The last game I recall playing, that wasn’t a download, would be Parodius Portable. A great compilation of Parodius titles all on one disc. It’s quirky, has a great sense of humour, and has the siginature penguin that Konami seem to be so fond of. In any case, I’d like to focus on the current catalogue of shoot-em-ups availiable on the X360, as that seems to be the main platform that Cave/G-Rev are releasing their games for.

The most familiar titles that would possibly crop up if asked what shoot-em-ups you had for the X360 would be Raiden Fighter Aces (RFA for short) and Raiden IV. One key reason to this is that both games have been availiable in the US for some time now, and at a price lower than the standard RRP making it afforable, prehaps enough so that those who haven’t heard of either will give them a try. Whether that will get the ball rolling is another matter altogether, but it’s a positive outcome. As it goes without saying, supporting the shoot-em-up genre is not exactly a cheap endevour, but it pays off if everyone gets a chance of trying more that -at the moment- may never see the light of day in the west.

TGS 08 had shown yet another game, surprisngly at the time, had turned out to be Otomedius G; the bizarre byproduct of girls with mechs, and penguins in some twisted affair, but what was more interesting was the specially crafted arcade stick with a touch screen that the PCB version offered, which would allow the use of special fire. Overall however, there wasn’t much that the game had to offer for the more serious players, and was – by general opinion – a far weaker game than Gradius and Parodius.

The biggest slipup to have happened earlier this year was 5pb’s shoddy port of Dodonpachi Daioujou BLEX, which got critisized for having unnessercary loading times between menu navigation. While the port itself had offered a couple of new gameplay modes that wern’t in the PS2 version, many preferred the latter for it being more faithful to the PCB.

Cave having seen what happens when you leave someone else to do work for you, decided to take the console ports into their own hands. Revealed in Famitsu was yet another one of their more popular titles, DEATH SMILES, but instead of getting a port out that worked well, they had decided to take the engine into HD territory. The characters and on screen enemies would go on to stand out more for those running at 720p, but also still trying to maintain the core design style of the game.

G-Rev having having their first port Senko no Ronde doing well in Japan, had stepped back in with Mamoru-kun wa Norowarete Shimatta! A top down shoot-em-up with a scrolling screen. The main issue that seemed to be keeping the game from getting much good reception was its flawed scoring mechanic, which has been discussed that you don’t need to do much other than sit back to rack in points using a rather odd method that will unfortuantly keep more hard earned scores off the higher leaderboard spots.

Last but not least, Castle Shikigami III. Surprisingly it got ported to the Wii for its US release, yet the 360 version is still only availiable in Japan.

It’d be hard to wonder just how future releases within the genre will play out regarding region locking and/or localization, yet the step that Cave has taken regarding this shows that if there is a team willing to support a small yet dedicated group, it’ll hopefully lead to other developers taking the same step, and giving everyone a chance to try something that would only ever be availiable to a specific group.

Mushihimesama Futari, possibly the biggest revelation of this year regarding the whole region free concept? Those days can’t come soon enough.

Yes, I do despise twitter by the way.