Other tidbits: M2 makes a PSA, Sisters Royale goes west etc.

M2 wish to make it clear that their new release of CAVEs ESP.Ra.De should have the moniker "Psy" as opposed to "Psi".

Sisters Royale, the Shikigami-esque game available for both Switch and PS4 in Japan is heading west on both platforms as Sisters Royale: Five Sisters Under Fire! with a January 30th release date.

Retro Cores Battle of the Ports tackles 1942:


Run'n'Gun Valfaris is getting its Japanese debut on both PlayStation 4 and Switch on January 23rd.


Bare Knuckle Development details where the inspiration for their awkwardly-named new shmup Super Mega Space Blaster Special Turbo came from.

It's chapter 5. The Dreamcast STG Chronicles continues

Hey, I helped fund this, all you have to do is watch!

Another nice episode of what is shaping up to be (as promised!) the definitive chronicling of the Dreamcast library of shmups/STGs.

Surprise! Sisters Royale released on JP Switch eShop

Alfa System, the makers of the Castle of Shikigami series of shmups, just surprised everyone and released a new shmup on the japanese Switch eShop; Sisters Royale. It's a vertical shooter with (now obligatory) tate support.

The story:

A new vertical scroll shooting game makes its debut in a battle royale where five sisters compete for one man!

Choose from one of five individual sisters and use standard attacks, spirit summons, and bombs to defeat enemies.

Play with exciting systems such as the “Tension Bonus System”—which increases the amount of points acquired and coins dropped depending on the distance between the player, enemies, and enemy bullets—and “Power Shots,” which turns the standard attack into a powerful strike!

Additionally, “Secret Fairies” that doubles the increase rate of the Tension Bonus System for a limited amount of time are hidden throughout each stage.

Use these systems to clear each stage with a high score!

Castle of Shikigami gets a big (free) update + scoring contest!

Degica games just rolled out a press release about a big update to Castle of Shikigami:

The team has been working hard on improving the game and thanks to your feedback we have a large update to release today. The details are below, but we still have more to come, so stay tuned!

Update Details

• Added Slowdown option
  Accessed via the Options, this can be turned on or off. The slowdown is as close as we can get to the original console releases, but will vary depending on your PC.
• Added Practice Mode
  Accessed via the main menu. New stages are opened once you've reached them in the main game. Each character's practice stages are independent, so unlocking stages for one character will not unlock them for the others. Scores are local only.
• Fixed leaderboard issues
  Without getting into technical discussions, the problem here is that Shikigami's scores are larger than Steam's leaderboards can cope with, so the approach we took was to divide the scores uploaded to Steam by 10, while leaving the in-game scores faithful to the original game.
• Changed Extend scores to match original game
  
  • Very Easy: First 100,000,000 and every further 100,000,000 points
  • Easy: First 100,000,000 and every further 200,000,000 points
  • Normal: First 150,000,000 and every further 300,000,000 points
  • Hard: First 200,000,000 and every further 400,000,000 points
  • Very Hard: First 250,000,000 and every further 400,000,000 points

As always, if you have any issues post-update, please post them here.

Thanks, the Shikigami team.

The scoring contest is described like this:

Score Contest

To celebrate Shikigami's update today, we're having another high score contest and to make sure everyone can take part it's very simple!

Rules:

1. Leave difficulty on default setting (Normal)
2. Play Practice 1-1 with any character and record a score (you need to complete the stage)
3. Take a screenshot with F12 of the Practice screen showing your score
4. Post the capture to Twitter during the contest period with the official hashtag #castleofshikigami and a mention to us (@degigames)
5. Multiple entries OK, but only one score per user will be accepted.  

**If you can't locate the screen captures, open your Steam Library, right click on Castle of Shikigami and select 'View Screenshots' and follow the prompts to navigate to the correct folder.

Contest Dates:

Start: Oct 4, 2017 7:00pm (Thursday)

Finish: Oct 9, 2017 7:00pm (Sunday) 

Prizes:

1st place: A signed Shikigami poster

2nd place: A Shikigami poster

3rd place: The soundtrack (Steam key) 

**We'll also be picking two random winners and awarding them a prize too. 

Small Print

In order to deliver physical prizes, we will need to be able to contact you by email, so please check back at the end of the contest.

In order to send the posters, we will need a postal address and name.

Castle of Shikigami (Steam) review

So not the best of releases, then. Well, we can always hope for future patches.

Shikigami is on Steam

Degica has now released Castle of Shikigami on Steam. It's 17% off as an introductory offer right now, go get it!

Shikigami comes to... Steam?!

Ok, they had me fooled. I was all but certain that this would be rolling onto PlayStation 4.

But Degica just announced that Steam is the platform and I'm not even mad. ;)

The date is June 15th. Be ready!

Degica website announcement: Castle of Shikigami

Straight from the horses mouth:

That’s right, the next shmup release from Degica Games will be Castle of Shikigami!

Congrats to @AlbertZero on Twitter and Michael Anderson on Facebook for figuring it out in our Mystery Clue contest! And after only one clue, too! They’ll each get a key for the game for their amazing prognostication.

So what is Castle of Shikigami?

A bizarre string of serial murders has occurred in Japan. Each victim was killed slowly, over an entire day. The 32nd victim has just been found. And you are going to stop it. Via mystical powers and shoot’em up gameplay. (There are very few problems in video games that can’t be solved this way.) Each of the playable characters has their own unique shooting mechanics while sharing the tension system, which rewards risky play with stronger shots.

Castle of Shikigami has never gotten a proper EN release, with only a PS2 release redubbed Mobile Light Force 2 with all the story pulled out making it outside of Japan, so this will be the first time ever that you can experience the full game in English! And with all six characters having a separate story, that is a lot that you were missing out on.

Be on the lookout for more info about Castle of Shikigami in the coming weeks!

Shikigami no Shiro getting re-released

Degica Games ran a short contest before announcing that their next shmup release will be Shikigami no Shiro or Castle of Shikigami, the original game which saw a botched port (for PS2) known in the west as Mobile Light Force 2 for some reason.

I'm not the biggest fan of the series and platform hasn't been announced yet but who am I trying to kid? I'll get it.