Mushihimesama Futari ver 1.5 [JP XBOX 360, 2009] REGION FREE W/ SCANLINES

[adverse]

For those of you who care about achievements, I think the doable achievements are going to top out at about 875 for this game.

What seems to be in the way of 1000/1000 are

25  Clear stage 3 in Ultra (some people have reported continuing and unlocking this)
50  Unknown (but a top player on the Ultra leaderboard has it unlocked and sequentially it would seem to be an achievement for beating the stage 5 boss in Ultra mode.  However the player did not clear the game it seems, so I imagine that the other 50 point achievement is for defeating Spiritual Larsa)
50  Unknown

Clearing stage 3 in Ultra seems pretty goddamn tough since MHK and EOJ are the only Western players known to have done it.

Otherwise the achievements are not massively difficult, but will take some practice for those new to the game.  

Incidentally, the achievement for getting the counter to 100k in Arrange mode is probably only possible on Stage 4 Ultra and up judging from some of the replays up right now, since the counter resets every stage.

Edit: No-continue clear for all modes in Arrange might be really hard for Ultra given that you have to take out Spiritual Larsa.  Will give it a go tomorrow.

[PsychoDiver]

I love the stick, it looks great. If I hadn't just picked up a SF 4 TE one, I would have to get one.

[EOJ]

25  Clear stage 3 in Ultra (some people have reported continuing and unlocking this)

I got this one already, don't know how really. I think it was either in Novice or Arrange Ultra mode.

[EOJ]

Looks like Play-asia is already shipping Futari without the DLC card - themasha69 over on shmups reported his did not come with the card.

[Schrodingers cat]

Looks like pre-order dates don't matter either.  Someone pre-ordered from PA as late as October and reported getting a DLC card, while someone else pre-ordered 2 copies at the end of August and got no card for either.  Maybe they're combining shipments without regard for the first print DLC.  Let's hope not.   

[EOJ]

Every copy I've seen in Japanese shops has the DLC card. All the copies for sale on Amazon Japan (even right now) still come with the card. Maybe they didn't include it with a batch of games shipped to asian distributors like P-A, as they thought the people buying those wouldn't have Japanese xbox live accounts, and thus wouldn't be able to use the card?

Still sucks, no matter the reason.

NCSX.com is reporting the LE is sold out from all distributors except two, who are now charging about $172 for it. So, ncsx.com will not be selling any more LEs.
http://www.ncsx.com/2009/112309/ncs1123f.htm

[cstarflare]

Edit: No-continue clear for all modes in Arrange might be really hard for Ultra given that you have to take out Spiritual Larsa.  Will give it a go tomorrow.

An Ultra 1cc is going to be really hard. Is it just me, or is there no slowdown?

I didn't really notice until I hit the stage 5 boss and ran out of points to reflect bullets with but it's really fast

[adverse]

Asada mentioned in the Famitsu 360 interview last month that Arrange mode was built based on an engine supplied by M2 which completely eliminated slowdown.  Taking the slowdown out is basically the whole point of the mode, otherwise the character switching/bullet slowing mechanic would be too powerful.

Just 1CC'ed Arrange Ultra with a score of 1.4 billion.  Only made it to 131 on the leaderboards though.    I think this mode is a ton of fun!

Edit: Arrange mode score is billions not trillions!  Sorry.

[antares]

Really great port. Scanlines leave the picture a little washed out but its still a big improvement in Arcade mode. Good effort with the slowdown, lovely wallpapers, tiny install and amazing load times.

Shame they don't allow you to adjust the intensity of the scanlines, which would rectify this.

If you haven't figured out yet it is possible to change the itensity of the scanlines, turn off smoothing and a ton of other stuff. You just need to press A on the Preset #D option and another menu will pop up that has ridicolous many screen options. Will be quite difficult to even find the best solution.

[SuperPang]

If you haven't figured out yet it is possible to change the itensity of the scanlines, turn off smoothing and a ton of other stuff. You just need to press A on the Preset #D option and another menu will pop up that has ridicolous many screen options. Will be quite difficult to even find the best solution.

Oh wow, thanks. The screen memu could be a little clearer.

[EOJ]

What are the top scores in Novice and Arrange modes? I don't have internet at home, so I can't check the leaderboards. I played Novice Original and did a 413mil ALL on my first credit. Pretty fun, once again, in a pure score attack sort of way (sorta like the easy modes in Ketsui Death Label). Also, much to my surprise there is still rank in Novice Original. I noticed the bullets sped up when I hit 50K on the counter, and got faster as I maxed out at 65K before Larsa.

