Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Fall Picture Madness!!
Friday, November 23, 2007
Immaterial and Missing Power
While making preparations for the feast three days away, Reimu is distracted by a strange powerful mist that is covering Gensokyo. She and many other inhabitants of Gensokyo (such as Alice and Patchouli) go to investigate.
Suika Ibuki is an oni. Although legends say all the oni are gone, Suika has decided to reunite the humans and oni by attracting them through partying. Using her special ability to spread across the land, she causes the humans and youkai to have feasts and parties. The more drunk she gets, the stronger she becomes, and she carries a gourd treasured by the oni, which never empties of sake.


Wait.. how old is she!?
Xenozip's IaMP blog explains the nature of the game pretty well:
The game generally plays like a cross between Guilty Gear and Marvel, except without all the ridiculously long dial-a-combos. However, the strong emphasis on controlling space, zoning, trapping, baiting, and momentum exists in IaMP.
The game aesthetics are rather deceptive. At first glance it appears that a bunch of chibi lolita girls "farts rainbows and sneezes pixie dust" at each other, then "shit out stars and spin around like crazy bitches on counter hits" (quotes taken from Bellreisa and Lovely_K, respectively). However, there's quite a bit more to it than just the aesthetics, actually playing it is quite a different experience.
-Xenozip's IaMP Blog
Before going into detail with the IaMP fighting system, Ill list some differences that IaMP has in regards to other fighting games of its type...
Actually, instead of listing the differences from my mind, Ill put in another quote. This time it comes from the IaMP Wiki. I was thinking about linking it but I know you guys are too lazy to click a link. That being said, I opted to quote the specific section instead of linking.
- How can I tell if this game is for me or not?
Do not play Touhou Suimusou...
- if you are averse to playing a fighting game with chibi/loli characters.
- if you are not good a spotting situational combos.
- if you go in expecting this game to play like any other fighting game.
- if you do not like the idea of not being able to kill someone by chip damage.
- if you are easily discouraged or prone to game rage.
You should play...
- if you want something different in the fighting game field.
- if you are a fan of the Touhou franchise.
- if you can wrap your mind around the concept of full-screen footsies.
- if you like being immune to chip damage deaths.
- if you enjoy fighters that are more about depth in simplicity.
- What are some basic things I should keep in mind while learning the game?
-FAQ - IaMP Wiki
- IaMP is a game of bad habits. You will develop them easily and not even recognize it, and you will have to fix them.
- It is very easy to rush that shit down in IaMP. Being able to do that in a measured and not easily escapable or counterable fashion is the difficult part.
- Movement, above all, is the most important aspect of this game. Knowing how grazing works and how you can manipulate your character'smovement to graze is essential, more than anything else.
- Very few non-situational BnBs exist in this game. Learning to spot situations and being comfortable enough with your character's moves that you can adjust the combos on the fly is important.
That explains alot I believe. IaMP is different from other fighting games because it incorporates some Touhou danmaku elements to it. When watching IaMP gameplay videos, you would often see the whole stage fill up with projectiles. This really changes some strategy while playing the game since you not only have to worry about the speed and range of melee attacks, you also have to factor in projectile cover for attacks. Its kind of hard to understand when trying to explain it with words so I instead point to IaMP videos to let you guys understand what Im talking about.
Theres also the whole spell card system. Each character has a set of spell cards that are unique to them and the player has to choose which spell card to use. Once your character has enough "energy" to use a spell card, you can declare SC by pressing 22D (down down D). When declaring, you recover some HP lost. You can then use the spell card attack by pressing 236 D (down-forward D) or 214 D (down-away D) on some occasions. You can use your SC attack until your timer hits 0 or you are out of SC to use.
I rather not explain story mode since its almost impossible, if you do try it (especially on Lunatic) then may God help you. Your enemy basically has unlimited SC. Not only that, their SC attacks simulate danmaku to the point that the whole stage will be filled with bullets.
There are 11 characters available to for play as of patch 1.11 with only Hong Meirin being the only character without a story mode. The characters are fairly balanced which is a hit or miss to some people. Personally, I get tired of seeing the same top tier characters in SSBM being used over and over again. At least in IaMP, all characters have a good chance of winning (except Patchouli vs Remilia). Of course, that means you dont see something like Pichu beating Fox, but you usually dont see something like that in tournament games.
