Otomedius

[Discoalucard]

www.hardcoregaming101.net/otomedius/otomedius.htm

Man I love Gradius. And Parodius. And Twinbee. Otomedius...ehh. Neither games are terrible, but neither are great either. I'll take what I can get, though.

Still neat that the sequel somehow came out in the US.

[BulletMagnet]

A few small things, not sure if you'd find them interesting enough to include:

- If you look carefully at the top of Eliza's head, the fish (he actually has a name, though I'd have to look it up) has been replaced by a black-and-white photograph, reminiscent of the ones placed at family altars for the departed. Presumably the fish has passed on by the time Otomedius takes place.

- Supposedly the Gofa sisters represent the two halves of the giant brain ("hence the "LB" and RB" thing) - their names, Hugin and Munin, are also the same as Odin's ravens from Norse mythology, and if memory serves they translate to "thought" and "memory" respectively.

- Some mention probably ought to be made of the ridiculous amount of delays leading up to Excellent's US release.

If I see any more (apart from some grammatical errors) on a more thorough reading I'll let you know.

[BulletMagnet]

Ah, you might need to edit the part for Excellent about it having all the stages on the disc - a DLC level just came out.

[Discoalucard]

I saw that referenced on the Facebook page today - is that only in Japan for now or is it out in NA too?

At least they don't tease you with it like the original game, that was all like, Easter Island? Take this large Red X and pay up that 480 or whatever points, sucker!

I bought Kokoro and some of the music packs awhile ago. I wish someone would just rip the whole soundtrack. A lot of the extra music seems pretty good but I don't feel like playing the game over and over (again) just to hear them.

[BulletMagnet]

Dec 13, 2011 16:37:15 GMT -5 Discoalucard said:

I saw that referenced on the Facebook page today - is that only in Japan for now or is it out in NA too?

Yup, seems they didn't bother delaying giving us the JP stuff this time around, it's on the US marketplace too.

[Discoalucard]

Bought the DLC stage yesterday. I have no idea how to access it in the main game, so I just selected it from multiplayer, where it's labeled EX1.

For the most part the stage is kinda boring, but they really amped up the fanservice. Some of it is lazy name-checking, like sticking the names of old Konami games on billboards in the background, although they do bring back the penguin enemies missing from the core game. It gets a little bit more interesting when you fly by the school, down through the pool and into a secret underground. Where you take on bad guys from a few old Famicom games - Meikyuu Jiin Dababa, Maze of Galious and Getsu Fuuma Den. The boss is Konami Girl, who pilots the ship from Scramble, although it's assembled with boxes to make it look like pixel artwork, similar to 3D Dot Heroes. This is the coolest part of the stage, but at 480 points it's overpriced. I'll update the article in a few days with pictures.

I also bought the Kokoro Belmont music DLC, which I thought would be Castlevania oriented, but actually draws from Trigon and Ajax. (It's awesome how the girls say the games they're from during the music select, but only in Japanese, since they never bothered to subtitle it.) Neither of those game's soundtracks were particularly impressive to begin with, but the couple levels I played of it were really boring and totally unsuitable for the game, despite being composed by Michiru Yamane. Since no one's ripped any of it yet, I'll have to record some of the tracks from Madoka's and Erol's packs, which are both pretty good.

[BulletMagnet]

You might have already heard, but a Stage EX2 is (I think) already out in Japan - no vids yet (I think), though rumor has it that it's based on/features cameos from Emon 5 and/or Goemon in general.

[psygnosis8]

Just for the record, I actually really LIKE Otomedius Excellent. The biggest thing going for it is probably that it came out in 2011 and it's NOT a bullet hell shmup.

I think the leveling up system is cool as well. It encourages replays. I still can't beat the dang Gofa sisters or the level 4 boss yet, though.

I wish we'd get Gorgeous in the states, even as an XBLA game. I'm glad Konami decided to bring this over here, as wierd and semi-offensive as it is (when I first opened my CE box my wife's girlfriends were all here. They were pretty shocked...and laughing at the same time ). I hope there's a decent 2-D Castlevania reboot somewhere in the works. (And no, Harmony of Dissonance doesn't count! )

[rorshacma]

Dec 15, 2011 11:20:02 GMT -5 Discoalucard said:

I also bought the Kokoro Belmont music DLC, which I thought would be Castlevania oriented, but actually draws from Trigon and Ajax.

At the very least, it seems that her boss theme draws a little bit from "The Theme of Simon" around the one minute mark of the song.

www.youtube.com/user/Fel1230#p/c/7/mfRpPKS8xZA

[BulletMagnet]

New stage is out in the USA, a video of it (originally linked on the shmups.com forum) is here.

[BulletMagnet]

A third EX stage just came out in Japan apparently, but not here yet.

[KeeperBvK]

Some quick corrections:

- The Japanese name of Otomedius is given as エリミネートダウン which is actually "Eliminate Down", hence a different game.

- Is the name of the first game's 360 port Otomedius G or Otomedius Gorgeous? The article mentions both.

- It says "mecha shojou" in the article, while it should be "mecha shoujo".

[Discoalucard]

I can't 100% remember offhand and I don't want to Google Image Search "otomedius" at work, but I believe it's both. The logo says Otomedius G but I think the katakana says Otomedius Gorgeous.

[BulletMagnet]

Yeah, I've seen it referred to as both "G" and "Gorgeous" - I think the former is just an abbreviation for the latter.

Also, here's a video of stage EX3 if you haven't seen it yet.