Ketsui and DDP DOJ BL ports [JP X360]

[EOJ]

@gsl: both games are standalone disc releases, both are separate as well.

[rtw]

Thanks, I emailed you two more in case you needed them.

Updated post 26, now in page order.

Wonder what is on the missing pages...

rtw

[Kaede]

This is pretty amazing news, but given the amount it would cost to import one of the most unreliable consoles ever made to the UK, I'd only pick these up if they were ever released officially in Europe (NOT GONNA HAPPEN) or if the games are region free (again, unlikely).

DEL has hinted that Ketsui *may* be returning to Casino anyway, so I'm OK.

[rtw]

This is pretty amazing news, but given the amount it would cost to import one of the most unreliable consoles ever made to the UK, I'd only pick these up if they were ever released officially in Europe (NOT GONNA HAPPEN) or if the games are region free (again, unlikely).

What about a "region free" petition to 5pb/CAVE ?

rtw

[Budloc]

What an awesome news !!!!!!!!!!

rtw count me in for a petition to have those games region-free !

[rtw]

rtw count me in for a petition to have those games region-free !

Hold your horses

I just suggested a petition, it has to be organized by someone who speaks/writes Japanese.

rtw

[zakk]

If you're going to petition anyone, you need to figure out who the publisher is; as they have been the historic decision makers regarding such things.

I doubt anyone at Cave would push the issue but if you can get the attention of someone at the publisher you have a way better chance.

[Geezer]

The "X" part is puzzling - who knows what that means.

The X is probably for Xbox.

I'm really happy to see these are being released

[freddiebamboo]

Good news!

A Japanese 360 is looking a bit tempting if these ports are half decent (I'm not even hoping for Arika quality) and the RF collection coming out soon.  Like Kaede said though, it is the most unreliable console on the planet - a big risk to haul one over from Play Asia.

[jpj]

pffft.  both these games are shit

[EOJ]

DDP:DOJ BL is 30% finished, while Ketsui is only 20% finished. Ketsui may have to wait until later in the year.


Too bad there aren't any extra arrange modes added to these - would have been particularly nice for Ketsui.
Or at least throw that special version from the recent Cave Matsuri on there. Also no word on any practice modes, which is troubling - that would be the only reason I'd buy this, so I hope it is included.

Also, 5pb's recent PS2 game called Umisho

[FrederikJurk]

I have zero knowledge about how porting arcade games work, so I am wondering what kind of reputation 5pb has - how come a company that does dating sims are porting arcade shooters? Did they just have the money for buying the rights lying around? Are the coders both skilled in making dating games AND porting? :/

(Of course I am chiming in on the YAY KETSUI PORT cheering, I just don?t get the 5pb part...)

[EOJ]

Dating sims and shooters have a weird link - some companies in the past made both, I think Naxat was one? Starfish is another.
They're both niche genres that apparently appeal to some of the same people.

[RAR]

This is great news, but I'm worried that the ports might suck because, honestly, who the fuck has heard of 5pb up until now?

Here's to hoping that the ports doesn't suck ass, and is region free.

Also, Porkport for '08.

[Sycada]

It's fantastic that there are ports still showing up for the home market. I too share a little skepticism as to how good the ports will actually be but we'll see.
I used to own a 360 and went through 3 of the malfuntioning bastards before I gave up and got rid of it so I'm more inclined to stick to pcb's rather than buy up another 360, unless the ports are stellar of course
I wouldn't have thought Ketsui would drop in price at least not just yet, since we haven't seen how accurate the ports are yet.

[GaijinPunch]

They're both niche genres that apparently appeal to some of the same people.

Dating sims aren't exactly niche.  They have far more (exponential?) releases than shooting these days...especially if you go into the PC world where "anything goes" if you know what I mean.   The thing is they're not exactly "socially acceptable".

