Been playing a clusterfokker of games lately. Let’s go over them one at a time.

DJMAX Technika – Beyond the (Near) Future

So DJMAX Technika 2 was released in Korea earlier this month and hopefully will be making its way overseas in months. From what I’ve heard, Technika “1″ players can transfer their data to T2 and use their MAX Points from T1 to buy T1 sets in T2. And that’s where the catch lies: you can only use T1 MAX. So I’ve taken it upon myself to play the crap out of Weekly and Special sets to grind 1,800 MAX per run.

Only one problem at the moment: I lost my card. My card that has 39,000 MAX saved up.

It hit me this afternoon at the arcade, when I went to get my card. I hadn’t bothered to look at it since last Wednesday, the last time I went to the arcade, which means trouble as far as whether I can get my card back or not. I still have one more card, but it’s far behind on MAX grinding (only about 9,000) or so. I’ll see about this data recovery service that I’ve been hearing about, but that means buying a new card. Rawr.

Touhou – Old and New

I got around to obtaining Touhou Seirensen: Undefined Fantastic Object (otherwise simply known as TH12 or UFO). UFO’s…well, UFO mechanic reminds me of Space Invaders Extreme, as they come in red, green, and blue (not unlike SIE’s powerup enemies).

The game itself is not bad, glad to have bombs separated from shot power again. Not a big fan of how one P now raises power by not .05 as in TH11 and 10, but now by .01, meaning you need 400 small P’s to reach max power. Even if there are way more P’s to make up for it, it still makes getting max power a daunting-looking task.

Also been playing the PC98 games. Touhou Rei’iden: Highly Responsive to Prayers (aka TH01 or HRtP), unlike the later TH games, plays more like a ball-and-brick game (like Arkanoid or Break Out) than a shooting game. Good, kinda-novelty fun; I’ve never been a fan of brick breaking due to just how much time I have to spend getting the last few bricks (or in this game, cards).

Story of Eastern Wonderland (TH02) is the first shooting game, and seems like the weirdest of the bunch. Much milder bullet patterns, enemies are all sorts of oddities, and holy shit ground enemies in a Touhou game. Haven’t played Phantasmagoria of Dim Dream (TH03) as I’m not really into the whole versus shmup thing, but Lotus Land Story (TH04) is good and is where the series finally gets good. Managed to take a 1CC on it; there’s only a few attacks that make me go wtf (namely, Reimu’s homing attack thingy, both versions of Yuuka’s Master Spark, and Yuuka’s fake explosion thing). I’ll probably get around to Mystic Square (TH05) some other time.

Patriot Dark – Mashup

Patriot Dark is what you get when you take DoDonPachi, Ketsui, and Espgaluda, breed a child out of the three, and baptise it with a little Raiden Fighters. You have DoDonPachi comboing, Ketsui‘s God-knows-what cashing in thing, and Espgaluda‘s bullet cancelling. So you’re trying to juggle two scoring systems at once; not as bad as it sounds (the combo meter is fairly lenient). You also have these spots to hover over to make point cubes show up. Thankfully, if you find one of those spots, instead of not knowing there’s something there unless you hover over it, a circle of sparks will appear, so you’ll know “oh hey, I better remember this spot for next run”. Graphics and sound aren’t that hot, but it’s a doujin shooter so I’ll shut the fuck up about that. Overall a fun number, I just might make a serious attempt at it.

Ninja Gaiden (NES) – GAI DAMMIT!

Ninja Gaiden aka Castlevania with ninjas and on steroids. I was at my friend’s house a few days ago and, too lazy to switch from my FSTE to my Saturn pad, decided to play on my FSTE. Not as bad as it sounds; I was able to play normally. Managed to finally defeat the Act 4 boss, which is a simple act of ducking under a pillar and waiting for the gargoyle dual bosses to come my way so I can stab them.

Currently on Act 5-2. I need to memorize/memorise/memorisize where all the bats are so I don’t get knocked to my death when I try to make so and so jump. This game is quite unforgiving; post-damage invincibility is near-nonexistant, bats pop up with the intention of bitchslapping you into a pit, and enemies regenerate if you destroy them the wrong way. Doesn’t make this game stupid though; just need to know how the enemies spawn and regenerate, and to try to keep moving forward.

Except this part.


This jump. THIS FUCKING JUMP.