Akai Katana [Cave, ARCADE, August 19, 2010]

Started by EOJ, July 01, 2010, 03:35:21 AM

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brentsg

Did Annex distribute the arcade release of AK?  I thought they did, and if so the Wiki is wrong.

Annex also distributed Futari Black Label "Another Ver." didn't they?  I assumed so but could be incorrect.


EOJ

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EOJ

Eh, that's a pretty crummy list (errors, missing games, etc). We have much better lists on cave-stg.com.  :righton:
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skykid

Quote from: evil_ash_xero on December 08, 2010, 08:26:19 AM
There seems to be such a lukewarm reaction to this game. It's disappointing.

I don't get why, when I played Pang's board (vanilla version) I really enjoyed the game. The scoring is weird at first, but then instantly gratifying once you start to get a feel for it. It's kind of like currency balancing, but here you get all the gold building around the ship and it's awesome.
The whole style felt really nice too, with a lot of movement space for a Cave hori (it feels freer than both Progear and Deathsmiles.) And damn, it's got warships and planes, heavy artillery and battleships jumping out of wormholes.

I guess the Japanese guys didn't like it cos there weren't enough pre-pubescent, edwardian dressed nymphs flying about.  :whyioughtta:
Quote from: SuperPangWhere DOJ rapes you, DFK grabs your boob then runs away

EOJ

Quote from: skykid on December 08, 2010, 10:45:31 PM

I guess the Japanese guys didn't like it cos there weren't enough pre-pubescent, edwardian dressed nymphs flying about.  :whyioughtta:

No, as stated earlier, they maxed out the scores after like a month. Any game where you can do that dies quickly in Japanese arcades.
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Strider77

QuoteI guess the Japanese guys didn't like it cos there weren't enough pre-pubescent, edwardian dressed nymphs flying about.

QuoteNo, as stated earlier, they maxed out the scores after like a month. Any game where you can do that dies quickly in Japanese arcades


In other words "to pedestrian"......     :-X

GaijinPunch

Quote from: EOJ on December 08, 2010, 11:04:06 PM
Quote from: skykid on December 08, 2010, 10:45:31 PM

I guess the Japanese guys didn't like it cos there weren't enough pre-pubescent, edwardian dressed nymphs flying about.  :whyioughtta:

No, as stated earlier, they maxed out the scores after like a month. Any game where you can do that dies quickly in Japanese arcades.

To be fair, it would be accurate to say the operators didn't like it... While the scores might have been maxed, there weren't a lot of boards out in the first place.

zombiz


EOJ

Tidbit: at the last Cave meeting IKD said "No game was made in as short of time as Akai Katana". They started it in May 2010 after Deathsmiles IIX was complete, and Yagawa did most of it himself as the other programmers were busy with other stuff. It was released in August 2010, so do the math.

Remember the pre-release hype from gfront that said it was "carefully made over 1 year"? Turns out that was just (PR?) BS.
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Runefaust

Maybe their other games where "carefully made in 2 (or more) years" :)

I got a question: how can i get middle- or large sizd gold in the limited ver.? It does not circle around any more so i am not able to let it grow by touching shots. I managed 1-2 times to get middle sized gold but i couldn't figure how i did it.

SuperPang

The game does feel short but its an incredible achievement for 3 months! Does that include the enemies and level design as well I wonder because they're extremely detailed. I love the backgrounds in AK, especially stage 4.

Quote from: Runefaust on January 08, 2011, 06:35:11 AM
i am not able to let it grow by touching shots.
You are but its much harder, you need a lot of bullets and some slowdown on screen. Much easier to do on the later levels.

skykid


I so want the port of this, moreso than any Cave game in ages. I'm hoping this will fill the void DFK has left me with.  :'(
Quote from: SuperPangWhere DOJ rapes you, DFK grabs your boob then runs away

Runefaust

Quote from: SuperPang on January 08, 2011, 07:08:23 AM
You are but its much harder, you need a lot of bullets and some slowdown on screen. Much easier to do on the later levels.
Thank you! That sounds VERY hard to do on purpose. I'd love to see japanese hardcore scorers do the trick. Hopefully a superplay DVD comes out soon, Youtube does not support enough resolution and FPS to spot such little details.

