News from the recent Cave meeting (Ibara Kuro port? DDP Campaign, etc)

[EOJ]

Lots of neat tidbits translated from this guy's blog (he was at the 10/30/2010 meeting with Asada). I just translated the stuff I found interesting:

http://star.ap.teacup.com/kibanist/746.html

-Esprade port would be hard due to copyright problems (w/ Atlus).
-Progear port would be hard due to copyright problems (w/ Capcom).
-Guwange port was done with no profit in mind
-Ibara and Ibara Kuro ports are being considered.
-Cave doesn't have some of the old games on PCB anymore. Sometimes they will
go and buy one of their PCBs at a PCB shop if they need the game for something.
-Cave is unable to fix some of their own PCBs.
-No plans for a Dodonpachi port, but they might toss it in as an Omake mode for their adventure game.
-There is only one Dodonpachi Campaign PCB in the world, and they can't find the original code anymore, so chances of a port
are close to zero.
-They're making an adventure game because Asada likes adventure games.
-Why no collaborations with other companies? There were talks in the past, but they all broke down.
-Why no score attack events with the home ports? Microsoft told Cave they couldn't do it.
-They want to continue to release PCB games in the arcades.
-There are no secrets (levels, characters, etc) in Akai Katana.
-Why was the DSII Arcade port so poor? They didn't plan on having it in IIX in the beginning (so it was slapped together last minute).
-For the superplay DVDs, the two most important things are timing and quality.
-DDPDFK BL DVD? It's in the works, but the timing is a problem.

[emphatic]

-Esprade port would be hard due to copyright problems (w/ Atlus).
-Progear port would be hard due to copyright problems (w/ Capcom).
-Guwange port was done with no profit in mind

But isn't Guwange an Atlus property as well?

-Cave doesn't have some of the old games on PCB anymore. Sometimes they will
go and buy one of their PCBs at a PCB shop if they need the game for something.
-Cave is unable to fix some of their own PCBs.

This made me chuckle. If it's rom data they need, why not just download a MAME rom? 

-There is only one Dodonpachi Campaign PCB in the world, and they can't find the original code anymore, so chances of a port
are close to zero.

-They want to continue to release PCB games in the arcades.

I hope this doesn't mean that new TAITO networked stuff though.

[KOMA]

-Cave doesn't have some of the old games on PCB anymore. Sometimes they will
go and buy one of their PCBs at a PCB shop if they need the game for something.
-Cave is unable to fix some of their own PCBs.

That's sick!

Speaking of DD campaign,you can see a picture of the pcb on this blog(at the bottom):
http://hmd.blog.ocn.ne.jp/_summyhouse/2009/09/index.html

[SuperPang]

Interesting stuff, thanks. The otaku ask better questions than siliconera  

Relieved to see they still see the importance of arcade releases despite DS2 and AK clearly not doing too well. I hope that "PCB" is a direct translation and they're sticking with their own hardware for a while longer. I think it was Andriasang who reported Cave are signed up for Taito's NESICA but I haven't seen this stated anywhere else, I think they meant Grev.

I still long for the day when Campaign Ver appears on Yahoo Japan Auctions and I can take out a second mortgage.

-Ibara and Ibara Kuro ports are being considered as Cave have tried everything else to get kernow to buy an Xbox 360

.

[njiska]

-Esprade port would be hard due to copyright problems (w/ Atlus).
-Progear port would be hard due to copyright problems (w/ Capcom).
-Guwange port was done with no profit in mind

But isn't Guwange an Atlus property as well?

I believe Atlus published it, but that's no guarantee that they own the license. Terms could have changed from Esp.ra.de.

[emphatic]

-Ibara and Ibara Kuro ports are being considered as Cave have tried everything else to get kernow to buy an Xbox 360

[kernow]

 

I only just noticed that, uhm yeah keep trying  

[Van_Artic]

-Cave doesn't have some of the old games on PCB anymore. Sometimes they will
go and buy one of their PCBs at a PCB shop if they need the game for something.

this one made my day lol

[cstarflare]

I still long for the day when Campaign Ver appears on Yahoo Japan Auctions and I can take out a second mortgage.

I like to think that if this ever happened shmups would band together to have it dumped.

[drunkninja]

Oh man, I definitely hope we get an Ibara Kuro port.  I've seriously considering dropping the change for a PCB, but that would definitely be a major hit to my pocketbook.

[EOJ]

Port would be cool. Double pack with Ibara, PS/MMP-style.

The PCB isn't worth the high costs it demands these days, IMO.

[twoup]

Thanks for the translations, very interesting read. I've wanted to play Ibara Kuro ever since I watched a replay of it, a double pack would be killer.

[brentsg]

Port would be cool. Double pack with Ibara, PS/MMP-style.

The PCB isn't worth the high costs it demands these days, IMO.