Also, I've been reading various Futari threads on the web, and one thing that I think is pretty disheartening is people keep saying stuff like "version 1.01 is just a couple tweaks". There are lots of differences between ver 1.01 and 1.5. Including the SCORING SYSTEMS, overall game system, bullet patterns, bullet speed, character attributes, enemy hit points, bomb strength, slowdown, difficulty curve, etc. It's not just ver 1.5 with " a couple tweaks". All the differences between ver 1.0(1) and 1.5 are listed here in these forums, but I guess not many people know that.

As a final point, I think it's ridiculously stupid to have ver 1.01 already on the disc, but require people to use an unlock code on a card to play it.

[adverse]

Arrange Ultra right now is 3.9 billion.  Sin is ranked 7 right now with 3.3.

Novice Original high score is 411020235, so you have a higher score than that.  Connect your damn internet man  .

Your Novice Maniac score would also be #1.

[SuperPang]

Also, I've been reading various Futari threads on the web, and one thing that I think is pretty sad is people keep saying "version 1.01 is just a couple tweaks, that's why it's only a 100K download". First, the 100k download is just the unlock code, ver 1.01 is on the disc. Second, there are lots of differences between ver 1.01 and 1.5. Including the SCORING SYSTEMS, overall game system, bullet patterns, bullet speed, character attributes, enemy hit points, bomb strength, slowdown, difficulty curve, etc. It's not just ver 1.5 with " a couple tweaks". All the differences between ver 1.0(1) and 1.5 are listed here in these forums, but I guess not many people know that.

As a final point, I think it's ridiculously stupid to have ver 1.01 already on the disc, but require people to use an unlock code on a card to play it.

I think the card is there to encourage people to buy the game and not download it. I would've expected it with every copy though. Are we sure everyones checking their boxes? At least its not as bad as some publishers who charge for DLC thats already on the disc.

On the v1.01 subject, don't forget a lot of people who are are buying this are more casual shmup players who won't notice much difference without extended play. It might seem a little pointless.

[bcass]

A Q for anyone with the LE - is the menu music on the CD?

[bcass]

As a final point, I think it's ridiculously stupid to have ver 1.01 already on the disc, but require people to use an unlock code on a card to play it.

I think it might be an anti-piracy measure, and of course to encourage more people to buy it on day of release.

I've been playing this today, and having been hammering Dai-Ou-Jou for the last few weeks, the difficulty gap is astounding!

[EOJ]

Novice Original high score is 411020235, so you have a higher score than that.  Connect your damn internet man  .

Your Novice Maniac score would also be #1.

LOL. I don't think any of the really good players have bothered with either Novice mode yet. I'm sure by the time I connect my x360 to the internet again (early January), my scores in those modes will be obsolete.

[GaijinPunch]

I've not downloaded 1.01 yet -- is it more or less the same as the PCB?  I've only played Maniac Arrange, and cleared it after a few credits (1.1 billion).  I have no clue what the fuck I'm doing though.  Well, a slight clue.  It's fun, and a nice package, but I'm still looking forward to ESGGaluda II.  I'm hoping my slate is a lot more open by then.

[PsychoDiver]

Any idea how well this game sold? I remember the producer saying if it sold well to overseas users then more region free games could follow.

[bucklemyshoe]

Any idea how well this game sold? I remember the producer saying if it sold well to overseas users then more region free games could follow.

I heard/read something along the lines of cave shipping 24k copies day one.

[KoD]

For people that are running this on 4:3 CRTs, what settings are you using?

Trying to get it set up on a 29" tri-sync at 640x480.
Zoom of 128 seems close to being the right size. Being a power of 2, I'd hope that's 2x native res (does anyone know if futari arcade is 320 x 240 or some weird size?), but there's still a bit of the background wallpaper visible.
The scanlines option literally just makes the image darker at that size, there's no alternation.

As it is, it honestly looks worse than the PS2 ports (well, not the unpatched 480i filtered ones).  I understand a lot of that is down to 360 being unable to do 240p, but where's the setting for tate in exactly 2x upscaling with nearest neighbor. . . I'd gladly have given up the matrix lolol 5 screens options.

[gsl]

The issue of a lot of people not having the 1.01 card in shipments from Play-Asia is a little disconcerting, especially since I ordered from them with airmail shipping.  Sounds like there's still plenty else in the game to keep busy with (especially in light of the upcoming BL), but it's still a bit of a rip-off since they were saying a card would be included in every first-print copy.  I'm hoping it's just an issue of boneheads not looking in their manuals.

If the DLC is really just something that unlocks the mode already on the disc, I wonder if perhaps there will be another way of getting at the content.

Assuming I'm one of the people who get screwed, I'm wondering what recourse I'd have.  Something tells me that PA might not care, considering they never mentioned including the card in the first place.  Would this be something one could conceivably take to Cave, or is it best to just acknowledge that someone has been screwed and the result is not in my favor?

