Yagawa-inspired Xbox 360 life hack

[GetPoint]

Hi all,

I wanted to write down something that only occurred to me very recently despite owning a 360 for many years! It's a quality of life hack, inspired by Shinobu Yagawa's amazing work on the Xbox 360 Akai Katana training and replay system (see next post for a recap of that). Tell me if you already knew about this! Here goes:

For any 360 Cave game that allows Training mode config to be saved between sessions, you can effectively create multiple training mode save states. All you have to do is create multiple 'Sign In' profiles alongside your main Xbox Live enabled Sign In. You name them 'Level 2', 'Level 3' etc, and give them a cool outfit  Then you open your game of choice, and agree to create all the system files. Now you can configure the Training Mode options for the relevant level, and they will stay saved. So if you want to practice eg DFK Stage 3 (Ura Route), you can just open up the game using your 'Level 3' Sign In profile and launch straight out of the training menu with no need to configure the settings.

You don't need a new profile for each game, just one per level to use on all of the games. You could have separate Boss fight profiles too I guess! It allows you to have a similar experience to Akai Katana, where you can jump straight in to training different levels any time.

There's a catch, in that only certain games allow you to save training options between sessions! Here are the ones I know about:

Games that DO allow this:


- Akai Katana (you can do it in-game without multiple profiles!)
- Deathsmiles (I & II)
- DDP DFK
- DDP DFK Black Label 
- DDP SDOJ
- ESPGaluda 2
- Muchi Muchi Pork & Pink Sweets
- Mushihimesama HD



Games that do NOT allow this:

- Ketsui (5PB Port)
- DDP DOJ Black Label (5PB Port)
- Mushihimesama Futari (M2 Port) 
- Guwange


As far as I know, you can't easily do this on the Steam releases, because you can't set up extra profiles...

Hope this is new and helpful to some people!

[GetPoint]

To recap regarding the joy that is Akai Katana:

Not only does Akai Katana allow multiple Training mode configurations to be saved and recalled, but you are also able to save replays of your training runs. Just don't restart while doing the run. In any replay (training OR full run) that you have saved you can jump back into control at any point using the 'Select/Back' button, and then re-save the new run, which is marked as an 'Edit'.

This is as close to 'Save State' as you can get on Xbox 360. With 20 replay slots per mode, you can effectively save up to 3 different runs per stage of the game, and attempt new strategies in each.

You can effectively turn the game into a series of single-level score chases, that can be improved at any stage.

It's completely deluxe, was built by Yagawa himself, and given the low price of Akai Katana it really does improve the value of the package. It should be standard on all games!!!

[GetPoint]

I made a small spreadsheet to illustrate how this life hack can benefit players:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wzQ5p0Mym4SqlLPqRqE0kiH36_3gf4aGuD8I0t2aHmA

You can pick any game, any cell, per session, and train for that objective.

It means you can really unpack the games, and flatten the stages in terms of difficulty. You don't need to get through levels 1, 2 and 3 just to access Level 4 holding scarce resources. Train the later levels as much as the earlier ones, and train them with max resources! This is a luxury that arcade players never had.

It also allows you to explore the arrange modes that you have paid for when buying the game. Play the arranged levels individually, for a change, without feeling obligated to go for a clear.

Most importantly, you can do all this by setting up the training config for each stage ONE TIME ONLY. Set and forget- then jump in and enjoy all the parts of the game you have paid for!