mullet2000
Member
Whoa, this looks awesome. I'm going to order this one after i'm done with the new Dodonpachi.
Any other region free ones that aren't cave games worth grabbing?
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CAVE restructured - No more dedicated divisions, but not quite dead yet
- Thread starter @MUWANdo
- Start date
Whoa, this looks awesome. I'm going to order this one after i'm done with the new Dodonpachi.
Any other region free ones that aren't cave games worth grabbing?
Who really knows. There is a contingent on shmups that certainly like them. Whatever the case, Shooting Love 10th anniversary looks to be a steller collection...and fantastic counter-programming for SDOJ. For $60 it is a no-brainer. Plus, that cover.
And, the first Shooting Love certainly has a nice space in my collection. No slouch.
That is it for non-Cave games that are region-free and have not been released in the west. But add Shooting Love 10th released just last week:
http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=23501
Your thread went places! I did not post for a few hours, knowing the drill but even after half a day I figured this might be it for Cave. Good thing Duckroll come in. I was half expecting adverse to clear it up a bit since he is usually on point with the translations.
The post was linked to me by a friend who mentioned the whole "consumer division being shut down" thing, so I skipped straight to the section of the 4Gamer article that mentioned Cave without reading the preamble (just like everyone else, it seems).
If it had been earlier in the day I might have followed it up, but at that point it was late, and my Japanese is pretty terrible at the best of times, so I kinda just assumed someone would post a more detailed explanation while I was sleeping. If I'd been paying attention I could have kept the thread from being so alarmist, my bad.
Anyway, if there's anything to be taken from the initial reaction to this thread, it's that STG fans can no longer afford to be complacent--if you want this genre to survive and for your favourite developers to remain active you need to actively support the genre in constructive ways, ie ways that involve a little more effort than arguing with dudes on the internet.
It's not that simple.
Shmup developers should learn to develop shmups that their audience actually wants. If they insist on creating whatever kind of shmups they please, they should learn to budget accordingly, like being able to turn a good profit at 5k copies sold for example. Companies like G.rev and Triangle Service know how to keep themselves afloat by just selling ~10k copies of their shmups, and know it's wise to keep their companies small (and in the case of G.rev, supplement their income by contracting out their services). Forcing the fanbase to run a charity is not the answer.
With SDOJ, it seems like Cave may have finally learned their lesson. It's a pity they didn't learn a lot sooner.
I wasn't suggesting people should buy games they don't want just for the sake of keeping the scene alive, or that Cave's issues aren't primarily of their own making.
What I am suggesting is that people should spend less time arguing with other STG fans about why [dev x] should do [thing y] and spend more time finding ways to directly communicate their desires to anyone who's in a position to make a difference--not just the developers, but publishers, distributors and other intermediaries, event organisers, etc.
If platforms, distribution methods, formats, etc are really the thing keeping STGs from being profitable then you need to be able to present a real, inarguable demand for change, otherwise we're just gonna keep rehashing the same arguments and banging our head against the same wall until the commercial STG scene is completely dead.
EDIT: oh yeah, this thing
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=573261
What I am suggesting is that people should spend less time arguing with other STG fans about why [dev x] should do [thing y] and spend more time finding ways to directly communicate their desires to anyone who's in a position to make a difference--not just the developers, but publishers, distributors and other intermediaries, event organisers, etc.
If platforms, distribution methods, formats, etc are really the thing keeping STGs from being profitable then you need to be able to present a real, inarguable demand for change, otherwise we're just gonna keep rehashing the same arguments and banging our head against the same wall until the commercial STG scene is completely dead.
EDIT: oh yeah, this thing
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=573261
adversesolutions
Member
Important development in this discussion: in the Dodonpachi Saidaioujou Limited Edition art book there is an interview section, where in his last answer, Asada announces that he will be leaving CAVE in the not-to-distant future.
Apologies for the shitty cell phone pic:
My translation below:
Thank you Asada-san, you gave us 4 years of absolute shooting mayhem on the Xbox360. You led what may wind up being the genre's final charge...
In terms of this thread's assessment of CAVE's future, as has already been noted, duckroll has it correct. From here on out it seems that we will not see in-house porting or development on consoles by CAVE itself. That doesn't mean the teams are gone, just that they are working on other stuff. The Ketsui PS3 port could be a test of returning to their brief start-of-gen approach in which they had 3rd party devs or pubs port their games (M2, 5PB).
For their new games, it is likely that they will be exclusively "social" and "smartphone". If we get something as good as Dodonpachi Maximum again that would be a small victory but it's hard to know what that means until we see something announced concretely.