To be fair though, you're not into PCB's like you were.  Do you consider anything over a few hundred bucks worth it nowadays?

It doesn't seem to me that IKBL has really changed all that much in the past year or so.

[EOJ]

Do you consider anything over a few hundred bucks worth it nowadays?

Yep.

[markedkiller78]

I have to agree with a lot of the games being too expensive just now. I bought Kuro a while back when it was ?550 / $800 for a FK & didn?t enjoy it. I would however buy a port in a heartbeat.

Guwange
Ketsui
DOJ BL
Futari
MMP
DFK

Although Guwange & DFK could be total munters, I?ll risk saying anything that has a good / very good port selling for ?50 is going to make a pcb costing 10x as much look like an extravagant luxury.

Anyways, buying ports puts money in the Dev?s pockets unlike the used pcb market.

Sorry to go so OT and thanks for the translations EOJ. It?s nice to see direct questions being asked and answered.

[drboom]

-There is only one Dodonpachi Campaign PCB in the world, and they can't find the original code anymore, so chances of a port
are close to zero.

I do not like the fact that this is true. So, does SOF-WTN have the only pcb?

[drunkninja]

-There is only one Dodonpachi Campaign PCB in the world, and they can't find the original code anymore, so chances of a port
are close to zero.

I do not like the fact that this is true. So, does SOF-WTN have the only pcb?

Quite possibly.  I thought they said at one point they had 2 or 3 out there though.  Either way, maybe he should donate that PCB to Cave temporarily so they can get the ROM data off of it or something

[EOJ]

I don't recall them ever saying they had 2 or 3 - people just assumed that because there was one playable at a Cave festival. According to Cave, there is only one, so clearly, SOF-WTN let them borrow his for that festival.

[emphatic]

And if they were to loan his PCB and dump it, it will of course still be unique unless someone could reverse-engineer the port code into a usable ROM and start converting DDP boards. 

[CIB]

yeah, maybe they should borrow the pcb again and dump the rom, at least to not see it disappear if something happens to the pcb

[brentsg]

It's pretty clear that developers like Cave didn't foresee things like Xbox Live and DLC.  Imagine if they had managed to keep every scrap of code oddities on hand and accounted for.  They could really milk the DLC on their ports by leaking out all the one-off revisions here and there.

I guess it wouldn't be a huge deal from a revenue perspective, but it would be much better fan service than the matsuri stuff.

[EOJ]

DDP Campaign may not be as great as people would like to believe. It's just a prototype for Daioujou, and they didn't even really get that scoring/game system right until DOJ Black Label.

Naturally, it would be fun to try out. But if released, it would probably go the way of Futari 1.01 - a rare version of a classic game released via DLC that most people think is crap. 

[BIL]

My boner tore my jeans asunder at the mere mention of Ibara + Ibara Kuro 360 ports. At this rate I'll only need a couple of Raizing PCBs for my shooter collection...

[EOJ]

An Ibara pack would probably sell at least 10K, and they could whip it together in a few months. Easy money. Then again Ibara PS2 only sold about 4k, so maybe this fact is keeping them from pulling the trigger on X360 ports.

Bundle Ibara, Ibara Kuro, and Mushihimesama into a "Cave classics" disc release, and the problem is solved (and we'd also have every SH3 shooter on the X360 except DFK BL and Akai Katana).

[zlk]

The campaign version PCB is the property of SOF-ZBL-NAI.  In fact the startup screen reads:

WARNING
THIS GAME IS FOR USE IN
ZBL NAI ONLY. 

It is kind of funny to see.

[EOJ]

Thanks for the correction. 

[spl]

I also wondered about this - in Plasmo's WR thread on his forum, he lists the WR for Campaign version as by SOF-WTN when I always thought it was ZBL-NAI who won the competition and ended up getting the Campaign PCB because of the writing in the boot as zlk mentions and also the fact that he is in the DDP book/guide.

[moozooh]

NAI and WTN are friends and teammates, and since WTN had gotten the 748 mil record on regular DDP I'm sure NAI invited him to play the CV so that he could record something on it as well. Look at the scoreboard at the end of the CV superplay: WTN has the first spot, #2 and #3 are occupied by NAI. Since that hardware doesn't save scores it's not unreasonable to think it happened at NAI's place.

[zlk]

Nai won the Saturn competition and got the campaign board.  WTN has the wr on the campaign board.  On one of Nai's VHS C-S replays (which is kind of rare) he included footage of him playing the campaign version.  He still hadn't figured the game out and he dies a lot.  I think the campaign footage is on superplay.

[lillin]

Bundle Ibara, Ibara Kuro, and Mushihimesama into a "Cave classics" disc release, and the problem is solved (and we'd also have every SH3 shooter on the X360 except DFK BL and Akai Katana).

What about Espgaluda?