Friday, September 30, 2005 @ 03:06 (Japan Standard Time)
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A hobbyist video gamer in the middle of Japan's gaming zone. Comments on console, PC, handheld and arcade games.
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2005-09-30 Fri

So then let's replace the flash

GBA Micro joins my purple club (Mario Kart Advance, Rozen Maiden)

2005-09-29 Thu

Site update (teensie weensie)

Another Xbox 360 game (Senko no Ronde)

He rides again!

What's right?

2005-09-28 Wed

Four shmups at the same time... and losing

2005-09-27 Tue

Help a fella out...

If tomorrow never comes...

2005-09-11 Sun

All hauled out (Touhou Koumarou)

2005-09-10 Sat

Missed him (Nintendogs)

From the other side (Maiden Love Revolution)

Pre-order reminding

Ookami means register before you get a demo

Attending a Touhou "only" convention

Caution wide load

2005-09-06 Tue

Rozen Maiden gaming

2005-09-04 Sun

Unfound Turbo

A holder to bind them all (Touhou)

The moon's the limit.

Tobi Tsukihime (Fly moon princess)

2005-09-03 Sat

Princess training takes money.

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So then let's replace the flash

A reader (thanks for the priv. email) quickly pointed out that GBA carts don't have batteries, and goes on to say: "If a GBA game DOES have a battery, that means it's a bootleg, since battery-powered RAM is a lot cheaper than flash. :)X"

Yeah, that makes sense in this day and age of ubiquitous USB flash drives.

Now that I am exposed for knowing nothing, can I at least write something in the form of a question? The question mark gives me so much more leeway, the possiblity to be right.

I wonder if Nintendo or licensees decide the cartridge's effective period (I'm not talking about the flash chip life expectancy, which can vary from app to app). Did someone in some meeting say, let's make these carts last for 3 years because we want the lusers to buy more games? Then game devs dealing with the flash chip design the flash writing with this minimal life expectancy? Or do they just let it run and not think about it at all? In any case, I bet 2 or 3 years is their target number. Otherwise, how would we get excited about the Revolution and its downloadable backlog of memories?

BTW, that Mario Kart Advance game came out in 2001, and I totally forgot I blogged about it and the mobile adapter. That's four years, pops, and it still works. Great.

GBA Micro joins my purple club (Mario Kart Advance, Rozen Maiden)

Recently playing:
  • Mario Kart Advance (GBA-jp, Sliding too much)

The Mario Kart Advance gave me a scare when it couldn't read the memory save. But I reinserted and reseated the cart into the GBAM and all was fine. (phew) No I didn't blow on the contacts like the old NES trick. What do you do with dead batteries in cart? I better ask NamakoTeam about GBA carts, since he did a maintenance article about regular cartridges.

Gameboy Micro, Sony Clie Palm TJ25, 3-in-1 gravity pencil/pen, Rozen Maiden Film Comic

So yes, I got a GameBoy Micro on release day. Unfortunately I didn't bring it with me on that two week plane trip because they only have 220 V power and the adapter is Japan only. So I let it sit in my apartment unused. And I picked purple-pink because it's color-coordinates with my default pen, my Sony Clie, my digital camera (obviously not shown), and my Nintendo DS (which I forgot! Well I have a picture from a previous post). I don't like that Famicom color GBAM, that's not my "roots". Red, white, and bronze on a plastic case. I guess it defines the 80s (in Japan), but I graduated from the flat black (Atari 2600) to the lunchbox gray and black (NES), so nyah nyah. Now all I have to do is get a purple/pink keitai phone, pink iPod mini, etc.

And my take? The screen is too small, I can't keep it steady enough for action games (but this is user error), and I have to carry the bundled felt case if I don't want to get too many scratches on it. I did add a protective film to the whole face, but this thing is a fingerprint magnet! But as a game machine, it's adequate.

And the book in the background is the film comic for the first season of Rozen Maiden. In other words, they print the cels into manga form. If you've seen the show then there's no reason to read this because it's the same, or less. For example, some of the visual gags are removed, for example when Jun "checks" Shinku. But the cover picture seems new. Rozen Maiden Traümend (the second season has a new name) starts next week. I can't wait!

Site update (teensie weensie)

I updated the links page with a new friends-and-foes links. Thanks namako team for excellent verbosity and thanks retrogaming with racketboy for re-heating my memories.

