Here’s a perfect run of Shikigami no Shiro III, which is called Castle of Shikigami III over on our end. This run uses Dramatic Change mode playing as Nagano and Roger. I dubbed in some alternate beats like I do, because that’s what a superplay mix does.
This here is a sample. The third stage.
You can watch or download the whole thing after the jump.
This week, Shmuppreciation Month continues with a look back at Lords of Thunder for the Turbo Duo. We also get all rainbow and unicorns with John’s sad, pathetic look at Peggle for XBLA. We then try and regain what’s left of his manhood by talking about Madworld for the Wii. The Shmopera continues with Act II and DJ Incompetent once again lays his knowledge on the table in another bountiful feast of STG awesomeness!
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SHOWNOTES
XBLA Review: Peggle
Wii Review: Madworld
Retro Review: Lords of Thunder (TG-16)
News: Watchmen Episode 2
Noby Noby Boy Multiplayer
Resident Evil Wii
Adventure Island on WiiWare
Shmopera Act 2
DJ Incompetent Presents-SCIENCE!
Release List
The Last Shot
DGR Mailbag
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For those looking for the true Hi-Fi experience, here is the Stereo version of Act 2, featured this week on Drunken Gamers Radio.
In this episode:
The Captain, self-appointed king of Silver City, finds his life is not what it once was. Could someone or something be missing?
The Spacebot, newly assembled after last year’s destruction, is pissed. As all good Spacebots do, he prepares for war.
If you missed last week’s episode, you can find it here.
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How did you all do at the Super Stardust HD challenge? Well, if your Stardust skillz0rz weren’t sharp enough, the new challenge is out and this time it centers on one of our all-time favorite titles: Ikaruga! Check it out:
You’ve trained for weeks now. Your training has focused first on pure survival, then on building up score multipliers. But to complete this week’s Challenge, you’ll need more than that– you’ll need absolute focus.
This week’s Challenge: Get the Good Grade Achievement. This Achievement is awarded for completing Stage One with a grade of “A” or better.
Sound too difficult? Well our very own DJ Incompetent has posted some SCIENCE!! As usual, DJ is incredibly thorough and provides a ton of insight on how to complete this challenge. It boils down to the following:
* You probably gotta earn a maximum chain somewhere in the 40s or higher.
* You gotta speedkill the boss with about 65 or more on the timer.
* You probably shouldn’t do something like lose all your lives or pass by a ton of enemies. That doesn’t help.
To read more and to find out how to enter the challenge, head on over to ShmupMonth.com. Thanks again to MC for putting together such an awesome event.
We’re ringing in Shmuppreciation Month with some very special guests! First off, Tiggermango, Apoch, Zinswin and Nanny Skeksis join us at the bar for the show. We also interview Dan Loosen and Gary Heil regarding the Midwest Gaming Classic. We review the new Ys remake for the DS as well as Watchmen: The End is Nigh and we talk shooter awesomeness with a look back at Einhander. The Shmopera returns with Act I and DJ Incompetent dishes out the SCIENCE!! It’s a long one, so hold on and enjoy this week’s show!
Email Us: mailbag@drunkengamersradio.com
Voicemail Line: 612-424-3835
DGR Twitter Feed
Facebook Group
SHOWNOTES
Shmuppretiation Month Kick Off!
DS Review: Legacy of Ys Book I & II
PS3 Review: Watchmen-The End Is Nigh
Retro Review: Einhander (PS1)
Interview with Dan Loosen and Gary Heil (Goatstore.com, MGC)
News: Infamous Dated
Beatles: Rock Band
Punch Out Controls
A Boy and His Blob
Mamonoro to Xbox
Release List
Shmopera 2009-Act 1
DJ Incompetent Presents: SCIENCE!
The Last Shot
DGR Mailbag
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So, the Shmopera is on the latest episode of Drunken Gamers Radio, but due to the limits of podcasting bandwidth and the fact that the show was so damn big, the first act was presented in Mono. Which, in my mind, equals “sounds like shit” when it comes to all things music related.
So, for those that really care, here is the first act of the Shmopera in Stereo, as it was meant to be heard. Enjoy.
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Wiiware. 173 Blocks of Fridge. $10. 5 Stages. Significantly-changed game loops. Button Configurable. Wiimote, Nunchuck, GC, and Classic supported. 1-Player only.
Worth the price?: Yes
Worth clearing hard drive space?: Only if it requires removing one or two games tops. I gave up Internet Channel for this. Gradius Rebirth is good, but not an eighth coming of Christ.
Recommended to: any shmup enthusiast or Gradius fan, novice or expert.
Very Much Recommended to: anybody who has never played a Gradius game. Or a challenge-based gamer.
Not Recommended to: anybody who judges games based on amount of content or refuses to replay a short game multiple times.
Not Recommended to: anybody who refuses to play a game for the challenge.
