Deathsmiles Xbox 360 port!

[Midnight Milkshake]

Not sure what you guys are talking about with Sakura's item aborption - she absorbs items just like every other character in MBL. The suck-in range is different in MBL from regular DS, which may be what you are referring to. You always have to let all crowns drop whether in normal or power up mode, which is a big difference from regular DS and ver 1.1. Sakura's weakness is her weak lock-shot, and her shot is very weak on some bosses.

I've played this a bit (full run in Arcade (2.8bil) and X360 (2.4bil)), and I can't believe it, but Arcade mode is really fucked up in terms of slowdown emulation. While most of the first six stages are OK, the ice palace is ridiculously messed up, it feels like you're playing it in fast forward - slowdown is missing everywhere. Same with the Castle.

Amazingly, X360 mode MBL is far more accurate in the ice palace and the castle. In fact, the ice palace feels nearly exact to the PCB. Slowdown is noticably missing in some parts of the first 6 stages and it's really messed up on the last boss (again, feels like you're playing it in fast forward) though, so it's not perfect overall, but as of right now it seems like X360 mode is the more accurate of the two.

I have to say, after playing regular DS so much over the past couple weeks, and then playing MBL today, I've realized I really prefer regular DS. No contest.
If regular DS had the ice palace instead of the Canyon as its bonus stage, then it would be just about perfect for me. I think MBL is better than ver 1.1, though.

No training mode and no replays for MBL really sucks. I would have gladly paid a bit more for it if they would have included these features.

All in all I'm rather disappointed with the MBL port. Arcade mode is really far from accurate, and while X360 mode is better, it also has problems. Whoever did this port clearly did not spend as much time on it as the programmer(s) did on regular DS.

Bad news , still is possible to solve the slowdown problem with a patch, no?

[SuperPang]

Afwul lot of work for a patch. I'd be surprised.

[seiatsu]

I'm trying to improve my DS scores before moving on to MBL. Due to this, I've ventured into practice mode for the first time. Most of the options are self explanitory but I'm wondering if anyone can clarify a couple that I'm not sure of.

What is the Stage Number option all about.

Death Mode: Is this just for fun to be able to set this in the early levels? Also, what is the proper setting for the canyon, 1 or 2




I know these are probably obvious but I just want to be certain since I am trying to arrange the settings to be most like they would on a normal playthrough.

[Megalixir]

I believe the stage number affects the rank, and the correct settings for the Canyon are Death Mode 1. Death Mode 2 is for the Castle ONLY after beating the Canyon first, otherwise Death Mode 1 for Castle providing you've gone through all 5 stages at Rank 3 and skipped the Canyon.

Something like that.

[seiatsu]

Do you mean rank like Level 1, 2 or 3? If yes, there is already a setting for that (which is why i think i'm confused...haha)

[GaijinPunch]

The rank on the stage is decided by:

1: Stage number (you pick your stages, right?).  Canyon as 3-2 is going to be different than as 1-2.
2: Rank on other stages.

The only place you can get Death Mode 2 is, as Megalixir said, the castle, and only after going to the Canyon in Death Mode 1.  This is achieved by doing at least 4 of the 6 stages at Rank 3.  Correct me if I'm wrong someone.

[EOJ]

Good news: according to the CAVE blog, they are adding replay up/downloads for MBL, to be included in the upcoming patch. This may delay the patch by 1-2 more weeks, but I'm really glad they're doing this. 

Other things they are adding to the update:
-Ability to change the position of the achievement notifications (when they pop up on screen)
-Support for different displays/resolutions (not sure what this will be exactly)

[Kiken]

-Support for different displays/resolutions (not sure what this will be exactly)

I interpret that as fixing the display issue when running the game through VGA in 1360x768 res.

[EOJ]

I've been playing MBL (Arcade mode) w/ Follett today, and much to my surprise, the slowdown is really accurate in the Ice Palace with her. So maybe it's just messed up with Sakura. With Follett, a run from start to finish through both EX stages (including at least one 999 stage) is really accurate in regard to slowdown - so much so that it's hard to discern any differences from the PCB (again this is arcade mode - X360 mode is messed up in many places, in terms of slowdown).

[Megalixir]

The 100G achievement for DS MBL is:

"Bloody Jitterbug has been defeated."

真の強者
ブラッディージルバを倒しました。

[EOJ]

Bloody jitterbug? I take it you can only fight him if you do all rank 999 up until him? Probably can't continue either.

[Megalixir]

I get the feeling that Bloody Jitterbug only appears after you've beaten all 7 levels (canyon, train, marsh, volcano, town, and graveyard) on Lv999. This game isn't on Share and I can't extract my own copy at present to find out what triggers the event and quite frankly I probably won't bother.

I guess I should explain. Carefully. All Xbox 360 games have an ID string and all content contains various garbage within this ID string, which identifies itself as different from each other yet still related to the original ID string. I've managed to create a program which catches this and stores it locally, and after I mess with it I can upload it, for example, here's some live gamerpics which are sourced from Xbox.com, redirected and grouped here: http://loliserv.org/~elixir/noah/gamerpic.php

These are the gamerpics for a few JP only 360 titles. If a new gamerpic gets released for any of those games, it will be detected there as they're uploaded to Xbox.com's database (which can be identified) a few days prior to them being released on the Xbox Live marketplace. This is how I managed to discover that the Chaos;Head Noah gamerpics (such as the geckko froggy ones) were going to be released and what they looked like prior to them actually being released. This can be done for all achievements, avatars, themes, basically any content on any marketplace providing that it's attached to the game itself (which it has to, in order for it to be under the game's category in the marketplace). It's even easier for games like DOJBLEX because they have their own achievement interface within the game, which means it's pretty much readily available and I can even extract the achievement icons. In order for an achievement list to exist, it needs to be stored there, otherwise people who unlock the achievement and log into Xbox.com or on Xbox Live will not see any information displayed (or if it doesn't exist, the previous information ie. locked achievement description will be there).