Controls
The controls are responsive enough. The only problem is the timing of HJCs (High Jump Cancels) and combos.
You need to have very accurate timing! I cant even pull off Reimu's basic BnB (Bread and Butter [Basic]) combo of [5B 6B 623B 22C jB 236A 6D jB 236B 4D jB j5C] properly because I cannot get the timing between 6B and 623B. Hell Patchy's timing for [5A(enemy in air) 5B 236B] is pretty tight to start with.
Once you do get the timing right then you'll have an easier time playing the game since your gameplay would be smooth. Look at a couple of Patchy vs Patchy games to see what Im talking about.
Other features
Just like other Touhou games, you are able to save replay files of games played (including online games). This helps you learn from your mistakes and it also allows you to watch replays of games played in tournaments.
Online play is available with the download of Caster. Theres also a better version of Caster out there called CowCaster which has more features including instructions in English. A download is also available that allows you to "train" the CPU AI through watching replays. If you watch the right replays, you could end up with a really insane CPU to go against.
Want to change the color of the characters? Theres also a Palette Editor that changes the color of your characters.
Most of these downloads are available through the IaMP Wiki. The IaMP wiki is basically your one stop source for all things IaMP so its definitely worth the visit if your interested in the game.
IaMP Gameplay Videos
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Baazgkh2KLM (Yuyuko vs Patchouli)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=fIA6L_yWzts&feature=related (Marisa vs Sakuya)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=kKlW7bxdi-0&feature=related (Sword vs Butterflies)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RqitQxA-I6A (Remilia Lunatic Story)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=glEqdzLY2f0&feature=related (Patchy war)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=387Hf-4Sgkw&feature=related (Kansai Taikai 3rd Finals)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=82doXUWrgYQ&feature=related (Combo movie)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=y1KxdbhLU0k (Tohgeki Finals)
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Possible Anime Screening this Thursday..... sometime next week....
*****Edit....*****
Well anyway we tried and it ended up not being possible >.> anyway we'll try for next week, as for the rest of the post its still favorable if you guys help us decide what you want watch because if not so we will stick with our list....
*****Edit.... ended.*****
We have kind of narrowed it down, at least I think you could say that, most likely we will show Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (episodes 5-8 to continue our previous screening) but as we have found out last week some people might want to see other animes such as Tokyo Majin Gakuen Kenpuchou Tou or Freedon OVA or Berserk or JoJo's Bizarre Adventure or any anime you people would like to see from the previous list which TheGrape has posted.... It might end up to you people's decision on which anime we would screen if we get enough responses, majority.. not 1 or 2 person.
the link TheGrape posted
This list includes anime which me and TheGrape have recommended for you guys to see, we tried to keep this list as vague considering all the different kind of genres we could think, that one day..., well if you guys see any anime there that you guys would like to see either contact me or TheGrape, or post on the Shoutbox, or leave a comment or any other way you could think of (or as TheGrape would say "if your good enough you might able to contact us with a paper in a bottle under a seat....") well anyway yeah.. Also if you guys have anime that you think we'll be worth screening bring it
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Touhou and you
There are also 2 fighting games in the Touhou series, th7.5 Immaterial and Missing Power (東方萃夢想 Tōhō Suimusō) and th10.5 Scarlet Weather Rhapsody (東方緋想天 Tōhō Hisōten) , but thats another topic. Touhou is one of the more popular series of its genre and is very unique in a couple of ways.Gensokyo is located in the Far East (ostensibly Japan, given that many of the characters have Japanese names, and Hieda no Akyu makes various comments about Japanese settings in Perfect Memento). Long ago, it was a desolate place haunted by youkai who preyed on lost wanderers in the area. Soon exorcists were sent into the area to resolve the youkai problem, and they eventually settled in the area as a check on the youkai. As human civilization advanced elsewhere, the power of youkai began to diminish, and they chose to seal Gensokyo away from the outside world as a haven for themselves.
