New Treasure Game For Nintendo DS Reve-it's Bangai-O Spirits
 

Taken from Kotaku:

Treasure x ESP

They forgot to mention Silhouette Mirage, lol.

Yeah, discuss.

Oh man this is going to be great. I remember how amazed I was when I first played Ikaruga on my Dreamcast and couldn't believe the pretty pictures that they could get my hardware to make. Therefore I can't wait to see what pretty images they can get my DS to make. Pure AWESOMENESS!!!

Sin & Punishment sequel :]

Well no, it'll probably be a new game entirely and that'll be all the more awesome. This is wonderful news and also luckily means the stupid rumors about them moving to XBLA are still just stupid rumors.

New Gunstar Heroes game nau. Make it 2D sidescroller and longer than my... Well... Make it long =O But a flight sim shooter would be awesome.

Treasure games are awesome. This is fantastic xD

Mischief Makers Makin' More Mischief.

Please.

Dear Treasure:
No sequel, please. I've had enough of Gunstar/Guardian Heroes degeneration for this lifetime. And please don't make another vertical shooter that only wants to show off how many bullets a screen can hold at the same time (Ikaruga, I'm looking at YOU). Thank you.

Yeah, because that's exactly what they made Ikaruga for.

I think a sequel to Sin & Punishment or a game along the same lines would work the best on DS. Just imagine the combination of Dpad and Stylus controls for a top-down shooter. Use the Dpad to navigate and the Stylus for your aiming. It's a guaranteed hit.

Also, you obviously haven't played a lot of shooters if you think Ikaruga is a good example for "bullet hell".

I've played enough. I just wanted to point out that I have no love for that type of shooter. The ones where you let the bosses go back and forth, or not move at all, relying heavily on the bullet patterns to create excitement.

If they intended anything else, they failed.

They made Ikaruga for the chaining system. Try beating my friend's top score of 2.7million and try again. I wouldn't say that Ikatuga didn't have a lot of bullets. but it's not the most.

Stage 5 of Gradius 5 is still my hardest stage to beat in a shooter... what a bitch.

What on earth are you doing playing Treasure games altogether if you can't appreciate the masterful craftmanship in Ikaruga?

If Treasure decides to make another scrolling shooter, I'm all for it. If we get more games of the quality of Radiant Silvergun or Gradius V, we should welcome it.

But yeah, I was suggesting something similar to Rock in chat today. Touchscreen for aiming and shooting, dpad for dodging and jumping. L for weapon switch if one is needed. It would probably work really well for a game like Sin & Punishment. Hell, it could work for a Bangai-O sequel as well <3

I'm not going to try beating your friend's top score since that will require me to spend hours and hours MEMORIZING patterns. I do not like the game. Period.

I DO, however, LOVE Gradius V. Yeah, level 5 is a bitch, but it's not THAT hard.


It's funny how you cramp all of Treasure's games together with Ikaruga like they all had something in common. "ZOMG! He can't appreciate the great Ikaruga! BURN HIM!". Please, give me the right to have an opinion. Also, pitting Radiant Silvergun with Ikaruga is a mistake. Sure, they're both vertical scrollers, but that's pretty much it. I like RS a whole lot more than Ikaruga for several reasons.

Now, Gradius V was a whole different matter for me. Sure, it had some of the bullet pattern storms, but it felt a lot "smarter" than Ikaruga. Entirely different game, IMO.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...ro/AP_WHAT.jpg

Ikaruga was all about flying upside down, not massive amounts of bullets! Nobody flew their ship upside down until Ikaruga came along! It was so revolutionary that it quickly became an internet fad! Even today, people are still flying their ships upside down in tribute to Ikaruga. IT WAS NOTHING SHORT OF A REVOLUTION!

Sure. The system WAS revolutionary, or rather, ORIGINAL, but I didn't like it. Ok? Good. Can we drop this discussion now? I know enough about Ikaruga to know that I don't like it. I have a friend who's REALLY good at Ikaruga, and he plays it the same way EVERY F**ING time. He loves it, I can't be bothered with it. I may say harsh things about it, but that's because I don't like certain parts about it, which in turn stops me from digging deeper into the system. I have other games to play. Please let me enjoy them the way I want to.

