Mushihimesama Futari ver 1.5 [JP XBOX 360, 2009] REGION FREE W/ SCANLINES

[bucklemyshoe]

depends on what type of shipping method you use. if you go the cheapest route it can be anywhere from a day or two up to three weeks. (they've never taken longer than that) if you use more expensive methods then they'll get it to you asap. they usually ship things out early. I received my copy of THE LE the day it was released.

[HVL]

The cheapest option is always a gamble, as bucklemyshoe stated.

I'm tempted to go for a faster method but I'd have to pay 20 bucks extra for UPS and might end up getting hit by taxes.

[NR777]

I went with the cheaper option ( UPS doesn't work for me, I am never home to sign for packages ), so I am rolling the dice a bit.  Granted, I placed my order when the lack of region-locking was announced, so I may get lucky. 

[EOJ]

Cool picture of a Futari display in a Japanese shop:



From: http://www.andriasang.com/e/ticker/5820388634/

I saw a similar display at the Kyoto Sofmap the other day.

[fuse]

I should probably upgrade my shipping option but I am so short of funds right now it's unreal. Play-Asia are pretty decent about marking things down (I have a permanent note on my file to do it by default) but they take no responsibility if things go AWOL. Not really worth gambling with on standard delivery, and if you're getting something huge sent (i.e. a console) with a $10 value marked on it you're just asking to have it taken apart, but if you've got just one game going via a decent courier it can be a good option to speed things through.

That demo pod is really nice.

[Megalixir]

Play-Asia are pretty decent about marking things down (I have a permanent note on my file to do it by default) but they take no responsibility if things go AWOL.

Not true.

I recently had something go missing and they offered store credit or a replacement, but I had to send them about 20 emails and waited literally over 40 working days before they would do anything. You would think that someone such as myself would have a supplier in Japan, but...

Play-Asia's guilty of overcharging for EMS too. I dunno, maybe they have to pay more for EMS in Hong Kong.

[EOJ]

Here's a little treat for you all, to help celebrate Futari's release next week:

http://www.cave-stg.com/forum/index.php?topic=713.0

[Megalixir]

プレイｘプレイ up for Gold JP account owners

Yukari plays original arrange and... I turned it off.

[adverse]

Good lord that's gotta be some must see TV. 

Will need beer.

[EOJ]

I picked up this week's famitsu, with the futari review. No one has anything particularly negative to say about the port itself, they just say things like "it's a 3 year old game" and "it can be completed in 45 minutes". Typical worthless complaints. One guy also complained that "it's a vertical game, so it's a bit hard to play on my small horizontal monitor". I guess he's never heard of tate-ing a monitor. Otherwise they say good things, praising the range of difficulties and the accessible arrange mode. One guy praises the "visual options", and says you can do things like "adjust the frame rate". Perhaps this is similar to the RFA port with selectable 54fps/60fps? They do not mention a scanline option (as they are clearly clueless scrubs who would not find this to be worth mentioning), but it might be in there considering M2 ported it and the visual options are apparently extensive. We'll find out soon enough!

Unfortunately, there is no other mention of the futari port in the famitsu issue, not even a one page preview. 

[adverse]

Review of the screen options, some really crazy ones in here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gGf51rJPZA&feature=player_embedded

[KOMA]

The one at 0.56 looks like the one they use for the superplay DVD.

[Ast-Kot]

Famitsu sucks...... I think that the arrange mode it's so interesting compare with other Cave game's arrange

Reko chan iku yo!!!!Ik__ku yoo, Palm!

[HVL]

Just noticed that P-A is "preparing [my] order."

[Megalixir]

Review of the screen options, some really crazy ones in here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gGf51rJPZA&feature=player_embedded

Thank god, I was hoping for a setting where you could have five images of the game playing at once

[Monouchi]

Thank god, I was hoping for a setting where you could have five images of the game playing at once

I have the Cave games running on a monitor next to my work monitor all day, awesome with more screen modes. 

[MX7]

Just noticed that P-A is "preparing [my] order."

Me too! Brilliant! Now I only have to wait a month or so as Royal Mail chuck my package to one side at a sorting office near East Midlands Airport and forget about it. 

[moozooh]

Wow, these screen modes are indeed crazy, and the menu/settings is really well done overall for a shmup title (much better than Arika ports, even). And there's a frame delay option to counterbalance HDTV lag.

I think the five-screen mode is just the epitome of show-off, though.

[moozooh]

Not really.  It's actually quite trivial creating individual process threads even on single-core architectures.  It might show-off the grunt of the 360 hardware, but certainly not the capability of the programmer(s).

I didn't mean "show-off" in that way, sorry if I confused you. I don't think it's even as much as individual process threads rather than just buffering more frames in video memory. However, being able to play on five screens each of them passed through some kind of a matrix text filter… oh yeah.

[Monouchi]

...disagreeing about options and all that....but isnt this game a big step for Cave in making really serious ports.
I mean, for me that only play ports it is absolutely amazing, it started with DS getting HD graphics.. (Finally made my colleagues at work stop complaining about the resolution when I played Espgaluda.)

And now Cave is working hard on getting the slowdown correct, more options, arrange modes etc in Futari....and Esp2 is allready finished they say?!?  
(Not to forget that Futari is rumored to be region free.)

Just a couple of years ago I would never have imagined this bright future.

[EOJ]

Once again, direct your thanks for the Futari port to M2, not Cave. Cave did the arrange mode and provided the HD graphic upgrade, but the ver 1.5 (and most likely 1.01) coding was done by M2. The options appear to have been done by M2 as well, due to their extensive nature, but it's also possible Cave did the options (and they've just tried expanding them this time around) and this could explain the lack of a scanline option.

Cave did DS, and are doing Espgaluda II. This is why EII is nearly finished - Cave was working on it while M2 was doing Futari. Let's hope they toss Daifukkatsu (or MMP) to M2 while Cave does Deathsmiles II, so we have a steady supply of new ports in the coming year.

[Lunchbox]

Amen!

[HVL]

shinshaobaka posted a video confirming it's really region free.

[EOJ]

Good news. Let's hope those outside Japan buy the game instead of pirate it, so future ports will be region free.

[EOJ]

Pics of the normal version package, from a japanese guy who got it early:

http://blog.livedoor.jp/shinsha3/archives/1010897.html

No pics of the LE yet, but as reported earlier in this thread Asada stated awhile back that the LE is in a DVD case, not in a cardboard box like the DS LE.

[SuperPang]

M2 put in scanline options for all their Sega Ages ports.

Did they do the Treasure Box? That was fine work.

[GaijinPunch]

Yes, as well as the most (all?) of the successive ones, including the Fantasy Zone Collection, which is such a fucking awesome set of games I can hardly contain myself.

[fuse]

Treasure Box made me very happy in the pants.

I quite like all of these crazy display options. The second one in the video where you have one decent-sized window then a close-up of various parts of the screen looks pretty cool. Can imagine some of them being quite fun for Superplay videos.

[brentsg]

If they can pull off a quality port that looks good on an HDTV, which should have plenty of resolution for the playfield even without needing a vertical screen... that would be awesome.  

My biggest knock to the older ports is that they look terrible if I don't turn my TV on end, and I can't do that with my little kids around.  I just can't make it stable enough.

[KOMA]