves around Astral, a magician dispatch company who rents out mages for various different tasks. Takes magic from so many different inspirations it’s crazy. Also quite entertaining with good op/ed music and fairly epic battles.

Now hear comes my question. What’s out there that would be interesting enough to watch? By reading an anime blog post a friend wrote, it only has one that I find interesting enough to watch, and that would be Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion R2 (コードギアス　反逆のルル－シュ R2), the follow-up to Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion (コードギアス　反逆のルル－シュ).

Would there be anything that would be interesting out there?

A fairly long rant about this issue. For the curious, I want out. More after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today was my course registration day.

The original plan was to go and do a distance ed course because I am heading out east for a week and a bit in June. If I carried on with that plan, I would have probably taken either CMNS 130 or CRIM 131, thanks to recent developments that have encouraged me to do more than just a Computing Science degree.

For the curious, the option that was on my mind for the longest time was a minor in Communications due to my primary interest area in Internet communications through websites. I figured that understanding how communications have evolved and developed and where it can go all thanks to technology would be a good thing to pair up with a computing degree.

But after hearing during a career fair last week (and I was one of the people running the booth where I heard it from) that there is discussion going on about a joint major in Computing Science and Criminology on computer forensics, I pretty much got hooked on that idea.

However, a desire to get a U-Pass for the summer (apparently, I am not eligible for a U-Pass if I take only distance ed courses) has encouraged me to go and take a course. And that lucky course does not fall into any of the two aforementioned courses, but CMPT 419.

The topic? Machine learning. The prof? Greg Mori, who also happened to teach my CMPT 310 course.

Two things make me worried about the course though. First off, it is quite math-intensive and requires a good knowledge of calculus and linear algebra, pre-requisites in the lower-level CMPT stuff. I did not do so well on those. Second is that the course is cross-listed with a grad course.

However, the course material does sound interesting and my interest in the material will be my main driving force in keeping me going. After all, my desire to do MACM 442 has already forced me to take MATH 342. For the curious, it was not as bad as it looked.

Jenn, this one’s for you.

LOLGrace – It’s like lolcats, except with someone I happen to know named Grace and features her.