This news is a few days old, but I do not think many people have heard of this game so I thought that I’d mention it here. Mushihime-sama Futari is an arcade bullet hell-style shoot’em up game from CAVE. Curiously, CAVE is porting this game to the Xbox 360, and even more curiously, they’re not region-locking the game. Region locking is the second worst aspect of the 360, and virtually all Japanese games are locked so I’m happy that CAVE is dispensing with it here. Note that they aren’t actually localizing the game; the language is still going to be in Japanese, but I figure that these sorts of games aren’t really difficult to figure out.
One of the game’s protagonists is named Reco, and she may be familiar to figure collectors due to Max Factory putting out a 1/7 scale figure of her a few months ago. She’s gotten a character redesign since her first appearance, but I prefer her earlier look:
Reco from Mushihime-sama
Reco from Mushihime-sama Futari
Curiously, both renditions seem to be done by the same artist. I guess he wanted to change up his style.
I don’t have much experience playing bullet hell shoooters … maybe Trigger Heart Exelica qualifies? I dunno. I did spend a good chunk of youth playing shooters in the arcade though; Tiger Heli, 1942, and Carrier Air Wing were some of my favorite games growing up. I don’t play them as much now since there aren’t very many of them, but I enjoy them nonetheless. I think I’m going to put in a preorder for this game; it looks like a lot of fun, and I’m happy to support a developer willing to risk making shmups.
If you want to see the game in action, here is a gameplay trailer. The game comes out on November 26 this year – Thanksgiving Day for the Americans. Preorders can be put in at NCSX or Play-Asia.
I don’t know If I said it already but …This blog rocks! I gotta say, that I read a lot of blogs on a daily basis and for the most part, people lack substance but, I just wanted to make a quick comment to say I’m glad I found your blog. Thanks, 🙂
A definite great read..Jim Bean
I haven’t really been able to get into cave shooters, tho I do enjoy shmups more than the average person. I wouldn’t mind a region free deathsmiles tho!
Cut my teeth on 1942 and then raiden on the PS1. Got some classic saturn shmups like battle Garega and strikers 1945, as well as some oddities on later systems like psyvariar. but my pride and joy is my offical copy of the ebay darling, Radiant Silvergun!!!
Triggerheart exelica is great as well and I bought Ikaruga on the gamecube too!
Oh, and I play the odd touhou as well…
>> JimmyBean
Thanks!
>> gundamjehutykai
This is going to be my first Cave game; hopefully it sells pretty well and they dispense with the region locking on more of their stuff.
I also played a bunch of console shooters, like Life Force and Thunderforce II (never did play Thunderforce III or IV though, which I’ve heard are some of the best shooters around). I also liked Silpheed on the Sega CD a lot, although a lot of that was due to the crazy graphics effects for the time; it hasn’t held up all that well. Ikaruga on the Dreamcast and Gradius V are probably the two shooters I’ve played the most recently, although I really suck at both of them. I was a lot better at these sorts of games when I was a kid; now I’m old and slow.
I have Psyvariar 2 on the Xbox but no console to play it on. I picked it up when it was on sale at Play-asia, intending to mod my Xbox someday, but I never got around to doing it. I wonder if I can get a cheap used Xbox somewhere.
I like both drawing.
I like the water-colour style of the first a lot, very much like Okami, for instance, but I really like the texture and her face in the second. Her bust size did jump by about a factor of ten, and not in an entirely satisfactory manner, heh.
wholy crap that’s awesome! i wonder if my touhou escapades have improved my bullet hell skills at all. speaking of which i should try exelica & mushihime-sama (have the 1st game for ps2) again ^^;;
too bad it’s (i assume?) not gonna be released via live. i prefer to just download all my games when i can.
@Meronpan: Yup, this release is disk based, like most, if not all of the recent shmups on 360. Not muuch in terms of live downloads for japan only. It’s not like the PSN, most live games are released in every region at the same time.
Personally, I wanted to try deathsmiles. Gothloli witches, yay!
>> Guy
It sure did; I remember reading somewhere that Reco is supposed to be fourteen or fifteen years old. It’s been a long time since I left high school but I know there weren’t any fourteen or fifteen year old girls who looked like that.
>> meronpan
I suck so bad at Exelica. The only way I can beat the game is to burn through all my continues, and I don’t have a hope of getting the true endings.
Yeah, it’s a disc release. I guess these games must sell at full price in Japan? I know they bomb over here; I bought Senko no Ronde at $60 (more to support the publisher and developer than because I liked the game) and I remember that was a disaster for Ubisoft.
>> gundamjehutykai
I’m gonna have to look up some videos for Deathsmiles. I see people talk about it on Shmups.com all the time but I have no idea what it’s about (other than, as you say, the gothloli witches on the promo art).