I got to A-cho at about 9:15am. I thought they already had the game, but I guess I was wrong. Anyway, some other guys were loitering around for a bit, so I played Futari 1.5 for about an hour and a half. On my last credit, I noticed some workers scurrying about to my left. I look over and there's the SDOJ kit sitting on the floor, with the Dodonpachi cab gutted, ready for a new PCB. So, I got to see the whole thing set up (and I was the second person to play it!). I had a good look at the kit contents too. First, the box just says Cave in the upper left, no Annex or whatever, just Cave. They did this one by themselves. Second, the instructions were in sort of a booklet, I think it was glossy. Looked pretty snazzy. I got a good look at the dip settings as the guy was starting it up. First, in the settings menu you can turn on a "trial version". What this does is add a FREE 60 second trial version to anyone. You have infinite lives for this. When the timer gets to zero, it asks if you want to add more money to continue. No one used it except the worker dude setting up the game. By default trial mode is OFF. The other dip settings are pretty standard stuff, though there's an "Autobomb Default" setting that's set to OFF by default. I think it starts you with Autobomb ON on the menu, instead Autobomb OFF. Master Ver is 2012/04/20. I took pics of all this on my cellphone but I'm not sure of the quality. Will check later and post them if they don't look like shit.
On to the game - oh boy, this is Cave done right. Easily the best DDP game. Ever. Made. It's balls to the walls hard, but doesn't feel unfair. Harder than DOJ's first loop, Ketsui's first loop, and Futari 1.5 Maniac. Bomb and Laser are about as hard as Futari 1.0 Maniac. Expert is Ultra mode level. I don't like DOJ much but I love this game to pieces. Everything about it feels perfect.
I played mainly B-Laser, I got up to the Stage 3 boss twice, and made it to Stage 4 once on my last credit (with autobomb off). I tried a credit with C-Expert and got to the stage 2 midboss, but it's too fucking hard to waste 100 yen on in the arcades for a few minutes of play. Only one other guy tried it, then he never went back either.
As for differences from the location test version, the difficulty is nearly the same, but they slowed down the nasty bullet spam in stage 3. The stage is now really perfect - I love it. This game feels mainly like Ketsui on steroids with a fine-tuned DDP scoring system. Feels like pure Ikeda and Ichimura and not much else. Doesn't feel like Yagawa at all. The stage 4 midboss slams you with a total Ketsui-ish pattern right at the start, I had to smile when I saw that. I saw one guy get to Stage 5 but he didn't last long. Stage 4 is awesome. Dark, gritty, shit flying at you from all directions. Hard as hell.
It felt like it was harder to get higher hyper ranks in this compared to the location test and I never saw the rank get over 02. Even at rank 00 it's brutal. This game will wipe the floor with all the scrubs out there. It's old-school Cave done right in 2012.
Oh yeah, extends are at 800mil and 1.8bil. There is a 1UP (the icon is on the movestrip), but I didn't see anyone get it. You may have to no-miss/no bomb the stage 3 midboss. That's my current theory. My best score was 900mil, best score of the day was 1.9bil (with B-laser).
Scoring is pretty hard, keeping your chain going is tough and a couple breaks and your hit count is demolished. The chaining meter did seem to last longer than in previous DDP games, though.
Sorry for the ramble, thought I should post this ASAP.