I changed my contact email address. If you have questions or flames, I welcome them. But don't bother sending the hate mail, just post it on your blog so I can link it, like to this guy: "I was reading one of the most pointless and somewhat idiotic blogs I've ever read in the history of online journalism". Thank you and please come again! Wait can I respond? Ok? This here game log/blog is no online journalism, it's NGJ, as in Navel Gaming Journal!!1!

I'm checking out the Internet resources to value my online ego. Google has their Blog Search (beta) going on. (I'm losing the google fight to some no-namer named piyokun-gogo. Lame.) Frankly I could care less if I get linked or not (please please please up my page rank!). I'm writing this for myself (and for you deprived individuals who can't get enough Japanese video game/anime/doujin crap).

Another Xbox 360 game (Senko no Ronde)

... for me will be Senko no Ronde 旋光の輪舞 (thanks Majoria's News 2005/09/15, yeah, hey I'm just catching up). Is this exclusive to the Xbox 360?

I don't have a definite threshold when I will commit to buying an Xbox 360. I'm now up to two games, the second one being ... I forgot, but it must be Dead or Alive related. Besides, I don't want to spend 30000 yen or more for a console. I need more reasons to consider buying any new console. Like games. What are the games on it?

Oh I also saw that the arcade soundtrack for this game was at the Gamers store (if you're going to be breaking street dates, do it for all of your stock items, please?). Since I've never seen or played this game, it doesn't make any sense to buy it, but it was composed by that Watabe guy who did the Border Down music. (Hype: 「STG音楽界の「匠」Yack.こと渡部恭久氏」) I gotta admit I liked most of that music (Doo doo doo! Hums the beginning of the attract music), so buying this one may not be a mistake.

(edit: Added the soundtrack comment, deleted the console argument)

He rides again!

While on that two week-long plane ride, I ordered something special for my Xbox, Burnout: Revenge. Yes, for me, it's imported. Now let's have some Xbox lovin'.

What's right?

While I'm in the shmups mood: It all started when IGN said that "Treasure Promises Shooter for Xbox 360" which got Joystiq on the linkie linkie. But didn't the same reporter get fact-slapped by Treasure while talking about Xbox 360 plans a few days prior (thanks VG Media Watch)?

I thought Treasure was the sort of dev house that "sticks it to the Man", which was in the last generation, the Playstation? For this generation is it still the Playstation (2)? Isn't Xbox 360 another deep fried cheese-cake from the Man? This year is wierd, what with Apple going Intel, Xbox 360 launching first, Square Enix buying Taito, GameBoy Micro and GBA SP screen up surprise annoucements. I must have forgotten a whole lot of shocking stuff, but I'm sure this year take the cake. What's next? Ikaruga 2?

Four shmups at the same time... and losing

Recently playing:
  • Raiden 3 (PS2-jp, Why do I keep thinking about how it bites off of other shmups?)
  • Princess Maker 4 (PS2-jp, Increase her intelligence (stat) with last minute cramming)
  • Street Fighter II X Revivial (GBA-jp, Gotta put my GBA Micro to use)
Now stacking:

I unleashed the Raiden 3 on my vert-only LCD screen and old PS2. But I'm a little disappointed. It's like someone time-warped the Raiden 2 devs a few years into the future (our present) and said, you can do 3d backgrounds now, have at it! Where's the new stuff, stuff that makes you think this is a new take on the Raiden saga? This game is not danmaku and it never was. There's no difference between holding down the fire button and tapping it. Not very innovative. At least it's pretty. This is what Ikaruga would look like on a PS2. Think about it, you launch off a floating ship in the middle of two brownish cloud layers. Yeah innovation.

Clockwise from top: Touhou Kaiezuka: Phantasmagoria of Flower View, Hitogata Happa, China Vortex

The other three shmups I am "losing" are on that Now Stacking list. Hitogata Happa and Touhou Kaiezuka: Phantasmagoria of Flower View finally came out to the Melon Books doujin shop so I grabbed it. And that China Vortex: Mechanized Samuraizm the Second Term by Bakuretzu Koubou is some kind of mechanized vert shmup with too sexy cut scenes (18+, so watch where you click). The character art is very professional, wow. Try the demo. At the shop, there was another side scrolling shmup that had flying damsels but I didn't want to plop 2000 yen on some unknown fantasy shmup. Shoot, if I was that hard up on shmups I'd get Air Rade, which I've been avoiding.

(edit: Added picture)

Help a fella out...

Now stacking:
  • Raiden 3 (PS2-jp, Only 5000 yen with nothing extra!)

