Otogi Matsuri signed - Joker Jun + Btooom! rancor lot

Shmups forum gentleman rancor has become my go to guy in Japan and over the last few months I have been picking up superplays, games and other stuff to satiate my gaming palate. This lot of goodies arrived about a month or two ago and had rancor's trademark Japanese Kit-Kats and hand wipes from game centers in Japan. I finally got a copy of the official Akai Katana superplay by Cave and its pretty awesome- also pretty strange as they used the X360 port for all of the three versions of the game.

I also got the INH The Aces High Raiden superplay DVD, which is fantastic. It covers runs in Raiden, Raiden II and Raiden DX as well as having two CD's full of music from the series and "rare tracks".

But the cream of the crop out of this lot was the Joker Jun mangas. Now, I have just started in on reading a few series and I'm digging manga stuff a lot at the moment. Junya Inoue has to be one of my favorite game artists of all time and I decided to take a look at his manga work via some scanlations on the web and got totally sucked in. His Latest, Btooom! is like a combination of the series Lost and the game Halo and I won't say any more for fear of spoiling it. Check it out, really good stuff.

Otogi Matsuri was Joker's first manga, and it has a lot of characters from ESPrade and Guwange and is about teenagers saving the world from traditional Japanese evil spirits and I dig it. The art, of course, is fantastic. This issue I got has been signed by Joker Jun himself and has one of the characters from the series exclaiming "Fight" - which is pretty bad ass. It's a welcome addition to my collection and at somepoint here, I have to frame it and give it the treatment it deserves.

Big thanks to rancor!

Akai Katana vs Akai Katana Limited Edition - sven666 unboxing/comparison video + SIN LE White mode Stage 1 & 2

Normally, I do not watch unboxing videos, but this one is pretty cool in that its a stupidly rare Akai Katana LE version pcb, which was sold only through the Cave JP shop at a cost of about $2,500 USD. It was made as a consumer only kit and as such, is set to free play right off the bat.

It's an updated version of the arcade version and comes with a "White Mode" and "Red Mode" as selectable, where the Red mode is harder and enemies spawn suicide bullets. Both versions also have no limit on the hit counter whereas the the normal arcade version stopped at 256. Below is a video of SIN running through the first two stages of the LE version.



This will probably be the most expensive and rare pcb Cave has ever mass produced and as such, both videos are a rare chance to see such a unique release in Cave's catalog. I'd be lying if I said it would be somthing I would never shell out that cash for as I do tend to like rarities and this game is all I have been playing on my 360 at the moment.

Akai Katana - Cave - 2010 - Preview

For those of you that haven't seen it yet, here is a 15-minute long video of Cave's newest effort Akai Katana.

The almost decade old Military-style of graphics come back, with no lolis in sight. It's a horizontal prospective, much like Progear with graphics similar to that of Ketsui. The scoring system still seems a bit tough to pick up - at least from this video. It looks like a bullet deflecting/absorbing into gold kinda thing. Could be pretty addictive. I'm just stoked on the graphics! The bullet spreads are similiar to Futari and Guwange, a pretty cool mix, with some of the organic-ness of Ketsui.

I'm pretty excited to see more videos of this, but reports from Japan say most op's are waiting for the 1.5 or BL version as seems customary with Cave's newer efforts.