As a result of the seal, the isolated community developed its own civilization. As opposed to the outside world, magical and spiritual qualities prevailed over science, and while youkai and humans coexist, they still fight with each other. The only known gateway from the outside world into Gensokyo is the Hakurei Shrine, on the border of Gensokyo. The seal has weakened, however, due to the urban sprawl in the outside world, and more humans are able to wander into Gensokyo from the outside.
-Source Wikipedia(Touhou)
Lets go over a little bit of history first.
The first couple of Touhou games (th01-05) was first developed for the PC-9801 system and not much is known about them. Although they are available for play in Windows through the use of a PC-98 emulator, the characters and story of these games are relatively unknown to most Touhou fans, including me. It is only when Touhou was being created for Windows did the Western fanbase for Touhou grew; starting with th06 Embodiment of Scarlet Devil (東方紅魔郷 Tōhō Kōmakyō).
One thing that makes it stick out from other danmaku is the HUGE variety of characters it has. You normally dont expect detailed characters and story from a danmaku game but Touhou says otherwise. In each game there are probably around 3 or more new characters introduced which keeps the Touhou character list constantly growing. Each character also has her own unique personality that each individual character in Touhou has a sub fanbase of their own.
Notice I said the word her and not they. This is probably another reason for Touhou's uniqueness in that almost all the characters in the game are female except for Rinnosuke and Youmu's grandfather. Of course, there are probably other males out there in Gensokyo considering theres a human village in there, but none of them are important enough to be noted in the games.
Of all the characters in the game, the main ones are Reimu Hakurei, the shine maiden, and Marisa Kirisame, the witch. They are both playable on all the Windows games (except th9.5 Shoot the Bullet) and are the most popular characters in the series.
Now that Im done explaining the characters, Ill start discussing the games.
I know that most of you have played a danmaku/shmup game at one point in your life. You probably remember it as the game where you play as a Blackhawk helicopter and you dodge the bullets from tanks/planes/turrets while collecting power-ups in the field to increase your firepower. Sounds familiar right? Well thats basically Touhou in a nutshell, but Touhou is very different from that in terms of gameplay.
To quote a random comment on a Touhou gameplay video:
Its like dodging rain, but instead of water its rape.
Touhou is HARD and I cannot emphasize the word hard enough. There are four difficulty levels in Touhou: Easy, Normal, Hard, and Lunatic. Never in my life has Hard accurately described the level of difficulty in a game. If Hard is not enough to make you pull out hair from your head, theres also Lunatic. The bullets in these modes are so compressed that in order to survive without the use of a bomb, you must have a complete accuracy.
Basically, you go through a stage shooting enemies in the way and dodging their attacks. Once you get to the end of a stage, you face the stage boss. The stage boss generally shoots down densely packed bullets at you and each stage boss has her own style. Each boss has multiple bars of HP and bosses further on have more HP bars. When depleting a complete bar, the boss goes through "Spell Card" mode and uses a more unique and harder bullet pattern against you. The attacks get more complicated as the bars deplete in a last ditch effort to defeat you and you are awarded bonuses if you can beat the spell card without loosing a life/using a bomb.
The presence of a huge amount of bullets in the screen might look overwhelming but they could be avoided with a good enough accuracy. The thing is, in Touhou your hitbox is only 5x5 pixels (which could be seen when using "Slow" mode (hold shift + direction)) while your character sprite is larger. That means bullets could be technically touching your character but it will not kill unless the bullet hitbox touches your character's 5x5 hitbox.
Difficulty-wise, it looks like the difficulty significantly increases each game. Embodiment of Scarlet Devil Lunatic mode is less difficult when compared to the hell that is Mountain of Faith Lunatic mode. Watching Youtube gameplay videos is different from playing the game. If it looks hard when watching it on youtube, its probably alot harder when playing the game yourself.
