Not just another NPC - (ds-x2 ver.)

This week I’ve “acquired” a Japanese copy of Bangai-O: Spirits.

Allow me to shove everything else aside…

*shoves*

There we go, now lets get crackin’.

Bangai-O on Dreamcast was silly, bizarre, and of course lots of fun. To n00bs of Bangai-o it may seem boring, difficult, and somewhat confusing at first (ex: “why am I destroying these houses?”). Then you discover the magic… of… the R button. Missiles galore! Keep in mind with this move the more enemy fire surrounding your hit-box the more missiles you’ll send back. In the Dreamcast version you could send up to insane amounts… I don’t even know the limit. The highest I think I got was 400 or so.

With the DS version, it’s pretty much the same idea with less missiles. This isn’t to say the game dosen’t have AMAZING animation and explosions - just less of them. In fact when you fire off the missiles at the right time in this game, instead of getting more missiles, you get these enlarged low resolution missiles. I laughed the first time I saw it(”holy crap! lol!”). Even with that the sprites are so much for the DS it starts clipping and slows the game down. Usually if this happens you’re probably about to complete the stage anyways so it’s not a real problem.

Along with the classic missiles and primary fire, there’s three new moves. One is sort of a charge/ram that allows you to blow through enemies, destroyable obstacles, and move certain blocks. Sometimes a level will have random soccer(football), baseball, and basket balls in them. You can ram into these and start a chaotic chain reaction using the game’s impressive 2D physics. Hint: Use this to your advantage to destroy a whole bunch of enemies or certain objectives. Thank me later. The second is this beam-sword-thing that seems pretty useless to me. Yea… unless I’m missing something here. The third is the ability to stop time for about 4 seconds max or so. Pretty useful if you want to fly in and destroy a target/objective that’s covered with tons of enemies.

I haven’t tried every mode in Bangai-O: Spirits yet, I’ve only completed the short story mode. Which this time is only made up of about 17 short tutorial missions. The rest of the stages are in a separate mode which are more scenario/objective based than the Dreamcast version. You could almost call Bangai-O: Spirits an action puzzler, which certainly fits the DS platform quite well when you think about it.

Well besides this preview I don’t think I’ll review this one… I do recommend purchasing it when it releases here in the states though. *thumbs up*

Speaking of purchases, I’ve caved into some internet peer pressure and preordered a game I won’t be able to play for quite some time.

Or at least until I can buy a cheap PS2, which may not happen for awhile. I still want the game on hand until then since I know it’ll disappear from store shelves fairly quickly (and quietly). Now that I think of it, I should probably track down a copy of Luminous(1) for PSP as well… oh boy, I need a job. Maybe I should apply to Gamecrazy?… hm… what would I put on my resume though?…

Nick Cecchi - previous occupation(s): Saving the world from General Gray, and Gold silver. Also is responsible for the downfall of General Morden’s regime. High score: 768730

A little blog drama lama(I’ve been wanting to say that) has set me back this week - I’ll be sure to never let that happen again. Since I only posted about it on my main site, readers of the other ones must think I’m dead or something by now(If I have any). Follow that link and you’ll understand.

Wasn’t much going on this week besides the awesome announcement of Bangai-O spirits and school.

Damn

…Unless you care about me playing old games like Ikaruga, which I finally beat using my Dreamcast and 8 credits. Don’t laugh - as much as I love it I’ve only recently been able to play it at leisure. However you can laugh at the coincidence of Treasure announcing Ikaruga for Xbox-live arcade the very next day. Though we all saw it coming eventually I guess - ever since that leaked beta(ish?) version was reported on. Speaking of Dreamcast while I was at zero’s place I plucked a VGA cable from one of his monitors sitting in his garage(with his permission of course). What did I do with it? I completed my VGA switch! Yes, I bought a VGA switch a week or two ago and I didn’t have enough cable to use it - but now I do! It’s awesome, I can just switch between my Dreamcast and computer on the fly by using this little nob on my desk. Of course I’ve never heard of this cheap-ass brand so I’m a bit worried if it’ll find a way to break itself. One funny sign - and I don’t know, maybe this is normal - is that while putting it together in the dark I noticed it gave off a small blue spark while touching the box/switch. If you wait for tomorrow, I’ll probably post a few pictures of my beloved switch in action, or maybe even a short video. Hmm…

Meanwhile I’ll also be advancing from square one when I take the drivers permit test again tomorrow. Did I ever mention my other one expired? Well it did, and so I’m going at it again tomorrow. Hopefully, just maybe, sometime next month I’ll finally get my drivers license.

Update: Video is up!

So maybe you’ve heard me rant about Neo-Geo before on my blog, and it’s kinda funny because I don’t own one nor do I favor them over any other system. On top of that most of my time is spent emulating the games with MAME. Not anymore! - No I didn’t get a Neo -geo, but I got the next best thing - my friend got a Neo-Geo! A Neo-Geo MVS to be exact, carts are much cheaper than AES carts and we can play with some nice HAPP sticks/buttons.

My friend playing around with his MVS… I can’t wait until he gets some good games for it.

The machine came with World Heroes which is pretty bad based off of the 2 minuets I spent with it. Luckily Ebay has a nice light assortment of MVS games for cheap, including games within the Metal Slug and King of Fighter series(which are some of my favorite). Though this is all excluding games with Marquee/cab kits as those run twice the price. A good example of this is Metal slugX, I saw 20 bucks for just the cart in one auction, and about 199 bucks for the whole Kit in another auction.

Funny thing about the MVS carts as well, they’re HUGE. A quarter for comparison:

Another shot of the whole MVS opened up:

My friend bought it from a guy in another city called “Elk grove”, if you live in Northern California you’ve surely heard of it. Apparently the guy said something about a place in Rocklin(where we live) called “Rock around the clock”. The day after my friend got it(today-ish?) he called me up to tell that he had spotted his exact machine on their website(that obviously needed updating). Note the price on this site, he didn’t pay near that much - heck no. The whole store seems overpriced too, but I find it fascinating that we even have a store like this (that I was unaware of!) in the first place. I may just drop by tomorrow and see how they react. Knowing typical Rocklin they might shoo me away or something. I’ll bring my camera.

It may seem like I’m leeching off of him a bit, but if everything goes right tomorrow I’ll be shoveling some cash to him for a Dreamcast. So hey, there’s some commerce between us. Also, if I buy my own cart I’m sure he’ll let me use his MVS and if/when we move apart I’ll probably end up buying a NEO-GEO MVS somewhere down the line to play it on. Somewhere in the future…. but wait! I almost forgot! The Future is now!

(dun dun duuun)