Another dear reader sent me an email about a picture posted on my site (what, don't they read it for the articles?). I didn't know who did this drawing, and neither did the reader. But it seems that the front cover drawing on the Touhou Koumarou convention booklet was done by Shuka Yuki (由岐シュウカ) of Luxia Continent (るくしあ大陸). This person has a lovely artist webpage, including some nice gallery pictures with samples to download.

If tomorrow never comes...

The "tomorrow" in the last post wasn't free. In fact, I got on a plane and forgot about writing for a time. But now I'm back and writing it will be. I still have a lot of stuff to talk about, which I should before the season changes. (What, it's already autumn? No!)

All hauled out (Touhou Koumarou)

Recovering from the hectic day. Just look here:

Touhou Koumarou 2005/09/11 - haul 1

and here:

Touhou Koumarou 2005/09/11 - haul 2

More details when I get the time (tomorrow?).

Missed him (Nintendogs)

That Nintendogs guy already zipped pass my prefecture (Hyogo). He made a stop at Kobe, even at a shopping center (Kobe Sannomiya Center-Gai which is shown in the picture) that I frequent, but I was unable to meet him. It's too bad my "Sugar" couldn't have made into his list of dogs (for Hyogo).

From the other side (Maiden Love Revolution)

While leafing through an Interchannel Soft Lineup 2005 Summer pamphlet (Ramune sure looks appealing), I was appalled to see the latest entertainment pill in Boys' Life games (love sims for women). Check this game out: Maiden Love Revolution (乙女的恋革命★ラブレボ!!) (my less-than-stellar translation). The main character which represents your persona is a girl who is overweight (100kg!?), but this dating-sim game specifically asks you to make her lose weight by dieting or exersise, and makes it a game stat. I can only conclude that it helps determines which guy you hook up with. I can't recall any gal-get game that puts your on-screen persona (i.e. a guy)'s weight on the line. Sure there are stat gal-games where you have to increase your intelligence points or charm points or what not, like Tokimeki Memorial.

I need to know if I'm being hypocritical here. Is there something just as shocking in the gal-get games I play that women would find objectional? (Yes yes the whole genre is objectional, but ignoring that... Hehe) I must be blind to see it.

I was trying to track down where this game property came from but I couldn't see the forest from the trees. Is it a manga serialized in B's Log magazine?

Pre-order reminding

Making my rounds to the local game shop, I forgot that Raiden III for the PS2-jp (originally arcade) will be coming out this month (2005/09/22). Ahah. The pre-order corner also reminded me that Homura for PS2-jp (originally arcade) will be coming in December (2005/12). There are no Dreamcast versions of these games. I remember how most shmup games (Ikaruga, Chaos Field, Shikigami no Shiro 1 & 2, Psyvariar) came out for the Dreamcast first, then other platforms. Was that the era of the Naomi arcade board?

Also other pre-orders I'm thinking about are Gunstar Super Heroes for the GBA, out 2005/10. If you order GSH from Sega Direct, you get a keitai strap with Sega and Treasure logos, and that promotional DVD. Talk about exclusive! Let's not forget Duel Savior Destiny for the PS2-jp, which will be delayed till 2005/12. It has a great figure of Nanashi. Excellent figure. Truly a moe-able icon. There's no picture on the web that I can find, but it's at all the shops.

Ookami means register before you get a demo

In the Weekly Famitsu magazine for 2005/09/23 (sold 2005/09/09), there was a full two page advertisement for that artsy, (cel-shaded?) PS2 Japanese-themed game Ookami (大神). It bills itself as a "Nature adventure", which means something different from the violence or collect all keys/items/gals themed games. There's a campaign for a free demo to be handed out at the Tokyo Game Show 2005, but you have to register at the site first. This looks very interesting, but I think I need to play the seminal cel-shaded adventure game, first. (I guess I'm talking about Zelda: Wind Waker for the GC.)

Attending a Touhou "only" convention

I decided to go to the Touhou Kouroumu (東方紅楼夢) convention, which will be held near the JR Shin-Osaka station. I saw in the pamphlet that Touhou Radio will be making the appearance in the itaku (委託) booth section. Truth be told, I don't know what itaku means in this context. My dictionary says "consignment" or "delegation". Does this mean by proxy? In any case they will have a booth at the edge of the room, which normally means they expect to have a big line for it.

Now I have to make sure that I don't buy the same thing twice, which means at least eyeballing all the stuff I already got.

