Shmups on the 360

[FortNinety]

Dave, check your mailbox cuz my copy just arrived! And I got the copy with the DLC card! Sweet. But it's no nice looking, I almost don't want to use it!

[dmauro]

Just got it. Does NOT have the DLC card. Time to start sending the angry emails. >___<

[FortNinety]

And I definitely ordered AFTER you, correct? Damn...

[dmauro]

Judging by what I've read on the forums, I think people who ordered earlier were LESS likely to get the DLC. I sent them a pretty stern email. Looking forward to what they have to say.

[dmauro]

Black Label is OUT NOW! You can get it with a US account and US points!

[isfet]

oh man, that sucks dude.  sorry to hear it.  hopefully they'll reimburse you in some way, though who knows.

anyway, i plan to get BL as soon as i get home.  so, essentially, with Black Label, there's not much point to playing 1.5, is there? unless you just happen to like that version, i mean.

[dmauro]

I don't think I'll be going back. It's easier than 1.5 because they give you more bullets which means more slowdown, and you get the sound effect, and in Original you only swap every 2k. But if I want a tougher experience once I 1CC BL Original, I'll probably go to Maniac instead of 1.5 Original.

Dear David,

Thank you for contacting Play-Asia.com.

We are sorry to hear about the situation. For the 'Mushihimesama Futari
Ver 1.5' game, we haven't been notified by the supplier that the download
card is included before the item is in stock. We just shipped all the
stock randomly when we received the stock. However, we are informed that
some of the stock included the download code after they are shipped.

We are regret that your order does not included the download code.
Unforturnately, we don't have any extra download code available since the
existing stock are all without download code.

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

Best regards,

Kasel
Play-Asia.com

[isfet]

well, at least they got back to you pretty quickly via e-mail.  that sucks.  i can understand how you feel; it's like when i preordered the TE stick for SF4 and there was so much doubt as to whether or not i'd actually get it.  and then when i kept calling and asking the store about it, they said they didn't have it when they actually did ("oh, i saw the box, but i didn't know what it was").

[dmauro]

Just came so close to 1CC'ing BL. I got to Larsa with 3 lives and somehow completely blew it. It was ridiculous, I was having such a good run in Stages 4 and 5 and then I just wiped out at Larsa hard. 400 million points.

edit: Got the 1CC. Only 350 million points though. Downloading BL introduces a weird stuttering problem to the game that people on the shmups forum confirmed. It happens randomly, only a few times in a full playthrough. It's not too bad, but it is a little annoying. If you're content with 1.5 then hold off until there is a fix for it, but I certainly don't regret downloading it.

[dmauro]

I decided to give Arrange Ultra a spin, and the last boss is surprisingly hard. They throw the TLB into the mix too and I didn't manage to beat it. Where are the high scores at? I'm mostly playing BL Maniac right now, but I'm also trying to get a BL Original 1CC that tops 400 million. I don't know how I got that score because now I just keep getting around 360 million.

[FortNinety]

I mentioned this already in my latest blog post, but I'm sure it was easy to miss, so I'll ask here:

Got the Futari DLC card but haven't used it. Sorta just wanna hold onto it since it's pretty, plus I figure I can sell it as a collector's item down the road if I needed the cash. So instead, wanted to buy Black Label with my own points, since you guys seemed to indicate that it's possible.

Well, when I go to the screen that supposedly allows one to do so, it lists the content as free. But when I choose confirm, I get an error message stating that I can't do that. Huh? Even if I wanted to use the DLC card, how would I even input the info? Other than going out to the main menu and choosing redeem code. Anyone know what I'm talking about?

[dmauro]

From the dashboard, go into My Games -> Mushi Futari -> DLC -> It's right there.

[dmauro]

And PA agreed to give me $10 for not getting me a copy with DLC, so they're back to being alright in my book. Let me know if you want to sell that DLC card. I'm not going to mention is on the shmups forum though because PA would probably hate me if I did.

[FortNinety]

Gonna give it a shot in a bit, but next issue: what's this about slowdown? Does it affect all modes?

[dmauro]

Are you referring to the stutter where it will occasionally freeze up for about a half a second? It stopped doing that to me when I installed the game to the hard drive. It's pretty annoying, but never got me killed. It's not super frequent, and not everyone is having the problem.

As for slowdown, that's there on purpose, although the word on the street is that Black Label has a little more slowdown than the PCB, enough that high scores will probably will have two separate score boards (PCB vs. 360).