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The rest of the internet already knows this, but I'll just post this up for completeness' sake (and to poke fun of Ryan for missing this news while on vacation, heh heh.)

Cave's legendary Ketsui, and DoDonPachi Dai Ou Jou are getting the X360 treatment this year. This marks Ketsui's home console debut, after years of neglect and exponential aftermarket PCB price inflation. But not to be out done, despite it's previous PS2 port, the 360 DDP will be the Black Label revision, just in case you felt the original didn't have enough bullets flying about.

http://www.famitsu.com/game/coming/1214 ... ml?ref=rss

http://www.famitsu.com/game/coming/1213 ... ml?ref=rss

Both titles will receive the obligatory "X" added to their title screens.

While Shikigami no Shiro III proved that later 3D games can run quite nicely on the ole' 'box, We'll have to wait for Raiden Fighters Aces to see if on old school 2D game can make a similarly painless transition. Also, the ports are being handled by generic licensed IP game dev 5pb, whose biggest claim to "fame" to date has probably been the Night Wizard The Videogame, signaling the passing of the torch of crap-anime-license-shovelware-developer from Bandai to 5pb. I'm filled with dread over this.

Great stuff.

I wonder if Mihara is feeling a bit betrayed right now...

Surely not, since he (and Arika) obviously have a good relationship with Cave, but still this whole thing with Ketsui has to irk them somewhat.

RyanDG wrote:Great stuff.

I wonder if Mihara is feeling a bit betrayed right now...

Surely not, since he (and Arika) obviously have a good relationship with Cave, but still this whole thing with Ketsui has to irk them somewhat.

I don't think Mihara/Arika would feel betrayed by Cave's choice of publisher/porter. As I understand it, Mihara is a bit of a Cave maniac, and insists on only 1000% perfect port jobs, which is why Ketsui never happened. The PS2 couldn't handle it, and using another console was out of the question, since none of them could properly display the 15KHz low-res mode that Mihara insisted upon. (I vaguely recall reading something to that effect on shmups.com back in the day, it could all be a lie) I'm pretty sure if the Xbox couldn't do it, the 360 can't either, so Mihara would probably decline even if Cave explicitly asked him to do it. He'd rather not be responsible for "ruining" a Cave game. Whatta guy.

I think he was pushing the whole Ketsui DS thing to give the frothing demand folks something to keep them away from their keyboards and writing angry emails.

If 5pb royally screws up these ports, then Mihara can say "I told you so," to the entire internet and feel vindicated. It's not going to do much though, since even if the ports suck, they'll still sell, and Cave will keep letting 5pb, or someone else port their games.

Warning, the following is a rant, if you don't care, hit the Back button now. Thank You.

So yeah, a lot of people are clamoring and hoping for 5pb's Cave shooting game ports being region free. Dream on kids, it ain't happening. First of all, you're all wishing for a Japanese company to do something against "the way it's done." The Japanese culture is often times shockingly single minded, almost to the point of a hive-mind. The logic breaks down as follows. We're a Japanese company. Microsoft included regional codes in their SDK. They would like us to include regional locks in our software. We'll use their tools and follow their guidelines, and include region locks. (Now pay attention, this is what Western logic fails to grasp.) IF THEY DIDN'T WANT US TO REGION CODE OUR GAMES, THEY WOULDN'T HAVE INCLUDED THE OPTION IN THE SDK. See, this is why Japanese companies region lock their games, because that's the way it's done. It never even had to have been explicitly stated in the documentation, a Japanese programmer would simply notice the option, and follow the logical conclusion; Japanese games get the appropriate region code.

Additionally, there seems to a bit of confusion about the region-lock-free software available for the 360. The incorrect notion seems to be that HK/Asia versions of games are region-free, and will boot on US/EU consoles. That is not 100% true. HK software is often nothing more than the original game disc that was sold in its territory of origin, Japan or the US, just with Chinese language packaging. US originating software usually doesn't have a region lock (probably because US/Western programmers don't use the same logic I outlined above). Since most people who import HK games do so with titles like Bioshock, which were never region-locked, it creates the impression that HK games are "region-free." Not true, HK versions (usually) have the same territorial restrictions AS THEIR ORIGINAL SOURCE (Japan=locked, US=usually unlocked). The Asia version of Ketsui X/DDP Dai-Ou-Jou X WILL BE REGION LOCKED. Of course, there are exceptions to this, Play-Asia has a great guide, use it. But note that P-A doesn’t have any sort of inside information about the software from the publishers, it looks like they rely on customer feedback to fill in the data. So if no one with a NTSC-U/C Xbox tries the Asia version of Bomberman Act Zero, we’ll never know how it’s region coded.

My third reason for this rant. Raiden Fighters Aces is a great shooting game collection, why don't we have petitions for that to be region free? Cave game's seem be surrounded by a particularly vocal and whiny crowd, who start to bitch and moan at the drop of a hat. It gets on my nerves every time it starts (every time a Cave game gets a port), but I could distance myself from it in the past since the games were all PS2, a club I never joined. I bought a NTSC-J 360 to play Japanese games, and now Success, and 5pb, are giving me great games to play, thanks guys.

Rant away... I don't mind.

While I do believe that Cave fans tend to overshadow the rest of the shooting community, I will say that I'm all for encouraging letter writing and online petitions when it comes to region coding (even if I won't really participate in them myself). I believe that region coding is truly a backwards practice, and though I agree with you that it is more of a cultural restriction now more than anything else due to it being 'optional' according to Microsoft, I also think that the more awareness that can be made about the issue the better. It's a shame only Sony had the foresight to remove the restrictions as a norm for their next gen console... Perhaps it'll be more of a trend with the next line up in 2010 or so.

Personally, I did go out and buy a NTSC-J Xbox 360 because I knew that there were going to be games that I wanted on the console that I wouldn't be able to get here. While my collection of NTSC-J games is relatively small (10-12 at last count I think), I'm satisfied with my purchase. I do think that shooting fans this generation should purchase a Japanese Xbox 360 though, because the truth of the matter is the Xbox 360 is turning into the console of choice for shooting developers and there are no guarantees the games will ever make it to America.