Then you probably shouldn't have made a snide comment about the game in the first place if you can't be bothered. This mess could have been avoided! We could have been discussing how it might be a sequel to McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure with shoot 'em up gameplay!

I was expressing an opinion about a game I don't like. Why does everyone have to think that I hate EVERY Treasure game as well as EVERY other shooter ever made because I said I didn't like Ikaruga?

Sure, I degraded Ikaruga to "a shooter than only wants to show off bullets". This is how I see Ikaruga. Sure, it's probably a much deeper and more involving game if you spend 100 hours on it (probably less, but a lot of time). Me? I like shooters where you can enjoy the game from the start AND THEN get involved in it. Ikaruga didn't do this for me, but Gradius V did. Thus me NOT WANTING ANY MORE GAMES LIKE IKARUGA. Is that such a stupid thing to say or do you really have to think about the general opinion before you express one of your own(opinions)?

I dunno, but I think you're stressing out a bit too much over this. May I suggest a quick round of McDonalds Treasure Land Adventure?

This answers itself.

Ikaruga requires no bombing and no dodging of bullets at all. If you're dodging you're probably doing something wrong, since all you do is absorb bullets. It's just switching and making sure you don't fly into enemies or walls.

Games like touhou and CAVE on the other hand actually require you to dodge constantly, and the game's centered around bullets. They make a much better job of "showing off bullets" - Ikaruga's focused around the polarity system and chaining. Not dodging.

Don't worry about any future Ikaruga sequel though, I'm sure a company of 6 people in Japan will adjust the development of their games to some critical westerner's likings.

Hey now, Ikaruga is one of my least favorite Treasure shooters. It doesn't allow for as much freedom and improvization on the fly as the likes of RS (which in general just does so much more), but it is an amazing piece of design even if I personally don't enjoy it quite as much. Just because I acknowledge it as important doesn't mean I'm branding you some heretic like a tool. Don't make yourself look any more ridiculous.

I was saying, what are you playing Treasure games at all if you can't recognize the quality. It's much like when people liken themselves to FPS fans but lambast Halo for whatever reason.

I was referring to the sequels for the GBA. A prequel is needed in order for something to degrade, you know? And this is coming from someone who has excellent taste in video games.

I'm sorry if you didn't see this minor detail.

No, you said: Meaning: What on earth am I doing playing Treasure games if I can't recognize the quality of Ikaruga? Does that mean that I can't appreciate other games made by that company because I couldn't appreciate that one game? It's like saying that you shouldn't play Square-Enix games because you couldn't appreciate FFXII. There's too much diversity in that company to make such a statement. It just doesn't make sense.

If this is not pitting all Treasure games together, I don't know what is.

Addition: What I expressed was my personal wishlist to Treasure, based on opinion alone. This doesn't mean that I can't see why OTHERS would like the game.

This is most likely an original title since it's being published under ESP, which is good. Pretty much all of their original titles are completely awesome anyway.

The only games it could be a sequel of are Bangai-O, Silhouette Mirage, Radiant Silvergun, Ikaruga, and maybe Stretch Panic. Or maybe they're bringing Gunbeat back from the dead!

Oh, and Ikaruga is awesome and Radiant Silvergun and Gradius 5 are lame.

You really don't seem to grasp the concept of being able to recognize skill. I don't like newer GTA games, but I can't deny they're excellent videogames.

Pretty much every great Treasure game is built on the same foundations as Ikaruga. Invention, pace, control, and a solid central concept.

I wasn't questioning why you don't like playing Ikaruga, no one gives a crap about that. But if you can't recognize good design when you see it, how could you possibly get anything out of the rest of Treasure's titles. The very fact that you spitefully lob Ikaruga into bullet hell games speaks volumes.

I'd deny it for you, but this isn't the right topic for that.