[Megalixir]

You could always buy the card off YJP. And if too many people get screwed I'm sure someone would be willing to do a group order for them.

http://page18.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/w45740652

[Strider77]

For people that are running this on 4:3 CRTs, what settings are you using?

Trying to get it set up on a 29" tri-sync at 640x480.
Zoom of 128 seems close to being the right size. Being a power of 2, I'd hope that's 2x native res (does anyone know if futari arcade is 320 x 240 or some weird size?), but there's still a bit of the background wallpaper visible.
The scanlines option literally just makes the image darker at that size, there's no alternation.

As it is, it honestly looks worse than the PS2 ports (well, not the unpatched 480i filtered ones).  I understand a lot of that is down to 360 being unable to do 240p, but where's the setting for tate in exactly 2x upscaling with nearest neighbor. . . I'd gladly have given up the matrix lolol 5 screens options.

I was able to get the picture to fill the screen in 480p while retaining the "Dot for Dot", now granted i had a bit over overscan while doing so. Then I turned all the extra stuff of in the "maniac" picture settings and used one of the scanline options, I believe is was "x 3 sharp".

It looked dead on.....   are you using the "maniac" picture options or just choosing one of the presets in the "simple" menu for the display?

[KoD]

How exactly can you tell that you're retaining "dot for dot"?  I've noticed that notation in e.g. the RFA collection, but not this game.

Yes, I'm using the maniac picture options (and the submenu underneath that).  3x sharp seems like its doing something along the lines of 2 lines at normal brightness for 1 line of reduced brightness, it looks really silly and nothing like a 240p signal.

Edit - got it figured out - I had set rotation and scaling under the standard picture options first, then gone to maniac for fiddling with the scanlines & etc.
Instead, if you go to maniac and then hit A on "layout" to get the submenu for scaling and rotation, it'll actually show you the scaling factor and a "d.b.d." notation instead of the arbitrary scaling number it shows you on the standard picture options.

Looks about as good as you could expect now, on par with RFA (and without the 54hz judder).

[SuperPang]

I'm playing 720p Yoko on a Pioneer plasma so it's no doubt very different but I have Smoothing off, x2 Scanline with 16 effect bias. No glare mode. Colour brightness 7, gamma 3, contrast 1 and Frame delay 2V (PCB) and am really impressed with how arcade mode looks.

[gsl]

You could always buy the card off YJP. And if too many people get screwed I'm sure someone would be willing to do a group order for them.

http://page18.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/w45740652

It's a good idea and nice to know I could resort to it if nothing else (and ?1000 isn't too unreasonable even with the horribly strong yen), but it doesn't fix the issue of someone having fucked up.  Either Cave's got some problem on the production end of things where cards aren't getting included (unlikely as Play-Asia seems to be the only one affected so far), they neglected to mention that they weren't including the DLC with Hong Kong shipments (a dick move considering there were no other restrictions stated other than the DLC would be first-print only) or Play-Asia is messing around with items they're selling (also unlikely, but odd considering that NCSX and other foreign distribution channels don't seem to be having this problem).

I just want to try and figure out who to gripe at if mine doesn't include the card; I'm sure there's lots of other people who would appreciate it as well.  My concern could be for nothing and the card could arrive with no problems, but I figure I've got another week at least before it gets here, so I might as well worry neurotically about it for a while. :/

--

So with the leaderboards, is this like Raiden Fighters where even Silver XBL members can post scores?  I'm fairly new to the 360 and not at all sure how a lot of the Live stuff works, other than a vague impression of Gold accounts being useless if you're not into playing online FPS titles.

[bcass]

So with the leaderboards, is this like Raiden Fighters where even Silver XBL members can post scores?

Yes, Silver members can post scores too (as is the case with 99.99% of all 360 games).

[bucklemyshoe]

 Either Cave's got some problem on the production end of things where cards aren't getting included (unlikely as Play-Asia seems to be the only one affected so far)

I'm guessing that this is more than likely the case. It would make perfect sense that only one retailer is effected if it just happened to be only one box that was effected? sometimes things happen in production that aren't caught instantly.

Besides that, PA usually includes all pre-order bonus items even when they don't mention them. I got my THE balloon and my DOJBLEX guide book.

[EOJ]

Thanks to those who have been posting their screen setup config (Superpang, etc). It'll save me a lot of time and fiddling when I hook this game up to an hdtv soon! 

[EOJ]

I've been having the most fun practicing Ultra mode stages (Arcade) in training mode. I wanted this so much when I had the PCB, and it's such a joy to be able to practice a stage over and over and try out different patterns. I'm already seeing rapid improvement, so look for more Ultra mode scores from me soon. I also love the fact you can practice the stage 5 boss, including the TLBs!