For the arcades, I do not think that they had a particularly successful run on NESiCA, given that I hardly ever see anyone playing Akai Katana Shin. Mostly this is because the NESiCA port had bad input lag, something they probably would have patched if it were fixable. Given that NESiCA and All.net are probably the only venues for releasing arcade shooting games in the future, and that the Astro City etc. cabinets which were home to the CV-1000 are scarcer every day in Japan, I would say the chances of a new arcade release are low. There is too much competition on NESiCA, especially with fighting game titles, to justify new shooter releases. Obviously doujin outfits like Yotsubane are an important exception.
However, two things should be noted in general: 1. CAVE's arcade was shut down once in the past but restarted later on 2. Although Asada will quit, and he and Kimura's blogs are being shut down, Ikeda has stated clearly in the CAVE history book and Arcadia interviews that as long as he is at CAVE, CAVE shooting will still be alive. What form they take may not be to your liking, hey it may not be to Ikeda's liking, but we will probably see new ones, possibly not far in the future. He is after all a director of the board. The company IR material Duckroll quoted has "danmaku shooting" as a target market for them, so I would assume that sometime next quarter or by the end of the year they'll release something to remind the world that they're still here.
Apologies for the shitty cell phone pic:
My translation below:
Makoto Asada said:
Thank you Asada-san, you gave us 4 years of absolute shooting mayhem on the Xbox360. You led what may wind up being the genre's final charge...
In terms of this thread's assessment of CAVE's future, as has already been noted, duckroll has it correct. From here on out it seems that we will not see in-house porting or development on consoles by CAVE itself. That doesn't mean the teams are gone, just that they are working on other stuff. The Ketsui PS3 port could be a test of returning to their brief start-of-gen approach in which they had 3rd party devs or pubs port their games (M2, 5PB).
For their new games, it is likely that they will be exclusively "social" and "smartphone". If we get something as good as Dodonpachi Maximum again that would be a small victory but it's hard to know what that means until we see something announced concretely.
For the arcades, I do not think that they had a particularly successful run on NESiCA, given that I hardly ever see anyone playing Akai Katana Shin. Mostly this is because the NESiCA port had bad input lag, something they probably would have patched if it were fixable. Given that NESiCA and All.net are probably the only venues for releasing arcade shooting games in the future, and that the Astro City etc. cabinets which were home to the CV-1000 are scarcer every day in Japan, I would say the chances of a new arcade release are low. There is too much competition on NESiCA, especially with fighting game titles, to justify new shooter releases. Obviously doujin outfits like Yotsubane are an important exception.
However, two things should be noted in general: 1. CAVE's arcade was shut down once in the past but restarted later on 2. Although Asada will quit, and he and Kimura's blogs are being shut down, Ikeda has stated clearly in the CAVE history book and Arcadia interviews that as long as he is at CAVE, CAVE shooting will still be alive. What form they take may not be to your liking, hey it may not be to Ikeda's liking, but we will probably see new ones, possibly not far in the future. He is after all a director of the board. The company IR material Duckroll quoted has "danmaku shooting" as a target market for them, so I would assume that sometime next quarter or by the end of the year they'll release something to remind the world that they're still here.
Completely forgot about this from a few months ago:
http://www.siliconera.com/2012/12/0...-maybe-ps3-probably-not-and-a-social-shooter/
http://www.siliconera.com/2012/12/0...-maybe-ps3-probably-not-and-a-social-shooter/
Wonder how much of that was in his control/in the works or just passed along as an idea, it sounds like he already decided to leave by the time of that interview.
NoirVisage
Banned
Cave will always have a place in my memories.
easy for HIM.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwKpzKZOpe4
easy for HIM.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwKpzKZOpe4
BudokaiMR2
Member
I really wonder how some of these developers who spent the generation making STG games primarily for Xbox360 are going to react to Batsu-ichi...
I mean they aren't even going to include Japan one of the strongest game markets in the world in their launch and the entire philosophy behind the console seems to run counter to the Japanese market.
I mean they aren't even going to include Japan one of the strongest game markets in the world in their launch and the entire philosophy behind the console seems to run counter to the Japanese market.
sixteen-bit
Member
Honest prediction?
Make games for 360 long after it has been discontinued like it's the fucking Dreamcast.
If they are still making games they will just make them for another platform. Really was nothing special about having them on 360.
Fans will just go where the games go. I don't think there is really any shmup player who is brand-loyal.
sixteen-bit
Member
No, any vita speculation came from a mistranslation.
Wonko_C
Member
Oh, that is kind of relieving in that it was just a rumor and I can finally put it to rest on my brain... and at the same time it's sad because I would have loved to play Cave shooters on Vita.