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Cave Shmups Compilations: Discuss

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Cave Shmups Compilations: Discuss

Unread postby Jedah » 20 Jul 2006 09:49

Yesterday evening I came across an interesting article about Cave games availability and home ports. The author proposes the solution of game compilations, so shooter fans worldwide can enjoy the sublime Cave games without having to spend a fortune on PCBs or head to emulation highway. This is the article:

http://www.angelfire.com/games3/badcp/ba55.html

As a poor European gamer, I just wish Cave will eventually consider releasing their games worldwide just like Psikyo does. It's sad to see Gunbird compilations, Ikaruga, Gradius and other in the shops of my country, and Cave games nowhere to be seen. I accept that people outside Japan do not care about 2D shmups anymore, but a lot of games are released. Why not Cave ones?

As the topic title says, discuss here your thoughts and wishes on the subject.
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Unread postby zak » 20 Jul 2006 16:08

Hey, I'm a big fan of Cave and would love to see their games in European shops. Releasing them in compilations would be truely awesome, but I don't really see that happening anytime soon.

The great thing about their games is the fanbase they create, because it's composed of people that really love the games and go out of their way to get them (outside Japan). And an important part of that fanbase's creation is the way future fans hear and get hold of the games.
I'm saying that part of what makes them so great is that they're rare. A game that sells for 64.99$ on ebay is different from the one you pick up from your local store. It creates a sort of myth arround it.

Cave makes awesome shooters, but unfortunately they suffer from rarity
Well rarity isn't always a bad thing. There's no guarantee that exposing your game to a large marker will make it sell. Look at companies like Looking Glass or Bioware that made great ground breaking games and sold them all arround the world, and still went under. Large market exposure doesn't guarantee anything.
Cave's been making games for a long while and I'm sure they'll continue to. Yeah so maybe they're playing it safe by just focusing on the japanese market, but it's working.

Many American fans of the shooting game genre haven't even heard of Cave and/or their games
Well that doesn't make you much of a shump fan, does it? And it's kind of imposible to go arround the internet playing shumps without reading about a Cave shooter on some message board.

more people would get to play and enjoy them (and that's what it's all about)
You can't force people to play anything, and you can't start mass-distributing these games in the US and Europe hoping that they'll sell. It's usually the demand that creates the supply, not the other way arround. Best you can do is tell people about these games, spark their interest.

Also, returning to the compilations, how much would one of these cost? Because at the moment most of these games are selling for more than 40 dollars. If a compilation is gonna sell it's gotta have at least 3 games, and you can't charge too much for it. That means it would have to be mass-produced and mass-marketed in order to turn in a profit.
I don't see Cave doing this in the near future.
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Unread postby icycalm » 22 Jul 2006 01:13

This I don't agree with:

zak wrote:And an important part of that fanbase's creation is the way future fans hear and get hold of the games. I'm saying that part of what makes them so great is that they're rare.


I understand what you are saying, but I would never list rarity as a positive aspect of one of these masterpieces when reviewing them. When looking at a game with a critical eye, trying to discern what makes it work, what makes it greater than other games that came before it, practical issues such as cost and availabilty are irrelevant. The game stands outside of all these petty concerns. The game is immortal. [/preaching]


I wholeheartedly agree with this:

zak wrote:A game that sells for 64.99$ on ebay is different from the one you pick up from your local store. It creates a sort of myth arround it.


Also, excellent point:

There's no guarantee that exposing your game to a large marker will make it sell. Look at companies like Looking Glass or Bioware that made great ground breaking games and sold them all arround the world, and still went under. Large market exposure doesn't guarantee anything.
Cave's been making games for a long while and I'm sure they'll continue to. Yeah so maybe they're playing it safe by just focusing on the japanese market, but it's working.


Only Bioware never went under.


The question is not why Cave doesn't release compilations of their older titles in the West. They never release anything in the West and with good reason: a tiny minority of foreigners play their games, and they import the Jap copies anyway. Besides, even if they went about releasing their games in the West, it would be nearly impossible to get retailers to carry them because of tiny print runs, and you STILL wouldn't be able to grab a copy from your local game store--you'd have to go online either way.

There's also the marketing angle. Cave doesn't spend any money advertising their games in Japan. No magazine ads, nothing. The arcades do that for them. In the West there are no arcades. What will Cave do? Spend a million dollars paying off IGN or GameSpot?

Forget about the US and Europe. There is no hope. The only way to get Cave to localize their games (and do you really want to have all those amazing covers and artwork butchered by a bunch of useless localization people?) is to educate Western gamers to how those games are properly played and what they can do.

This happens in the arcades in Japan, but in the West there are no arcades, etc. etc.

So again, forget about localizations. Maybe one day in the distant utopian future...


The REAL question here is why they don't release ports of their older games in Japan itself (and I am talking about individual titles here, compilations are not really necessary: 5,900 yen is a bargain for a goddamnn masterpiece which you'd normally spend 40,000 to master in the arcades).

This is also a question I can answer.

DP and DDP were ported to the Saturn and the PS1. Guwange, Dangun, Progear and Esprade were never ported. From DDP DOJ onwards (with the exception of Ketsui) all their other shooters have been ported, or will be ported in the near future.