MBL was actually on the marketplace about 3 days ahead of release.

[EOJ]

You have to go through the ice palace and canyon, and CASTLE at rank 999, which means you can't continue from start to finish. Then you have to beat a beefed up Jitterbug.

You should only need to do 4 out of the first 6 stages in rank 999, since once you do that the ice palace is in rank 999 as well.

[Megalixir]

Is that all? I was expecting something ridiculous.

Can't wait to see some vids.

[EOJ]

There are vids on nico showing how to do all of the first 6 stages without continuing, and these are helpful (especially the boss fights).

You also have the canyon boss at rank 999 to look forward to:

http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm5595165

Good luck on that one.

[EOJ]

You know, I'm now thinking Bloody Jitterbug is a TLB. If you note this 1CC (up to Jitterbug) full rank 999 vid:

http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm5469213

You don't fight "Bloody" Jitterbug. He may appear if you beat either regular rank 999 Jitterbug or Tyrannosatan without continuing. Which is nearly impossible, so I won't bother trying.

[Megalixir]

For vanilla DS, I haven't seen a single replay which stays at 1000 throughout the entire game. Do people still do this or is this tactic obsolete?

[EOJ]

No one ever played it with 1000 throughout the whole game (well, at least no one looking for a good score). The tactic was always to score normally in the first 6 stages, then play with 1000 through the Canyon and Castle.

[GaijinPunch]

10,000, right?

[EOJ]

I was just referring to the item counter. Multiplier should be maxed at 10,000 (and you can't die) for it to benefit your score, of course. 

[EOJ]

There's a USA player with all 1250 achievement points now:

http://profile.mygamercard.net/Im%20Too%20Godlyxxx

But he's obviously a cheater:

"We are missing game data totaling 191390 GamerScore.
This can be corrected by simply booting games not shown in this list."

How long til MS wipes his gamerscore? I don't normally care about achievements, but DS has some that take real skill, and it would be a shame to have
a cheater at the top for too long.

[adverse]

It takes them forever to do it at least as far as I've seen.  There's some guy going for a million gamerscore whose blog I read every now and again, and he says that even cheaters he has pointed out rarely get punished.

[Megalixir]

He's obviously a cheater because he has 1000/1000 in every single game he plays. He also has 2 copies of Dynasty Warriors 6 at 1000/1000, which is a dead giveaway because the final achievement (even I'm not grinding for that shit) is basically "max out all characters, get and max all horses, beat all bonus maps with all characters". Plus there's no reason to own the game from both regions (it's region locked, meaning he would have to own US and European 360s) . But anyone with a gamerscore over 50k should just be classified a suspicious.

He actually obtained every achievement in the correct order, which I have no idea how he managed to do. Though he did unlock the canyon 1.1 1cc before the regular 1.1 1cc. I've been thinking of starting from scratch myself, but my Bomberman Live history is the one thing I can't transfer. 40,000+ games since early '07 and now in the top 10 players, this isn't something I want to pass up, even if it is meaningless to everyone else. It's mine. There's also a few other things like my 850k Pacifism score in Geometry Wars 2, my DOJBLEX 1-ALL, etc.

I know there's a bunch of legit players with really high gamerscores but I just feel sorry for them, since they seem to have forgotten the purpose of playing games.

[EOJ]

According to vgchartz.com, this has sold 33,323 copies up until May 17th. That's pretty amazing, and it is on pace for 40,000+.
It sold more in its first week than Mass Effect did in Japan (just released there).

[lgb]

I know there's a bunch of legit players with really high gamerscores but I just feel sorry for them, since they seem to have forgotten the purpose of playing games.

For entertainment? If he wants to go for a really high gamerscore, he should want to, right? Wouldn't he enjoy it?

[Megalixir]

How is it entertaining doing trivial tasks in games you don't even like? Buying games for gamerscore is pretty fucking dumb. I only buy games I'm interested in, personally.

I know a lot of people buy Cave games just because they're Cave, and that's equally as dumb. I'll probably never play Ibara again.

[lgb]

I don't think it's doing the tasks, I think it's getting that gamerscore and being "better" than everyone else.

Some people don't even buy the games and just praise them to death.
--------
Cheaters almost never get punished; go look at Nintendo's WiFi policy. Pirates don't really get punished much either, unless they're very public about it; even then, they still come back in a few days.

[EOJ]

Good news:

According to the official CAVE blog, the update patch is finally complete (it includes MBL replay up/downloads). They are turning it in to MS tomorrow, and will post again when the distribution day has been finalized. Let's hope it's some time next week.

[EOJ]

The MBL secret achievement ("Defeat Bloody Jitterbug") is in this month's Xbox 360 magazine in Japan. Here's what you have to do:

-Play all 6 stages in rank 999
-Go through the ice palace and canyon before the castle
-Defeat Jitterbug
-You have to make it up to Tyrannosatan without dying (so you have to NO MISS from the start of the game to Tyrannosatan).
-You can't continue (obviously), you can't play 2 players, and you can't modify any of the default game settings.

Bloody Jitterbug will appear after Tyrannosatan. I don't think anyone ever did this in the Arcade version.

I'm not even going to bother trying.

[Megalixir]

It would be funny if Cave's hardest TLB was disguised within Cave's easiest game.