Gameplay videos:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RC1fKsO62Qo
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ac03lFINrtA
http://youtube.com/watch?v=oAzQBKzH5nY
http://youtube.com/watch?v=aK1LD_YH4rk
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hHmzO2RI1fs
Edit: I just noticed that the sound quality in some of the videos is horrible (had comp on mute when posting). Ill edit this with better videos later
The music in the games are pretty good. I feel that the background music goes very well with the mood of the current stage. In a whole, while leaving out the difficulty, playing Touhou is a very enjoyable experience and you guys would probably have fun playing it too whether or not your a fan of the danmaku genre. In fact, it was Touhou that made me love the danmaku genre and you might start liking the genre also once you give Touhou a try.
Other than the games, Touhou also has many doujin works associated with it whether they're both official or fan work. There are also different music tracks based on Touhou music from artists such as Cool&Create and IOSYS.
If your interested in getting the games then either email me or talk to me at school. Ill go over the individual games in depth at my other posts. Ill probably start with the fighting games (Immaterial and Missing power / Scarlet Weather Rhapsody).
For more Touhou info go to Touhou Wiki.
Friday, November 9, 2007
First Post :). A nice Comparison between three Greater known animes : Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece
Finally some real fighting in Bleach will begin. I myself checked the newest chapter out a few minutes ago, and a good page I believe:
Now for my comparison on how the end of these arcs will be good. Bleach, the fighting so far looks quite good, probably a few suprises. however, as for a BIG important chunk of plot? not really. the fight against an unreleased grimjow was far better in my opinion.
One Piece now. I see that Luffy WILL lose his big powerup because the pirates that gave him the shadows to power him up stated it would onyl last 10 minutes. As for an actual permanent powerup, he will probably get a bit physically stronger, and maybe develop a new gear ( gear 4). The fight with Oz, the super huge ZOmbie controlled by Shikibukai member Moria, is going to be good apparently.
Last, but definitely not least, is Naruto. this Arc seems almost like it could be its only seperate part ( part 1 as pre timeskip and part 2 started after the Kakashi gaiden ended). as for how it can end, thats really hard. Madara is doubtfully him, but still, many people tihnk he is obito. I will luagh when kishi reveals him to be Madara. o wait, HE ALREADY DID. some people never learn. anyway, naruto was given the key to his seal, and it was stated many things about the kyuubi and such. AS for how this arc ends, its going to be ENORMOUS. Jiraiya will die ( WILL, Kishimoto WILL make him die for purposes of Plot and inferiority to Pein). Naruto might be able to finally control not only the 3rd tailed stated but even the 4th, new jutsu development ( maybe he can maintain and even throw the fuuton: rasenSHURIKEN ( its like it was meant to be thrown).
currently, I vote for One Piece ( since it will have a great fight with Oz). overall, I vote for Naruto for the ending of the current arc. that was my super long review, probably with plot holes all over the place. comments with your opinions/reviews are accepted and definitely recommended.
for anyone wondering, these were taken from the chapters at : http://www.onemanga.com/
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Today's Screening
Considering we started screening at 3:10, 23 people is seriously a good number. Hopefully, we will be expecting more people to come at the next screening since we will start at 2:10. Feel free to post about any comments regarding today's screening in the shoutbox or as a comment to this post. We want to know what you guys enjoy watching while we feed you new material so comments and suggestions would be great.
Next week's screening is still pointing towards the second chapter of Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (5-8) unless there is any objections before screening day. Other ideas for next week's screening include Freedom OVA and this anime who's name I forgot. If you have more ideas for next week's screening then please post in here or in the shoutbox since we dont know what you think unless you tell us.
Anyways thanks for coming to today's screening and I hope to see you guys again in the next one!
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
First Screening
What are we going to screen tomorrow? It was first going to be Hellsing, but after some discussion, it has been changed to Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. Personally, I like starting with Higurashi as a tribute for Rika, this year's Saimoe winner (Saimoe topic on another post). Higurashi isnt such a bad anime to start with anyways since you Naruto/Bleach fans might enjoy the plot. Hope you guys enjoy tomorrow's screening and if you want to add any anime to the list then feel free to post it in the shoutbox!
Explain the schedule plz...