[zakk]

I'm a little suspicious that Cave just announced/released(? is it yet, I dunno) that sorta-kinda-a-dating-game-with-a-princess-or-something-i-dunno-wtf game on the DS, and then a company that's done dating sims is suddenly porting two of their games.

Shenanigans are afoot

[EOJ]

Good point. The plot thickens.

[RAR]

I wonder what kind of achievement you'll unlock if you manage to 2-ALL DDP DOJ or Ketsui?

[RemyK313]

I registered to this site just to support the petition idea.
Ultimately, the publisher of the game decides whether or not a game is region-free. However, with the 360 there IS a choice that can be made. Unlike some other consoles where all games are region-locked always, developers are given a choice. Quite a few American releases are able to be played on the Japanese console, unfortunately, this isn't really true for the reverse.

Anyways, I think that this is our chance to speak up and say something. If I'm not mistaken, Japanese companies take fans a bit more serious than their American counterparts, and there have been times when developers will listen if there's a loud enough demand, even if from a few people..... With that said, I think we should find ourselves someone who can represent us, and state our case to the games' publisher/developers.

No, really, my argument is this : the only reason you'd region-lock a game is if you didn't want to interfere with regional sales elsewhere. However, with such a niche genre, one which RARELY ever sees a release outside the nation, can they really expect that they'll lose money if they DON'T region-lock a game? If anything, the opposite could be said. They'd have to do nothing special for their game, just when it comes time to region-lock it, for all of their global fans, they could just NOT region-lock it, and let specialty retail shops supply our needs. In the end, it takes no effort on their part, and all of the money made stays with them. There'd be no middle-man other than the shop (but shops are ALWAYS a middle man).

I'd be willing to state our case, and I could probably do it eloquently, however, I'm not at all familiar with the Japanese language.

Anyways, to give us a headstart, I found at least ONE email we could use in our hunt : support_5gk@5pb.jp
My idea was this, we could email them telling them we plan on petitioning for the game to be region-free and ask to see if we could be given the publisher's email, or at least who the publisher is.

From there on, it's just a hunt, an email, maybe a phone number, and then we can really start formulating what we wanna say about it.

I'm sure that their support would either be able to find out that info for us, or at least point us towards someone who could.

I wish I could find the publisher myself, but according to their website, they don't seem to have a consistent publisher. You can see for yourselves at : http://www.5pb.jp/games/products/

I don't know, I think that we can state our case with about 15 man-hours total. I know I did like, 45 minutes of research just now, so all it takes after this is someone fluent in Japanese to dig up info, make a few emails on behalf of us, and get the ball rolling.

I mean, I don't know, it doesn't sound so complicated to me. But what does everyone else think? I mean, once we can get in contact with the people who count, I or just one other person could just set up an online petition, and then just advertise it on all the big gaming sites with shmuppers. If everyone who wants this game outside of Japan writes like 2 lines stating their desires to see this on their home turf, then I'm sure they'd have no problems region-freeing it.

Here's my big own big idea with all of this : seeing as 5pb develops games for a slightly niche market, if we could appeal to them, they could appeal to their publishers.

Well, that's the idea. I'd undertake the entire thing myself, but I don't think I could get my message across as well as someone who can communicate in Japanese. Hpwever, if we can get someone to open communications, I'd be willing to spend time getting the word out on the English-speaking side of things.

I don't know, how much apathy from the community is there regarding this? And how much do you think a Japanese company will care what the non-Japanese think? I think we can do it, but then again, I'm assuming you hardcore guys are a lot more capable than I am at estimating realistic possibilities.

[MX7]

I'd be willing to sign a petition, but I think it's wise to start lowering expectations: I for one have pretty much resigned myself to getting a Japanese 360

[EOJ]

After further inspection it seems unclear as to whether this will be a full disc release or an XBLA download, so wait and see before you jump for a JP X360. A global download would be better as 1) it would be much cheaper and 2) far more people would be able to play it easily. It would be bad because the quality will likely suck, and personally I think the lack of packaging would suck as well.