Caution wide load

Last year I took part in the Nishinomiya Matsuri (西宮祭日) held by the Nishinomiya Shrine, which is the main shrine for the Japanese God of Business, Ebisu. It was a festive event involving community activity. But, helping to carrying the o-mikoshi tired me out. I saw the advertisement for this year's festivities and my likeness was in front and center in the sample picture:

Nishinomiya Matsuri 2004, me holding up my end

Do I look like I'm enjoying myself? Incidently, this is just the start of the tour, so I didn't know how hectic this would get. Now I know, and this year I'm not carrying anything.

Rozen Maiden gaming

I saw on the official anime Rozen Maiden (ローゼンメイデン) website that there's going to be a Playstation 2 game. Ooh I can't wait, waku waku! Pretty soon I'll be seeing this on my little PS2 screen:

Rozen Maiden game!

Shinku!

Oh I just have to mention that I saw the Shinku doll at Books Lashinbang for 24,000 yen unopened. With good looking painted eyes. Ah haha.

Unfound Turbo

Talk about stupid. I had that oh so shoryuken feeling, so I was playing SFII: World Warrior last week. Then I got the urge to play the Super Famicom version of SFII Turbo. But I couldn't find my cart, and it wasn't in the usual places. Then I got the idea that I should go buy the PS1 version, but then cleaning my room revealed that I already had the Street Fighter Collection for the Saturn, which is probably the same thing. Only with better controllers (snarky comments about Saturn "domination" need not apply).

Do you have so many games that you forget you already have a copy? It's happened to me before.

A holder to bind them all (Touhou)

"Touhou" (東方) has been the genre name of the Team Shanghai Alice / Zun mega-phenomenon that has overshadowed doujin shmups for the last 3 or 4 years. (Do I really need to introduce it?) The fever hasn't stopped, in fact it's stepped up a bit since Zun released his latest game Phantasmagoria of Flower View (東方花映塚) at the last Comic Market 68 in August. (I'm still waiting for an affordable copy!) Being doujin doesn't mean it's immune from being copied (flattered?) again and again, so here we have other doujin groups basing their efforts off of Zun's creativity. It's grand affair. Zun created a whole universe, and the other groups fill it in.

I am a bit burnt out with Touhou music covers and arrange CDs (they still occupy a large part of doujin audio CD shelf space), but I still keep my eye out on the doujinshi and related games. This last CM68 I didn't go, but I allowed myself to buy the following items via proxy as shown in the picture:

Touhou Radio Spellcard Holder with "Touhou Jifushiro" Game

The CD case contains the game Touhou Jifuushiro ... the Alternative Age (東方時封城) which is a danmaq effort into "historic Touhou STG" action. It's a copy (or duplicate or clone or ripoff) of the shmuppy goodness in the spirit of Zun games. Which is okay, I guess.

But notice the silhouette. The character graphics are pitfully crude and we are saved from the horror. The music is snappy, but it's too close to the original.

But I can't fault the game play. The bullet patterns are superb and colorful. Where Zun opted for primary blue (#0000FF?) and primary red (#FF0000?) for the curtain fire in his later games, Touhou Jifuushiro gives you the whole pastel spectrum. It sort of reminds me of the early Touhou:

Scarlet .. Touhou

This full game is good at 700 yen, but if you want, try the Touhou Jifuushiro demo. ("TRIAL_1.00/B140" 57 MB! download)

The other thing dominating the picture above is a card holder binder! Yes, this is cool! In the last Zun game Touhou Eiyashou Imperishable Night (東方永夜抄), one of the fabulous game submodes was "Spell Card" collecting. One group (or a collaboration?), Touhou Radio, stepped up to the plate to give the fans a card collection set and a binder to hold them (東方らぢおスペルカードホルダー), priced at a sensible 1000 yen each. Offiical artwork card binders usually cost 2000 yen and up. I didn't know about this until I picked up the last available binder at Melon Books. Lucky!

Banner ad for the Touhou Radio card collection and binder

Zun's rendition of the "pseudo-dolls in paradise" is adequate, but to my anime-tainted eyes, I like other artists' artwork. Here's a close up of Reimu Hakurei from the binder itself. I really love the eyes. But with that big bow-tie head band, she looks pretty close to neko-mimi. Ahaha. I really need to figure out who drew this.

Close up on Reimu

There will be a Touhou "only" convention in my area next Sunday, called Touhou Kouroumu (東方紅楼夢). Before, I decided not to go, but I may change my mind. I gotta pick up a pamphlet at Melon Books to see if they have Touhou Radio attending. I gotta put something shmup related in the holder, you see.

The moon's the limit.

