Mushihimesama Futari Black Label "ANOTHER VERSION"[Cave 2009, PCB]

[pestro87]

God Mode is the same on both boards, you can get those numbers via double play where one char builds up the counter and the other cashes in on the cancels. It's actually possible to counterstop the game (9,999,999,999) that way.

[EOJ]

Great, thanks for clearing that up. 

[EOJ]

Alright, I bought a NOS kit from yaton6262 on ebay. I'm looking forward to checking out the differences (in original/maniac) in this version first-hand, as well as playing god mode on PCB again.

[pestro87]

Nice man!!!

[EOJ]

I've been playing this a lot over the past few days. I am really enjoying it. God mode is 100% the same, as pestro87 mentioned. I think the price of the kit is worth that by itself. The boss tweaks to Original and Maniac are also very interesting. Several of the boss patterns in the JP release feel really messy and 'herky-jerky' in these modes. The first phase of the stage 2 boss, in particular, is a good example of this. They have been smoothed out in AV, and due to the reduced health the fights go by a bit quicker. Unfortunately you cannot score as well on the bosses due to the reduced bullet density, so for anyone interested in competitive scoring (like me), you should stick with the JP version. But for casual players, this should be fine.

[pestro87]

Glad to hear that you're enjoying God Mode, EOJ! It's such a fantastic game with incredible depth. Looking forward to following your progress! And feel free to ask away if you have any questions - there are a lot of details at higher levels of play that took me a really long time to figure out (and there's still lots that I haven't fully understood yet).

[EOJ]

The two most important things you have to learn for high-level play are the proximity effects (and the movement/placement of Reco's options), and fast C tapping. Your great youtube videos, pestro87, are very helpful for the latter, because I can see exactly when you tap C. 

[EOJ]

One thing I don't think has been mentioned before is that there was a significant bug on the original JP version in which, if you killed the last two large bugs too late at the end of Stage 2, the boss wouldn't appear and you'd have to reset the board or wait for the boss timer to time out (I think I'm remembering this right, but if I am wrong on the details please let me know). This was fixed on the International "Another Ver" BL. So the "Another Ver" God Mode is the definitive, bug-fixed PCB version (this bug was also fixed on the X360 port).

[pestro87]

^That's super interesting, didn't know that! Will have to give that a try sometime. I have had my JP PCB freeze on me at that very point though when the boss was about to appear but it's only happened once so far.

[SuperPang]

This was quite a misstep by Cave wasn't it. I'd love to know why this title in particular got overseas distribution, which was obviously a mistake if they ended up in a warehouse in China for years.

[EOJ]

It's a strange case for sure. Perhaps they had a few hundred CV-1000B PCBs left and tried to figure out a way to monetize them with this, but that doesn't explain why the plan failed so horribly and practically all of them ended up in a warehouse for years, as you note. DDPDOJ Tamashii came out at a similar time, so they were experimenting with Chinese/Asian versions of their games with slightly reduced difficulty.

[Muchi Muchi Spork]

Their history with China is bizarre. The buggy seemingly prototype xx version(s) of Pink Sweets were supposedly from there, the impossibly rare Dodonpachi III went there, this Another Version Futari and there was an updated version of SDOJ on PGM2 hardware completed and then scrapped.

[EOJ]

According to Yaton on ebay, these kits are all sold out now (he sold the last one on November 2nd). His reply to my inquiry about buying a new kit this week is below:

"Hi.sorry late.
this game all sold. not more
Thanks
James"

For reference, Cave made 200 of these, making it one of the rarest Cave kits.

[_rm_]

there was an updated version of SDOJ on PGM2 hardware completed and then scrapped.

First time i've read something about this. Care to elaborate?

Thanks in advance

[Animaitor]

there was an updated version of SDOJ on PGM2 hardware completed and then scrapped.

Never heard of it either... interesting.

For reference, Cave made 200 of these, making it one of the rarest Cave kits.

I was under the impression that most BL versions had 100-200 runs.

[EOJ]

I was under the impression that most BL versions had 100-200 runs.

Yep, they all did. MFBL JP was 150, and MFBL AV was 200. There are only four other BL PCBs (DOJBL=100, IKBL=100~150, DSMBL=200, DFKBL=200).

[brentsg]

I'm doing some casual reading and I noticed that this topic popped up again.. and I always enjoy it.

I was reminded of my discussion with Joey Tang (Excellent HK) back on January 29, 2010 so I have been going back through messages.  Here are a couple of interesting bits:

In regard to whether Legend had returned existing JPN Futari BL stock to Cave to be reprogrammed, this was the response:  "Yes, now all of the pcb is upgraded and back, so we sell "real" stock." 

For context I was asking whether they had the games in stock so I think "real stock" is sloppy English for "in stock".

In regard to whether they could source the original Japanese version at that time:  "we contact Cave and they told us that if we need old or new version, the answer must be new one"

I used to have some discussion with Fannie but it's long gone.  Of course all of this is ancient history now so I think the only remaining mystery is why I own both versions of Futari Black Label but I sold 1.5.