Anyway, I'm hopeful that this will be a new brand (BRAND NEW). Treasure has almost never made sequels to their own franchises (pretty much just Gunstar Heroes, right?), and Ikaruga seems like it would be very difficult if not impossible to make work on a handheld. I would personally really like a new 2D run-and-gun game from them, perhaps with a twist of some sort (robots? mecha? BURGERS?).

I'm also hoping that it's 2D. I like pixels, and explosions, and long walks on the beach. :D

I understand it perfectly well. I can understand why people in general would like a game because of it's overall concept, as is the case with the newer GTA games, but I'd never deem it as "excellent" if I didn't like it myself. That would just be silly.

After all, "good" and "bad" design is just a matter of personal opinion. Basically, what you're saying is that my opinion isn't valid because it doesn't correspond to your own.

Yeah, I don't think Ikaruga's a masterpiece. It's deeper than I described it, but not much. In fact, it isn't even THAT original. Basically, it's just another vertical scroller with a quirky system.

If Sword Familiar worded himself/herself differently, he'd be avoiding a bit more flak as far as the Ikaruga comment is concerned. It's obvious that you know good and well that Ikaruga's point wasn't to have as many bullets on screen as possible, but I don't think the comment has quite the impact in the heads of others as it does in yours. Snark tends to do this. I'm sure your point was that it "wasn't all that", but you're being held accountable to what you said in the literal sense and you just aren't going to get around that. Because, god knows no one ever engaged in hyperbole in a discussion of all things.

Look, your post sucked, plain and simple.

This is basically saying "I was wrong in my description, but I'm a defensive shit so I'm going to stick as close as possible to it." Look, I've already explained what Ikaruga was - didn't you read my last response? I've put 30 hours into the game (I still can't 1cc it) and it's not "just" deeper than "a game which was made to show off fancy bullets" (which is wrong).

What the fuck are you talking about. A prequel is needed for something to degrade? A game is degraded based on it's proprietary game because of your opinion? The same opinion that groups Ikaruga with curtain fire and ALOALAOAL Ikaruga wuz only maed 4 showin off fanci bulletz?

Wasn't this thread about possible shmup sequels to McDonald's Treasureland Adventure at one point?

A moderator could probably split the topic like they did for the PS3 thread and some others. This has definitely flown off topic, so I really wish they would. Reading through these last responses, I've had nothing to say and neither has anyone else cause all it's really been is pointless arguing between two or three people.

Confirmed, first screen released!

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y13...lthytomato.png

"THEY TTKK RRR JRRRRRRBBBBBSS!!"

What I meant was that you can't degrade something if there's nothing to compare it to. Degradation is a LOSS in quality, which means that it's RELATIVE to something else. THAT is what I meant. It is not an opinion, it's a scientific fact! Stop being such a douche.

But I see now that there's really no reason to discuss this any further because you've already made up your minds about me, meaning that you'll not listen to anything I say about anything.

I admit that my comment was more than a bit inaccurate, but I'm also amazed at how much this blew up. Partly my own fault, but it also says a lot about you guys. Just try to step down from your ladders every once in a while and you might avoid these kinds of misunderstandings. As for me, I'll try to be more "accurate" when spewing sarcasms at games I don't like.'

Can we get back on topic now?

That looks awesome. Can Ronald fly upside down in this as well?

Seeing as how he still doesn't seem to get it, yes, I think splitting the thread would be a great idea.

From some dude at shmups.com. Since Bangai-O is like the greatest thing ever I can't complain.

I have a feeling we won't be seeing 999 explosions at once this time around :(

I wouldn't mind a sequel to Silhouette Mirage, as long as it's not controller-throwing angry hard like SM was. Working Designs beefed up the difficulty and it pissed me off to no end when I wasted all those lives beating the game, to realize I had to beat all 5 paths with the set number of lives and not a refresh of them at the beginning of each path.

You have to play the Saturn version of Silhouette Mirage. It is just so much more fun to play. You can actually screw around with more than the default weapon without any worry of running out of energy.