Playing some more of the the Tobi Tsukihime. This is a point-scoring fanatic's dream. Seriously. Take Dodonpachi obession with hits, with the Zero Gunner-style option control, coupled with the kamakaze movements from Psyvariar. That gets you maximum pointage. One of the provided replays, called 「お手本_1e_稼ぎ」or "1e Example 1e Point" pulls off a 10 million score with 3000+ hits. I can only get a piddly 1.5 million, with the highest consective hit in the 800s.

Where do they get the beta testers!?!

Tobi Tsukihime (Fly moon princess)

Recently playing:
  • Princess Maker 4 (PS2-jp, Why isn't dark town bigger?)
  • Tobi tsukihime demo とびつきひめ 体験版 (WinPC-jp, Lots good things in this side scrolling shmup)

After playing the demo at the Melon Books doujin store, I knew I had to try this at home. Tobi tsukihime by 01 step is a side scrolling shmup that tries to blend a lot of different shmup styles together. You got the hold-button rapid-fire, tap-button spread shot (button 1). Level ups come quick by items or by enemy shot down. You become invisible for a short time during the level up. You have an indestructable "option" (a spinning marble ball with a black cat on it?!?) that you can either fire forward (button 2) or aim freely (button 3). Well there's a bomb button (4) but I don't use it (...enough). You can power up the option fire forward for more power. You get different bonuses from either shooting down with your regular bullets or your option, which are gems or gift-wrapped presents, respectively. Your option can drill into a heavy enemy which makes it linger on screen and it erects a bubble of destruction that takes out a lot of enemies for the presents bonus. The enemy bullets are easily visible bright blue (what was that Capcom side scrolling shmup that had too many danmaku bullets back in 2001? It's like that game). Holding down either action buttons gives you your hit box icon and reduces your speed. Wow, kinda deep having all these gameplay tactics.

This is a great game not only for the gameplay but the graphics and sound. The graphics are a mixture of 3d and 2d, and even the player is 3d, which is actually minus points because your broomwitch character just doesn't look cute. But still the frame rate doesn't let up at all, even if there's hundreds of objects on the screen. The music is very good, action-y. I'd give the songs 4 or 5s if they were on my iPod. Plus the game supports a number of game mode options that games nowadays should have, stage select, replay and replay saving, ranking (but disabled in the demo version). Even when you're playing stage select, just press button 6 to instantly retry the level (just like Border Down).

As far as the story goes, I don't really care. It says it's based on Type Moon's Tsukihime, which has some following in the doujin soft world (am I understating this? I guess I'm not a fan) and let's not forget the anime.

Unfortunately it's only available as a demo, and you can only buy it a doujin store right now. I'm definately going to keep a watch for this game's release, which is scheduled to be Comic Market 69, Winter 2005. This game has heft that puts it in the league with Team Shanghai Alice shmups or even commercial games. Or maybe I'm just kinda tired of my current shoryuken/princess stat point crawling and that's why I'm so enthusiastic?

Princess training takes money.

Recently playing:
  • Street Fighter II: World Warrior (SFam-jp, It's car-crushing time!)
  • Princess Maker 4 (PS2-jp, Stats galore)
  • Nintendogs (DS-jp, Still no sign of other dog owners)

I got my copy of Princess Maker 4: Collector's Edition. I'll have more photos coming, you can bet on it. I mentioned it a couple months back after it was delayed.

Princes Maker 4 delivered to your door, or through your window

The yellow-and-white strip of paper is the delivery announcement. It says at the bottom: 「窓から入れさせてもらいました」, which means "(I) put (it) through the window". I'm pretty much ambivalent with that. (+ I got it sooner! - My window is open?!)

Actually, the same delivery guy who did that just came by again with my second copy of Princess Maker 4. (Hehehe). But the Sega Direct store sent the wrong Telephone Card (テレカ) omake so I'm going to have to take it up with their support.

How do I like the game so far? It's interesting. I have to make my "daughter" "Yumi" work a lot to earn enough money so that she can go to school (shock!). In the 3 "PM4 years" I've been rearing her (about 1.5 hours game time), she's becoming a dancer with diligent babysitting skills. She's as strong as an ox but pretty dumb in the head, according to the stats. She has good conversational skills I suppose. I did buy her a child version of a make-up set, does that make me a chauvinistic pig? Hey, it gives +5 elegance points (+5 気品ポイントアップ!). I want a well-rounded, intelligent and respectable kid but I can't afford to put her into school every month! The dance lessons are pricey.

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