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.

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.

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?

Having had The Orange Box for around a week or two now, I pretty much played two things on that set (see my Steam profile for more details):

1. Portal
2. Team Fortress 2

Unfortunately, my machine kind of lags when playing both games. They are playable, but I’ve had to tone down the graphics a bit, although I was half-expecting that since I can manage playing Half-Life 2 on high graphics settings, then this should not be a problem.

Despite that, I really enjoyed both games that I have played so far. Half-Life 2: Episode 1 and 2 can wait, especially since I have not actually beaten Half-Life 2 yet (lost my save file the last time I played and I was at Nova Prospekt).

Portal

So what did I think of Portal? Well, I started playing the unofficial Flash version of the game first, so pretty much, by the time I started playing the actual game, I kind of understood the game mechanics. But the game itself was quite entertaining, especially with the whole plot (yes, there’s a plot in Portal, surprisingly enough) of the game. I would not want to spoil things for people who have not played the game yet, so I will not say too much, except I miss my Weighted Companion Cube.

Team Fortress 2

A fairly entertaining game, touching up on Team Fortress Classic by quite a bit. The cartoony graphics just makes the game fun. It really is a nice change from all the serious games popping up all over the place. Sure, it is a recycled idea (class-based, get the objective teamplay), but it is a lot lighter and quite fun compared to various other things. I must admit though, the “Meet the …” trailers set the environment for fun nicely.

Like most team-based games however, finding teams that do not exactly suck, or getting yourself better at the game so you do not get owned so quickly by your opponents, is one of the things that would affect the fun factor. Hence, the Steam Community implementation makes things so much better, although more people on that list of mine need to get Team Fortress 2.

Hopefully, I can find myself playing some other games that are included in the Orange Box and finish Half-Life 2 and move onto the two trilogies. Too bad I am super busy with a bunch of other stuff.

Some other things have attracted my attention in the set of releases

Gundemonium Recollection

Link: http://www20.cds.ne.jp/~murasame/games/re_gundemonium.htm

This is a horizontal shooter (think R-Type or Zero Wing of “All Your Base” fame to get an idea of what that is) in the 弾幕 (danmaku) style, which means a small hit box for you and quite a lot of projectiles. You control girls with guns that can fly and have magic to a degree.

Depending on who you use (you can choose between the main character Eryth (from what I can tell she is the main character) or create a custom character out of the four Earl Types (you can customize their primary weapon, their special ability, and their bomb attack).

東方風神録 ~ Mountain of Faith

Link: http://www16.big.or.jp/~zun/html/th10dl.html

This is the tenth game in the 東方 (Touhou) series. I haven’t ever played anything in the series before, but it looks like a very intense 弾幕 (danmaku) game. And damn straight it is. The music goes well with it nicely, the boss attack patterns are complex and make for a challenging game.

You choose between two characters and for each character, one out of three styles, which dictates your weapon evolution path and your bomb attack (I think; I don’t really use the bomb ability because it costs you in firepower), called a Spell Card. In reality however, your weapon does not evolve, but you get these satellites around your character which shoot extra shots, dependent on your style. Focusing will make you move slower, reveals your hitbox (for better dodging ability), and changes your support shots into its secondary mode, which is quite useful.

The game is challenging, but very fun and enjoyable. Try it if you can.

So Comiket 72 happened a few days ago and as a result, a flood of torrents of games released were posted. (just search for C72; games are usually categorized under “Other”).

As some may know, I really really like shooting games. And they’re quite popular over in Japan. So of course, after coming across some postings about some games to expect from C72, I went off and got myself some games and while I’m at it, some reviews of sorts.

So here we go!

Ether Vapor

Link: http://edelweiss.sakura.ne.jp/works/works.html (Ether Vapor is in the first section; the links there from top to bottom are “Introduction”, “Screenshots”, “Download”, “Development Log” (an educated guess; can’t translate that…), “Staff List”)

Download Link: http://edelwiss.sakura.ne.jp/works/ethervapor/download.html (note that the demo they released, v1.08, at C72 isn’t posted there)

One’s first impressions on this game is probably going to be “ooo.. pretty graphics“. And yes, Edelwiss’s Ether Vapor has that. But it’s also quite fun. Your ship has three different weapons mounted on: a vulcan gun (Gatling), a multi-directional weapon (Winder), and a homing laser weapon (Lock On).

Each of the weapons also has a charge up attack. So for Gatling, charging it up would get you a powerful shot (Gatling: Pierce). Charging up Winder will give you an explosive radius around your ship (Winder: Radiate) that damages nearby enemies as well as taking out nearby enemy projectiles, which is quite handy when you’re in a bind. Somehow, I haven’t been able to charge up Lock On, but from the look of the screenshot (can’t read the Japanese, too much kanji), Lock On: Cascade seems to either do something like Winder: Radiate or perhaps stronger shots.

The most memorable part of this game so far was probably the bonus section in the first mission where you had to shoot down enemy missiles with the lock on weapon. The game moves the camera and switches the controls a bit to allow you to do so efficiently.

Magical Cannon Girl

Link: http://www.kit-station.com/mcg/index.html

A shmup game that involves a magical girl who can attack with regular shots as well as a charge up magical cannon attack. What are her opponents? Pink and blue blobs that remind me of the Porings in the Ragnarok Online universe, except they have wings (yes, I know Angelring has wings, but your typical Poring doesn’t).

Of course, there are other enemies out and about too, but I’ll leave those for you to figure out. It’s quite a challenging game, like most Japanese games. And of course, you have your boss battles at the end of a stage.

Basically, you control レベッカ (Rebecca), a magical girl. My Japanese isn’t that great, so I don’t really know the story, but somewhere in the middle of the first mission, you encounter some mythical beast of some kind named ラファ (Rafa) who helps you.

Speaking of magical girls, and ones with destructive powers similar to Magical Cannon Girl..

Nanoha Taiken -Lyrical Nanoha- 2nd Chu

Download Link: http://www5b.biglobe.ne.jp/~aoi_pg/download/dl.htm (click the last link in Internet Explorer; it doesn’t work properly with Firefox)

魔法少女リリカルなのは (Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha) fans rejoice! This is a shooting game based off of the Nanoha universe. If you’ve played the first game, which is based on the A’s storyline and involves the player selecting either Nanoha or Fate and fighting all the Wolkenritter, including the original Reinforce.

This newer version introduces tag team play into the mix. The demo appears to let you only play with the Nanoha/Vita pairing, but I could be wrong and Fate/Signum and Hayate/Reinforce II might be unlockables. But then again, it’s a demo, so maybe they aren’t unlockable. Anyone care to find out and let me know?

As for the story, no freaking clue. But you end up fighting Arf and Signum as bosses in the two stages that are part of the demo.

That’s all I’ve grabbed and played so far. Hopefully more stuff shows up on Tokyo Toshokan over time.