I will never touch the Working Designs release of that game ever again.

But it seems it's Bangai-O anyway, so maybe Silhouette Mirage next time.

DUDE. Holy shit. I can't believe it.

Time to play through Bangaioh again just to celebrate. But, how do they plan on fitting hundreds of missiles, a bunch of robots and explosions on a DS at once?

http://img132.imagevenue.com/img.php..._122_130lo.jpg

Scan of the article, pictures included. Looks more like a sequel to the N64 verion than the Dreamcast to me, but who knows how it'll play. You can see a couple multiplayer screens and the level editor.

Some cool bosses wouldn't hurt.

Edit

Hmm, most of the screens have the two shot types listed as homing and bound, but two have bat in place of bound. There's also a direct instead of homing in one of them. More than two shot types this time? And a napalm shot? And there's actually four weapons listed up there and I just noticed now? Combining weapons like the original Gunstar Heroes?? Why do I keep editing this post?

Looks more like a fat black guy with some chick to me.

I... refrained from saying anything because I couldn't tell if it was intentional or not.

Haha, did I use the wrong link? Still gave me Bangaioh! Should work now maybe?

Yup.

But screw this, I want Mischief Makers 2.

You won't get it because Enix owns it :(

It's not like they couldn't collaborate!

COLLABO! Sorry, had to say it.

Bangai-O sequel? Looks like even Treasure has to establish a consistent set of recognizable intellectual properties. Not that that hasn't been said already. Not exactly my platform of choice, but I always get butthurt about handheld releases. I will cry in the corner in private, don't worry. Good stuff, Treasure.

Holy shit yes! Though hopefully the levels won't only be tiny little single rooms or something minimized like that that tends to be the recent trend with handheld sequels/remakes.

Y'know I'd settle for a remake of the first game except with working controls. The game was more about fighting the controller than it was conquering the levels.

I'm.. what? What on earth was the problem with the controller this time? You didn't even need to use the analogue stick this time, so holding the pad was no different than holding any controller with handles. Only in this case the handles were decent lenght as opposed to the tiny stubs on a dual shock.

I could only imagine trouble with doing some of the double tap directions on the dpad for dashing, and even those had a shortcut on the c buttons. Though in Treasure style, dashing on the dpad was slightly different than the c buttons.

I don't think it's possible to change the controls of Mischief Makers without completely ruining the game. There's just grabbing, jumping and dashing. What's wrong with these controls?

So it seems this is already out in Japan (at least play-asia seems to have it in stock). Looks really good, but I'm not quite clear how the aiming works. Anyone's played it, is it ABYX or stylus aiming or possibly both?

They talk about editing with the stylus, is this some proper level editor or just a tiny feature at certain parts of a level?

I'm tempted to buy the jap version, but I'm still hopeful someone will release this in english ;_;

You could have made a new thread you know :gonk:

Still, the DS is lacking in Shooters so I might pick this up later. What was / is called?

NEED MORE SCREENSHOTS & INFO QWARKY >:3

Bangai-O Spirits! ^5

I think the US version is coming out in May? I think I read that somewhere, but don't hold me to that, as I can't find it anywhere now. Anyway from what I've seen the game is more or less the same as the DC version that I know and love, so I don't think there will be a huge lingual barrier to overcome. I wonder if online multiplayer (which I'm assuming it has, I don't know, am I wrong?) will be universal or zone-bound...

And I guess I can wait a few months to support a localized version. Well, maybe!

I just played it for a bit. Just about everything is in Japanese except for the pause menu. I don't really know what mode I was playing. All it had me doing was complete mission after mission where I had to destroy certain targets. The game certainly got hectic pretty quick, but it was quite fun. No stylus controls from what I noticed. The top map shows a map, while the bottom screen has all the action. From what I was able to tell, the controls are something like this:

Y: Weapon 1
B: Weapon 2
A: Dash
R: Bomb
X: ???
L: ???

Definitely gonna spend more time with this later.

It is out in Japan. It's called Bangai-O Spirits by the way.

It is also very different from the N64 and DC originals.