So the question is now why those 4 titles were not ported soon after the time of their arcade release.

I don't have the answer to that. But I do know that it would not make economic sense to port them now. Re-building the engines of those 4 games to run on the PS2 takes a lot of time and work. Because those games have been thorougly beaten by most of their fans in the arcades, their sales at this point in time would be far less than if they had been ported closer to their arcade releases. So Cave would see no profit, or very little to make it worth the effort. Besides, they'd rather make new games than spend the time porting old ones. Also, Cave doesn't even own the rights to these titles (Atlus and Capcom do), so that's one more problem they'd have to overcome. Finally, these four games do not run on the same hardware, so it's not a matter of just building one engine and using it for all 4. For example, DDP DOJ and Espgaluda run on the same hardware, so after Arika built the engine for DOJ it was relatively simple porting Galuda.

I don't know what happened with Ketsui. I read somewhere that they wanted to do it but there were some technical difficulties.

In short, it's just not possible, not worthwhile for them do re-visit those older games. As far as simply playing and enjoying them is concerned, they are perfectly emulated anyway, with the exception of Ketsui again--damn that fucking game to hell!!!

It's awesome. When I go back to Tokyo I will spend quite a bit of money on it and hopefully review it.

Jesus, this is my longest post here I think. That's what you get for mentioning Cave in the insomnia forum!!
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Unread postby zak » 24 Jul 2006 10:10

icycalm wrote:I understand what you are saying, but I would never list rarity as a positive aspect of one of these masterpieces when reviewing them. When looking at a game with a critical eye, trying to discern what makes it work, what makes it greater than other games that came before it, practical issues such as cost and availabilty are irrelevant. The game stands outside of all these petty concerns. The game is immortal. [/preaching]


Yeah, that's the way to review a game. The thing is that you're reviewing it for a small niche of gamers, that are reading about it on a small dedicated site. So it's a rare game being discussed by a few dedicated gamers on Insomnia rather than a massively sold game frothed upon on GameFaqs.
So you won't find any "OMG this game roxxorz" about these games. They are masterpieces that define their own audiences, sort of what you were talking about on the site (where did that "about" page disappear?).
At the current time only a bunch of people (outside Japan) are playing them, hopefully that will change with time.

Also screw localizations, I don't even want these games translated into english. Leave them the way they are and import them. I'd love to see them in stores over here, but that won't happen for a long while.

icycalm wrote:So the question is now why those 4 titles were not ported soon after the time of their arcade release.
I don't have the answer to that. But I do know that it would not make economic sense to port them now.

Yeah, it wouldn't make any sense. I've allready played Guwange, Dangun, Progear and Esprade, but I would buy them if they were ever ported. The problem is that there wouldn't be too many people to follow my example.

icycalm wrote:I don't know what happened with Ketsui. I read somewhere that they wanted to do it but there were some technical difficulties.

What's a ketsui?

icycalm wrote:It's awesome. When I go back to Tokyo I will spend quite a bit of money on it and hopefully review it.

Please do.

There should be a general warning about mentioning Cave games on these boards. The discussion might never stop.
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Unread postby Kaede » 29 Nov 2006 16:25

zak wrote:
icycalm wrote:It's awesome. When I go back to Tokyo I will spend quite a bit of money on it and hopefully review it.


Please do.


Seconded. I've been lucky enough to play Ketsui a few times in London and while I haven't played it enough to fully understand the scoring system, what I have seen so far is up there with the likes of 'Galuda and DDP and it's topped with a superb soundtrack. An Insomnia review would be most welcome.

The supposed PS2 port was canned over Arika's plans for an 'insane' arrange mode wasn't it?
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Unread postby icycalm » 29 Nov 2006 18:33

Do you also post in any other place which I frequent? Because I think I've seen a "Kaede" somewhere quite recently. In any case, welcome to the forum.

I've been playing Ketsui quite a lot since I came back to Tokyo in late-October, and I now regularly reach the 5th Stage. I've been ready to write the review for quite some time, and I have all the necessary screenshots, videos, artwork, etc., but there are so many other titles that have priority at the moment, that I can't really say when I'll sit down and do it... When I write it, I'll post in this thread to let you know, because the review won't actually appear on the frontpage (it will go straight to the review index page).

Kaede wrote:The supposed PS2 port was canned over Arika's plans for an 'insane' arrange mode wasn't it?


Something like that. Apparently Mihara -- Arika's boss -- said that he wouldn't even consider porting the game without a decent arrange mode and other extras, but from a business standpoint the projected earnings of the port did not justify the necessary investment.
Last edited by icycalm on 29 Nov 2006 19:26, edited 1 time in total.
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Unread postby Kaede » 29 Nov 2006 18:57

icycalm wrote:When I write it, I'll post in this thread to let you know, because the review won't actually appear on the frontpage (it will go straight to the review index page).


Cool, well I look forward to reading it...whenever that may be!

icycalm wrote:Do you also post in any other place which I frequent? Because I think I've seen a "Kaede" somewhere quite recently. In any case, welcome to the forum.


Well, after lurking on forums for quite some time I'm now registered at shmups.com and at Gaijin's excellent Gamengai site so you may have seen me post there? Everyone on this board is so knowledgeable....I hope i can chip in with some posts from time to time. :)
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