It's About Time: DeathSmiles Coming to North America

After almost a whole year of waiting patiently, CAVE’s gothic lolita bullet hell shmup DeathSmiles is finally making its way to North America.

Full press release and screenshots after the jump.

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Boss Rush – A Bullet Hell Shmup that Lets You Play as a Giant Boss Ship!!!

Words can’t express how excited I am for this game. Boss Rush lets you control one of five of huge boss ships to fight a puny little hero ship. There’s also a 2-Player VS Mode where one person is the hero and the other plays as the boss. It all sounds pretty epic.

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Have you ever played a bullet-hell-style shooter and thought to yourself “That boss looks like they’re having a lot more fun than I am…”?

I mean, think about it. You have a tiny little ship, capable of only firing straight ahead. Your weapons are puny until you power them up, and even then seem decidedly inferior to what you’re fighting against. Your armor is apparently made from paper-mâché, and usually can’t even survive one hit before you blow up and lose all your toys.

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Meanwhile…

Over on the other side of the screen, the boss is chortling gleefully, launching wave after screen-obscuring wave of bullets in beguilingly beautiful patterns, the merest touch of which will destroy your ship. All while absorbing enough damage to sink an aircraft carrier, without even getting his paint scratched.

It hardly seems fair!

It’s not fair, in fact!

Haven’t you ever wished that that could be YOU over there? Calmly making horribly devious patterns of deadly bullets? That you could then admire and fully appreciate, because the actual task of figuring out how to avoid them was someone else’s problem?

If so, then this, ladies and gentlemen, may be the game for you!

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The developers, Paper Dino Software, promise over 50 different levels, 3 difficulty levels, the aforementioned VS Mode, and endless Survival Mode, and, of course, plenty of secret unlockables, like Unicorn mode, whatever the fuck that is…
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Boss Rush was officially completed this past November, but the developer’s currently looking for a sponsor and more details will be made available at a later date.

You should also check out the game’s soundtrack by Justin Mullens at the bottom of this page.

Phalanx Remake Coming to WiiWare in Japan

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Phalanx is a shoot’em up game that was released back in the day for the SNES, GBA, and the Sharp X68000. Although I never actually played the original game myself, I distinctly remember the amazing box art with the banjo-wielding bearded dude.

The WiiWare remake will be based on the X68000 version with some new content thrown in and it’s scheduled to drop in Japan this winter for 500 Nintendo Points.

Here’s a gameplay video of the old Sharp version…

You can check out some screenshots of the WiiWare version here.

[Tiny Cartridge via GoNintendo]



Daily Graffiti: The R-9 from R-Type

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As a huge fan of shmups, I’ll never forget the first time that I played R-Type Final for the PS2. It’s actually the first R-Type game that I ever played. This graffiti spotted by meek rgt featuring the R-9, one of many ships in the game, makes me want to go back and play through it again.

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A work-in-progress shot. Damn that thing’s huge.

Here’s a video of R-Type Final featuring someone with a decent amount of skills who’s obviously memorized the shit out of the enemy patterns.

2D shooter action in a fully 3D environment, epic boss battles, and over 100 unlockable ships that each play differently from one another. Everyone should own the fuck out of this game.

Shmup Photography

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These photographs are long exposures taken while playing video war games of the 80’s created by Atari, Centuri and Taito. The photographs were shot from video game screens while I played the games. By recording each second of an entire game on one frame of film, I captured complex patterns not normally seen by the eye.

- Rosemarie Fiore

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[Via Fucahire]

Wait, there’s a King of Fighters shmup!?

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A lot of people were pissed to find out Mai Shiranui wasn’t included in the King of Fighters XII roster, but at least SNK had the common sense to put her where she truly belongs: a shmup. Wait, what?

The King of Fighters: Sky Stage is a vertical shooter set in the King of Fighters universe. The title is set for an XBOX Live Arcade release.

I can’t freaking wait. No matter how silly and pointless it seems.

[Via Kotaku]

DeathSmiles Trailer

DeathSmiles is a gothic lolita shooter being ported to the Xbox 360 and I couldn’t be happier. The shmup fan in me is drooling over all the bullets, the Castlevania fan in me has a boner, and the hentai fan in me just came.

[Via Kotaku]

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