The rumor-bag said this is supposed to be a remake of Gradius 1. I would say that yes, while it contains four or five significant stage references to Gradius 1, there is way too much new layout and bosses to say this is a remake and I’d argue to call this more its own original game. But remember that point is hard to argue as almost every Gradius game recycles a crapload from the game before it. And then after saying that, I now gotta say this is a hard fall from Gradius V. Don’t even come into this thinking you’re going to get anything from Gradius V. No Option control with R button. No instant respawn in main modes. No editable powerbar. This is more into Gradius Gaiden territory, but even that’s a stretch as there’s less content and no co-op. You do get 3 selectable Powerbar layouts. You unlock more when you credit-feed the game (on Hard). There is a dedicated mode to test your 1 Credit Clear ability on defaults.
Super Noize Post, but whatever.
According to an awesomely questionable article from dailymail.co.uk, the better your reaction time, the longer you’re going to live. Like, real life; not in the game.
The 7,414 volunteers in the study have been followed since the mid-Eighties, when their reaction times were measured with an electrical device fitted with a small screen and five numbered buttons.
The volunteers had to press the matching button when a number appeared on screen. The time they took to react was measured and averages worked out.
Since then, 1,289 have died, 568 of them from heart disease.
The researchers then compared the reaction times, smoking habits, weight and other factors of those who had died with those who had survived.
The results showed that people with slow reactions were 2.6 times more likely to die prematurely from any cause. Smoking was the only factor linked to a larger risk of death – as it made it 3.03 times more likely.
Physical exercise, blood pressure, heart rate, waist-hip ratio, alcohol consumption and body-mass index all had a lesser effect.
In deaths caused specifically by heart disease, reaction time was the most important factor after blood pressure, this time having a greater effect than smoking.
The researchers said: ‘It has been hypothesized that reaction time, as a measure of speed of the brain’s information-processing capacity, may be a marker for bodily system integrity.
‘This way, slower reaction times, or poorer information-processing ability, might be an indication of suboptimal physiological functioning, which may in turn be related to early death.’
So maybe Brain Age doesn’t make you smarter, but keeps you alive? And then nursing homes will send back the Wii Bowling in exchange for Rock Band, but the old folks will only be allowed to play Visions on expert.
Either way, I suggest you go complete M.C.’s challenges. Your life now depends on it.
Time to get me a bucket of KFC tonight! Gonna plan my retirement for age 114! I R Invincible!! OVERCONFIDENCE WOOO!!
Listener Amar sent over this list of free shooters for you all to enjoy. There are some well-known classics on this list, but also a few obscure ones. War Twat? Sounds great to us! Most of these are found at The Indie Game Database, so head on over there for more great indie games.
Here’s the list:
Warning Forever
Clean Asia
Tumiki Fighters (and all other Kenta Cho shmups)
Cho Ren Sha 68k
Every Extend (Every Extend Extra on PSP)
SeizureDome
White Butterfly
Excellent Bifurcation
Garden of Colored Lights
Scientology Pwned
War Twat
Chalk
From Comments of DGR: 02.27.2009
Your comments on Flower are pretty interesting, John, in light of the podcast I heard right before this week’s episode. I was listening to a recent episode of The Geekbox in which Ryan Scott was discussing R-Type Dimensions. His take on the game was essentially this:
“It’s good, it’s really hard… Thank God they put in Infinite Mode because it’s too hard for me to get through otherwise. But the game’s really short– I mean, you can blow through it in 45 minutes.”
While this is technically true, as shmup fans, we get a [i]lot[/i] more out of the R-Type experience than this guy did. Perhaps the same is true for Flower. Obviously, you can’t directly compare Flower with a shmup– DJ Incompetent is likely to vomit upon reading this, in fact– but for many folks, the experience that they get from playing through Flower is good enough that the length isn’t a concern.
- M.C.
I hear what you’re saying. Flower is a “flight-ish” game for certain, reminding me almost of Nights.
I have no problem with short games. Hell, I wish a lot of games were much shorter than they are. I just don’t have time for it anymore. But it wasn’t just the length of Flower that gave me pause. It was just the feeling of, “They could have done so much more with this” that I had when it was done. But like I said, I sort of go back and forth with it. The experience I had playing it was mostly great and often unlike any other game I’ve played. That itself is worth the price. But when I finished it I just had this sort of unfulfilled feeling.
- John
As far as I’m concerned, short games are fine, but I put a lot of value in games that offer options and alternate ways to play through the content. That is what earns the timeless replayable triple-A award for me. Did you know one of the bigger complaints expert players have on Gradius V is that it’s too long? This game clocks in at about an hour, but the ideal time STG players (myself included) want to spend on a one-credit session is roughly 30-something minutes. This is a large complaint for many Compile games as well (Aleste series, Zanac series, etc.), being long stages are a fault and not a feature, especially when they have dead zones of no on-screen enemies for several seconds. An ideal way to maximize content of a single shmup title is to have several different ‘courses’ of 5 stages instead of one massive 8-stage trek. Developers have not thought to include this option besides the compilation multi-game packages. Raycrisis explored this by allowing users to plot a course of five stages out of a selectable eight.
But what’s the issue here with the semi-controversial Flower and FlOw?
They’re great stand-alone games, but players complain not enough is done with it.
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