As for the game: i love it! To me it is the best Cave game so far. You surely need some time to get into it and figure the "feeling" and the mechanics. Some friends who are also into Cave said "what a junk" on their first credit.

zombiz

Quote from: Runefaust on January 08, 2011, 09:01:24 AM
As for the game: i love it! To me it is the best Cave game so far. You surely need some time to get into it and figure the "feeling" and the mechanics. Some friends who are also into Cave said "what a junk" on their first credit.

I got the vanilla version a month ago, and i think it's a great game too !
Of course, it seems a little odd at first (compared to other cave games), but after feeding some credits, it is just pure fun.

Runefaust

Congrats :) :) :)

I must admit i had a few problems with it too. On first sight it looked to me like some plastic-looking 1995 Jaleco game, and it just had not this feeling of "flow" i love at Daifukkatsu and Futari. But then i discovered the avesome fun of the ninja-mode, scoring, repelling bullets, diving right into the bulletstorm and beating medals out of it. From now on everything seemed right, i fell in love :o

Muchi Muchi Spork

#316
Edited...

Here are a couple of things I found that I don't think have been posted yet. When you kill enemies at close proximity with A held you generate a small amount of energy balls but when you hold your helper directly on top of enemies you generate a higher number that depends on their hit points, and when you fight bosses and hold it on top of them it generates a bunch of them quickly. Then of course when you let bullets pass through them they get bigger and then you need to absorb them before they start to go away. Also rapid fire (C) at close proximity gets lots of energies going as enemies blow up, but when you're fighting a boss or an enemy with a lot of hit points, the only option is holding A with the helper on top to get them going quickly. This game is extremely fun after you get used to it.

And when you smart bomb on your last player, it takes away all of your bombs, not just one.


Tesuman

That happens only if you auto-bomb.  You can still manually bomb one by one.

(Of note, the voice changes if you bomb in ninja mode.)

SuperPang

It's been a while, but I think it's just a case of how many bullets are on screen and because it doesn't hang around for long it's hard to do.

There are lots of things I like about LV but I think Arcade is my favourite purely because the energy slowing the bullets breaks the patterns. It completely screws up the last boss.

Muchi Muchi Spork

#319
Akai Katana was Cave's biggest money loser ever other than Deathsmiles II so I doubt the production number was very high. They totally did it to themselves I think. The rumors are IKD already had made his changes for Limited Version and he wanted that to be the version of the game that was released, then marketing people suggested selling it later as a different board and they released the older game system version. Then a lot of game center managers passed on it because they believed there would be a black label version that they would just wait that out, then Cave heard about that and said there would be no black label version I guess thinking that would make more people buy the original version, then I guess Limited Version turned into the home-only thing so they wouldn't make themselves out to be a liar.

Pretty dumb stuff. If they would have just listened to IKD it would have been a hit. The build up counter and then banking off the E balls with your tail uncomfortably on a boss in Limited Version makes the game feel like "the full Cave".

EOJ

A Japanese guy was cleaning his room today and came across an old Akai Katana promo flyer! I was under the impression there was no flyer for this game, but whatdoyaknow.



Source: https://twitter.com/PO_TPJ/status/1216198559860543488
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SuperPang

There seem to be two types of promo flyer, the thicker paper ones handed out at shows etc with cut-outs and the like, and then these paper ones which I can only assume were sent mainly to retailers, possibly arcades? The likes of Fujita used to email out B&W scans of them when pre-orders opened.

EOJ

Their last three SH3 games (DFK BL, AK, SDOJ) all had these paper flyers that seem to be quite rare today. MFBL also had one like this.
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