LittleBear
says: An honest brew makes its own friends.
Over at TIGSource dessgeega talks a little about Metanet’s next game, “Robotology”. They are, of course, the developers of N, a favourite of both father and son here. Difficult not to get excited about a game that lists as influences Philip K. Dick, and Z-Lock among others, and alludes to Shadow of the Colossus.
Intercept has an upgrade available. Highlights of the update include online highscores and updated boss graphics. Download’s available here.
Harmotion’s 2nd Release Build is now available. All known bugs were fixed, networking has been improved, something called a “Cerulean ship model” has been implemented, plus more. Here’s the homepage, and Double Jump Studios now have a development blog going.
Nintendo DS homebrew game, No Place To Hide, has been updated. “Wifi is working good now. ” Go here to get it.
Flakbuster is only a tech demo at the moment. That means no enemies yet, just lasers and bombs and it does showcase an interesting control mechanism. The up and down arrows control the pitch of your airplane, while left and right apply thrust accordingly. I’m not sure I like the controls, they definitely take some getting used to.
Danmaku Gata posted news today that the trial version of eXceed 2nd-VAMPIRE- has been released. Start downloading it now, it’s big, but well worth it.
Tim posted a review over at Independent Gaming and saved me from figuring out the controls. ‘Z‘ controls your primary weapon, as it usually does. ‘X‘ fires off your super weapon, but only once it’s been powered up. ‘C‘ switches your polarity, from blue to red and back.
The game, to be distributed (released?) at Comiket 70, has incredible production values. There’s just nothing similar over here to the independent scene in Japan that allows a Comiket to flourish and for the various types of products released there to be made.
If the gameplay sounds similar to Ikaruga, it is. You can absorb enemy shots that are of the same colour as you are, which in turn powers up your super weapon. This leads to a certain amount of memorization, which some people don’t like… but I do. Not only are you testing your twitch skills then, you’re also testing how well you can deduce the optimum paths. But, don’t kid yourself, once you’ve learned a pattern you still need to have exceptional eye-hand coordination.
eXceed 2nd-VAMPIRE- is an excellent example of bullet hell danmaku and even if it didn’t offer fun gameplay would be worth downloading just for the beautiful visuals alone.
R-Type is one of my favourites, in fact it’s probably at the top of my list. There’s an excellent article/review on it, over at insomnia. Reminded me of when I first saw the game, in the Student’s Union arcade at the University of Calgary. I should have gone to class that day, but I ended up spending a lot of quarters instead. Ah, the road less travelled.
the2bears © Copyright 2004-2010
William R. Swaney. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
License. 