First off there is a tutorial mode. It is 17 levels with cutscenes before each stage explaining some game mechanics or something. It's not in English so they could be talking about muffins or something, they get very excited. Anyway, you beat those 17 levels you get credits. This will take you ten minutes and you'll be all waah?

Next you'll try the 2nd option on the main menu which is free play. Now you can choose from any of the 160 levels already in the game and have at her. Levels can be incredibly tiny (as big as the screen) to about the size of the maps in the original.

You are also given the option of loading yourself up with four weapons, two basic attacks and two counter attacks. You've got lots of different missle types, and a couple melee types. You will want to take the bat around with you because it sends shit flying all over the screen and is the best part of the game.

Anyway, the game is hard. Enemies have a lot more health then they did in the originals, and they shoot a lot more bullets. Shooting your regular guns is pretty much usless so you're going to be using your counter attack a lot to flood the screen with bullets. Like the N64 version you can charge your counter attack up before releasing it (up to 100 bullets), and if you release the counter when you're surrounded by enemy fire, you will release larger, more powerful bullets. They can get really big, it's pretty silly.

Oh, by the way, no ABXY controls. L is one counter, R is the other, B fires one of your guns, Y or X fires the other, and holding A makes you dash around. You cannot fire while dashing around. It works better than you think since you pretty much just counter bomb the crap out of everything or hit them with your bat.

Here's something neat, pressing select opens up a little edit menu which lets you do pretty much anything you want to a stage, while you're playing it. You don't like that enemy in front of you? Just erase him. Not enough enemies? Add more. Put a couple soccer balls all over the screen and smash them with your bat and watch all hell break loose if you want.

There's also the level editor where you can make your own levels from scratch and save them. You can then copy a sound wave of the map and share it with anyone through the mic on the DS. After you beat a level it will also ask if you want to save the replay and these can be shared the same way.

Anyway, you'll have to try it and see for yourself. It's very different.

So it uses the awkward direction lock system instead? That'll take some getting used to, but luckily counters don't require directions.

Sounds really neat, hopefully they translate it <3

Large bump because this is a game that should not be neglected.

I've been playing this since my US copy arrived in the mail on Friday and it's quite excellent. It took me a moment to even realize just how excellent it is.

The game initially feels like a Bangai-O Lite, with a level editor thrown in to compensate for the apparent compromise elsewhere. The DS is incredibly tiny for my hands and on one hand entirely unfit for games with this pace. The shooting controls feel a tad fiddly and it's ridiculously easy to die on a single enemy without chance for retaliation. Completing levels often feels like a case of luck rather than skill, mostly due to the random nature of some of the enemy movements.

Stick with it though as this will change. It dawns to you. For one, it is an incredibly addicting game. You can die really fast, but restarting a level is just as quick, further enhancing the "just one more go" feel. And you will be repeating that a lot. After the first 16 tutorial levels, you will start dying at an alarming rate on the 17th. At first you feel the game is just really fucking hard and the controls too fiddly. Later on, by the time you return to the level to improve your time and score, you'll notice the difference. You no longer rush, shoot blindly and hope for the best. You've developed new techniques, strategies and tactics, gaining new ways to survey the field and assess your options. You'll see that while the game really is very hard, there is surprising depth to the system, affording multiple different playstyles, thanks to the weapon loadouts. You steadily learn the rhythm of EX-counters and surviving tight roomfulls of enemies without a single scratch.

First you learn to dodge enemy projectiles, then get rid of them, then use them against the enemies. The EX-counters range (you can pick two for the level) from previous Bangai-O style missile clouds (now reliant on both the time you hold the trigger down and the amount of bullets heading your way) through freezing time, to sending everything flying away from you.

The shooting weapon loadouts follow this same system (two per level) with various missiles with different strengths and weaknesses, a directional shield, a laser sword for cutting through bullets and enemies, and my favorite, a giant bat for hitting projectiles back at enemies, as well as sending them flying.

