Street Fighter IV – First Pic!

Thanks to ShadowMan on the RetroGamer forums for pointing out that 1up have uploaded the first ‘in game’ shot of Street Fighter IV : A New Beginning:

From 1up: 

“Though the screenshot doesn’t answer this question outright, we can confirm that the game’s graphics are polygonal but the gameplay is strictly 2D. There will be new moves, locations, and gameplay features, while the standard six button control scheme remains. Ryu and Ken return along with Chun-Li and Dhalsim, but beyond that the character roster is a mystery.“

Full story here.

Pink Sweets – Ibara Sorekara

So I managed to get down to Casino today to try out their latest PCB, Cave’s cutesy, Razing styled shooter: Pink Sweets – Ibara Sorekara!, which is kindly loaned to the arcade by shmups.com member, ill6. 

Now I have to say I’m not the biggest fan of Raizing shooters but having spent a bit of time with the excellent Muchi Muchi Pork! whilst in Tokyo, I was looking forward to giving this game a shot. Unfortunately, I managed to play about six credits worth and came away feeling a little disappointed by it.

I think the relative pick up and play nature of MMP didn’t prepare me for this game at all. The controls seem a little poorly implemented; I had no clue as to what the second button was used for (I think it rotates the options/Rose Hips?) and the ability to switch speeds by hitting two buttons is just clumsy. The third and fourth choice ships just seemed really unappealing with the fourth ship possesing a god awful ‘thunder strike’ attack. And finally, the charge shot which works in a similar way to the blade attack in Shienryu(?) seemed to take too long to charge to make any decent use of. Raizing games are infamouse for being growers though, so I can’t be too harsh on it just yet!

On the positive side, the graphics and sound effects were awesome and the game oozes cutesy shoot ’em up style which I really liked. And thankfully, it was placed in one of the better cabs! (At the expense of Ketsui though. Natch). So I’ll definitely be making a few more trips down there to try and get the hang of this game.

Söldner-X: Himmelsstürmer

Söldner-X: Himmelsstürmer, a rather generic (although admittedly sharp) looking Euro shooter published by Play-Asia is out on December 14th. According to the official order page, the game has a stupidly long list of features including ‘addictive collection quests’ and ‘beautiful weather effects’, which was enough to put me off. But the game also promises ‘never before seen tactical elements such as chaining’ (!) as well as ‘a unique upgrade weapon system with five standard weapon types’, so it can’t be all bad!

It might be worth a look for fans of C64 and Amiga shooters though and Play-Asia have pulled out all the stops for the limited edition version, which comes in a sleek looking box and includes a soundtrack, which was incidentally composed by Rafel Dyll, the guy who provided the sonics for NG:Dev.Team’s dismal Last Hope. (The soundtrack being the best thing about that game).

Cave soundtracks galore!

GaijinPunch reports via his excellent gamengai forums that two new official Cave soundtrack CD’s are to be released: Muchi Muchi Pork! and a joint ESPra.de./Guwange album. The latter being a somewhat welcome surprise, it will also include brand new artworks from long time Cave associate, Joker Jun.

NiGHTS into Dreams for Playstation 2

Sega are releasing a port of the Saturn classic, NiGHTS into Dreams for PS2. It will apparently feature updated graphics, a new widescreen 16:9 mode and some bonus features (Gallery options etc.). Two versions will be available, a normal package for 3990JPY and a limited edition version for around 5000JPY. Scans from Famitsu can be found here.

Play-Asia have it listed for a February release.

Mushihimesama All Clear!

Finally, after months of tantrums and bottling it at the final boss I got the all clear in Mushi. However, it took me a few goes to actually clear the game and beat my high score, ending up with this:

 

Original Mode – 30, 469, 585 – ALL – S~Power – Lx2 Remaining

New ESPGaluda Hi-Score

Haven’t played this game for about 2 months. Fire it up this morning and…manage a new personal best! I somehow managed to one-life it almost to the end, before throwing away four lives on the last form of the final boss.

 

Arcade Mode – 33,036,340 – ALL – Ageha

Under Defeat score

I retired from UD after two months of playing, having found it to be a very frustrating old skool affair. I plan to come back to it one day and finish it off.

1,658,430, – Stage 1-5 – Normal Shot