The list is compiled from anime we believe to be top rated and highly recommended. We means me and Andre, and we feel that the anime listed there will be enjoyed by you guys. We ordered the screenings through genre mostly. Since we want to let you guys know that we do like Narutard/Bleach type action anime, we are showing those types at the start. We will not show all of them but we will show a good amount at the start. Then we slowly move into other genres that might interest you guys. Later on in the year we will be showing anime on our (me and Andre) end of the spectrum.. which is basically near the opposite of Naruto/Bleach/w.e. This is done so that by the end of the year, you guys will have been exposed to a huge variety of anime out there, and hopefully find which anime you like individually.
For the ADD impaired person, this is the basic arrangement:
Full Metal Panic (Action)
Shana (Action/Romance)
Pani Poni Dash (Comedy)
Nanoha (Shounen/Shoujo combo Drama)
Chobits (Romance/Comedy)
Kanon (Romance/Drama)
Of course action will be thrown around in the middle also for the hardcore/stubborn action fans.
Why no Naruto/Bleach in there? 1) Theyre on Cartoon Network/Adult Swim to watch. 2) They are easily available on Youtube. 3) I feel that we should not bother wasting time on ridiculously long anime. If everyone has seen it/know about it, then its pointless to screen. The point of anime screening is to expose members to different types of anime so that you could further appreciate anime. To limit screenings to mainstream genres destroy the purpose of screening and limits our members to limited genres (Yes.. Im talking about the Narutards out there).
Enough of my rants now so Ill just leave you guys to enjoy the screening. BTW to posters - Please post something! One of the ways to communicate to club members is through the blog. If you want your ideas to be heard then please post. We want an active club this year and I feel that posting on the blog generates a good amount of activity. Post about anything anime related whether it be news, reviews, or rants about something. I dont care what it is on as long as its appropriate.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Party Aftermath
I really wanted to put the emphasis on the video game tournament and the anime screening. Unfortunately for the screening, we didnt get the huge screen the theater offered. Also, the DVD player we used the DVD on sucked.. really bad. Thats why some parts of the anime got cut off at random times. If you were wondering what we were showing, its Lucky Star. Its a pretty interesting and funny anime to watch but there are alot of references in there that many people probably didnt get. I especially liked episode 12 since it mirrors some of the things we did at Anime Boston.
The video game tournament went pretty smooth. The SSBM tournament could have been better since it took forever to get round 1 done. The main problem was getting the people to play. Not only that, the people who won never reported it to the booth so they were surprised that they didnt get in the next round.
We will try to organize both the Halo 3 and SSBM tourney better than before. The problem was that we didnt expect to get such a huge number of people participating. In fact, the video game tournaments went so well that we are planning more tournaments in the future. Back then the only tournaments were done in the Halloween/Christmas party and the End-of-the-Year party. The thing is, we didnt have any tournaments in the past 2 years! I really felt that the video game tournament is a good way to get people together so we were seriously bent on making it possible.
The art contest went pretty well. The only problem is that not much people knew there was an art contest. We barely got any word around in school and there were no announcements made about it. Hopefully we get to advertise the next art contest better than we did for this one. The quality of the art we got was great and I hope we get more from other artists out there.
Now might be the time your wondering about who won. Whats funny is that seniors dominated all the contests. I know there were a number of very good people in the Halo tournament but they ended up having to go in the middle of it. Hopefully they get to stay in the next tournament.
Winners are..
SSBM
1st Paulo Talion (12)
2nd Chris Marino (12)
3rd Mike Chang (10)
Halo 3
1st Brian Murphy (12)
2nd Andrew Pedicino (12)
3rd Lance (..?) (?)
Art Contest
1st Dorina (..?) (12)
2nd Naaila Hassan (11)
Correct me if Im wrong on any of them. I know the results for SSBM since I won in it. Not so sure in Halo though.
Feel free to comment in on the party and add your suggestions in the shoutbox on how to make it better. We are always looking for ways on how to improve it and your input would really help.
As for screenings, we will start having them soon so check out the blog for info on what anime we are going to screen. Again, feel free to give us ideas on which anime we should screen. Use the shoutbox or talk to us in school.
On other news... today is the finals for Saimoe 2007 with Rika vs Nagi. I encourage you to vote for which one you think deserves 1st place for being the most moe. This is probably going to affect which anime we are going to screen also so get a good start by knowing a little bit about the shows where Rika and Nagi come from.