At best, it's completely intoxicating, panicky shooting and dodging morphing into graceful dancing and playing with your enemies. One level you would be a typical anime mecha, releasing hundreds of missiles to wipe out an armada, one level you're dashing between enemy fire, freezing time ZA WARUDO style and sending everything crashing about, finishing them off with a sword.

But it IS really hard, and the DS IS really tiny, resulting in extremely sore hands if you have long fingers like me. It's a splendid kind of pain, as finishing that next level proves so satisfying.

There's shooting levels, puzzles levels, salutes to all manner of anime and videogames (a pac-man level, an R-Type mothership etc), even pokes at modern gamers. Plus the level editor is easy and fun to use, the sound load sharing system is admittedly novel but once you get it to work it's a lot of fun and clever.

So yeah, this is fast becoming my third favorite Treasure game, right after Radiant Silvergun and Gradius V <3

Woo YAY I preordered but I couldn't wait, so I also downloaded the US version. It's awesome!

I haven't even scratched the surface of the pack of levels that comes with the game itself, and then there's the practically endless supply of additional levels thanks to the level editor (which I also haven't touched yet). The tutorial levels were extremely funny, and the levels that I've tried so far were all really fun (if sometimes really difficult, did anyone else struggle like hell with the final tutorial level? never mind, just realized that was the 17th level you were talking about Q). Sometimes I wish there was a little more in the way of being able to predict what weapon would be good to take into a level, but it's all good, I don't mind going through a level a couple times to learn by trial and error.

What's your favorite weapon? Mine has to be the freeze EX, combined with the bouncing EX. It's just too funny to freeze a circle of bullets as it's about to hit you, and then shoot giant bouncing balls that trace the enemies and clear the screen for you.

Recently I'm constantly going with the combination of Bat and Bounce, with Freeze and Bounce for EX. Sometimes I switch the missile weapon around, but I'm almost always carrying the bat as it's really useful and very, very fun. If the level involves ANY Longai-Os, Reflect is a must or it's impossible for me.

Freeze and Break does a good enough job of turning their missiles against them, though I imagine with Reflect the action stays much more fast paced, rather than being defensive and somewhat dull in comparison. Beats swinging the bat like it's going out of style... and then getting killed anyway because Longai-O's have damn infinite EX POWAH.

The easiest trick is to get them to fire as large missiles as possible. Bat their crap at them till you get them to do one of those mid level counters, then immediately Reflect it back, which will in turn make them counter with much, much larger missiles. These reflected, they will surely kill anything on screen and it was the only way I survived the last few levels in Treasure's Best with multiple (and different size) Longai-Os.

I have a saved replay where my reflected counter reads 35991, although that could well actually be 359, with maybe the Longai-Os EX counter of 191 under it or something. But I wouldn't mind the idea that I reflected 35000 missiles back at the big Longai-O~

I'm not sure how I'd survive The Earth stage with that strategy, mainly because Ninjas and Spiker Roll things want my blood. I need to be Dio, Q. I NEED TO BE.

ZA WARUDO.

I guess I got lucky as every time I play the Earth stage, the blue bots and longai-os beeline at me, with the hedgehogs calmly staying put at the top of the level without activating. I've also found both ninjas get obliterated if you manage to reflect both longai-o's large missiles rapes. They really wipe out everything. And one time one ninja survived, I could collect the left over fruits and finish him off with Freeze and batting him to death. I didn't think you could launch large ninjas but apparently you can.

I just picked up this game a couple of days before I left to go back to work. I've been playing it during all my free time at work, and it is an immensely enjoyable game.

It is definetely highly enjoyable, I've pretty much have most of the levels beaten but there are still a few that are pissing me off from time to time. I had a hard time trying to destroy the Longai-O's.

I have to agree with Qwarky and my favourite combination of weapons is the Bat with the Bounce Missles. In terms of EX I actually prefer using a combination of Direct and Break. I find it oblitorates some of the larger enemies with just a few hits.

I'm hoping in a few more days I'll have all the levels finished, but it was definetely a worthwile purchase and would recommend this game to anybody.