[jpj]

indeed.  i feel bad to see ikaruga cheapened to be only worth a download.  it deserves more.  and if treasure make a new and awesome shooter exclusively as a ntsc/j retail disc, it'd really test my resolve  :/

[zakk]

After further inspection it seems unclear as to whether this will be a full disc release or an XBLA download, so wait and see before you jump for a JP X360. A global download would be better as 1) it would be much cheaper and 2) far more people would be able to play it easily. It would be bad because the quality will likely suck, and personally I think the lack of packaging would suck as well.

And of course the bigger question: will you be able to play it in 10 years? Or even 5 for that matter. I've said it elsewhere before; I do not understand why a group of people who commonly play games on 20 year old consoles want everything to be an XBLA release.

Although I guess in another generation or two you won't have much choice anyways!

[EOJ]

Mihara has finally posted about these ports on his blog.

-He was just as shocked as us to see these ports revealed in Famitsu. He said both he AND IKEDA don't know anything about them, and thus cannot comment. I'm sure IKD knew about 5PB buying the rights to port the games, but it's clear CAVE has absolutely no involvement in these ports whatsoever.

-He thinks it looks good so far, but will have to wait for more info to draw any conclusions.

-He does not know why Famitsu put a "copyright Atlus" on the bottom of the DDP DOJ page. They had nothing to do with Daioujou.

-He is still working hard on Ketsui DS, and the announcement of these ports has made him
want to try even harder to make the game great.

[zakk]

This is turning out to be a barrel of lolz

Sounds to me like the Cave bizdev guys made a deal with someone and never bothered to really talk to the technical people about it!

[GaijinPunch]

Thanks for sifting through Mihara's blog.  I checked a couple of times in the last few days, only to find 1-sentence posts about what he had for lunch and other bullshit that I (and hopefully nobody else) gives a shit about.

I'm with zakk 100%.  XBLA and PSN have some cool shit, but they should be limited to simple mini games and puzzle games.  I played some PS3 at a mates house the other day.  It's quite clear that if I had a PS3, I would buy maybe one game, and the rest would be the $8 PSN games (I liked rub-a-dub and the little trigger-race-car thingy game by Pixel Junk).  

I guess one day we won't be able to buy packaging, but it won't be next generation.  People said w/ the internet we wouldn't be buying newspapers in 10 years.  I still see newspapers.  They said the computer would make the office paperless.  What a joke.  The computer allows us to print paper faster.

[FrederikJurk]

-He is still working hard on Ketsui DS, and the announcement of these ports has made him
want to try even harder to make the game great.

Hell yeah! I will much rather take a nicely coded apation from Mihara with added sweet stuff on a cheap and widely avaiable handheld than some lackluster port by guys nobody has heard of for a console I really don?t want to spend money on.

As for technical details - 5pb are building this port from scratch? Or will it be emulated? The way I remember it the problem with Ketsui was the heavy encryption, so that might not affect people who officially port it, obviously (again, I don?t really know how such things are handled, just speculating here). Though that "enchancing" part makes emulation unlikely (if we are not talking about cheap smoothing effects or something).

[RemyK313]

Hahaha, if THIS is what sparks Mihara to get the gears cranking on Ketsui DS, then we're not at a loss, not at all...

It's surprising to hear that Ikeda didn't know about the port... but isn't he an infamous liar? It's a little hard to believe someone would be doing a port without consulting its developers. I mean, I guess there's no reason why it can't be worked on by people who didn't do the original project... however, as a programmer myself, lemme tell you, it's ALWAYS easier to talk to the original programmer about the way certain things work rather than relying on intrepreting the things that are there... I mean, there's more than one way to do a port...

Besides, last I checked, wasn't Ikeda somewhat of a hardass when it came to ports? I don't know, something about his "not knowing" is fishy...

[Shalashaska]

Thanks for the tidbits of info EOJ. It's going to be really interesting to see how this all plays out....