#uploading shmup dialogue

[meiizumi]

Castle of Shikigami: An informal rant nobody asked for about my most obscure obsession to date

STOP i spent like 2 days writing this post and im only posting it on tumblr because it’s the one website i’m a member of that can hold the most text. i wanted to infodump somewhere...... read this to learn something i guess (´･ω･`)

Bad voice acting is the Peak of comedy to me, and while I was looking for something to laugh at one day, I found this game called Castle Shikigami 2 for the PS2. The US version of the game's dialogue is rife with machine translated text that makes no sense, and awkward voice acting to boot. They even have voice actors saying the wrong lines, voice actors speaking implied commands, and a few voice lines are left in Japanese. Apparently, Roger Craig Smith (Sonic the Hedgehog's current voice actor) was in this game but I don't think he's even credited?! I think I know which character he voiced but I’m not exactly sure.

The history behind this game’s localization is REALLY weird. Castle of Shikigami/Shikigami no Shiro was originally an arcade bullet hell shoot em up game. The series was created by Alfa System and it was one of Alfa System’s main IPs. There are three main shmup installments and a text adventure game for the PS2, Nanayozuki Gensoukyoku. Nanayozuki was practically fanservice for whatever number of CoS fans there were back then. Each main game in the series was originally an arcade cabinet, but they were all ported to PC and home consoles. In CoS 2′s case, it came out on the PS2, Gamecube, and Dreamcast, but only the PS2 version got localized. The western publisher, XS Games specializes in publishing quality budget titles such as “Bass Pro Shops: The Strike” for the Wii. I theorize they didn’t care too much about the actual content of CoS 2 and were more focused on selling a game quickly for a low price, so they just machine translated it and adjusted a few things. If you’re wondering if Castle of Shikigami 1 was also translated this badly, the answer is No. XS Games instead removed all the dialogue from the western release of CoS 1, and released it with the title “Mobile Light Force 2″.

“Wait, what do you mean ‘Mobile Light Force TWO’ if Castle of Shikigami 1 is the first game in the series?” If you want to know what Mobile Light Force 1 was, it’s GUNBIRD; another shmup game, but by a completely different developer than Castle of Shikigami. I don’t know why they did that. What really kills me though is that both MLF 1 and 2 use the same boxart, which is COMPLETELY unrelated to the actual contents of either game. AFJQHJFOKLJFDS look at this

There’s more hilarity behind Mobile Light Force that isn’t hard to find so you can search that up if you’re interested. But thankfully, Castle of Shikigami 3's Wii edition got more of a proper localization by Aksys Games.

Now I would bluntly say something like “stan castle of shikigami” but:

1. This series’ lore is insanely convoluted. It’s an essential part of this expansive fictional universe referred to as “Mumei Sekaikan” (I don’t know what this translates to in English) where there’s like, 7 different parallel worlds. There’s more obscure ass games and manga that are tied to this universe, and I think there’s even a tabletop RPG made based off it. Have you heard of “Gunparade March”? Most likely you haven’t; it’s an obscure video game made by Alfa System that also got adapted into an anime, and I feel it can be described as Mechas x Persona. One of the characters in CoS 2 is just one of the GPM characters going undercover to find her senpai who traveled to the CoS world. Or something like that. The 7-world universe isn’t explicitly talked about in the game but they make so many references to it without defining anything that it’s like you Must know about it. There is NO documentation in English about the Mumei Sekaikan I could find on the internet, although there is a wiki in Japanese where I got a ton of knowledge from (GOOGLE TRANSLATE IS MY TRUSTED FRIEND) I feel like I might be THE person in the United States who has the most knowledge on the Mumei Sekaikan, and I could go on another tangent talking about what I know so far (and who this one specific dude Shibamura Yuuri is) but I won’t.

2. The writing isn’t excellent and can be pretty Unwoke ™; the first game came out in 2001 and the third game came out in 2005 if that gives you a sense on what era these writers were in. As far as the games dialogue goes, the characters appear kind of flat. CoS 1 and 2 Kotaro (i refuse to use the official “Kohtaro”) is stupid and driven by JUSTICE to a point where it’s annoying. I can’t tell if Hyuga is trying to be a Ladies Man in CoS 2 and 3. Kim, a religious tae kwon do instructor, spends CoS 2 thinking about how he should atone for his sins, then he turns himself into jail at the end. Sayo’s backstory is that she was a shrine maiden raised as a “human weapon” to have no emotions and her only goal in life was to kill god and then die, something like that. However, after CoS 1, she gets a crush on Kotaro because he actually treats her like a human and Of course that’s what you’d expect from the main teen girl and boy in the series. In CoS 3, Sayo's character is mostly played out to be a major tsundere for Kotaro even though surprisingly HIS character in this game changed a ton compared to 1 and 2 (he had to kill an illusion of his older brother, who he learned actually died earlier, and now he has to kill an illusion of his childhood sweetheart... damb that shit sucks :/). He’s still stupid though

There’s a gag in CoS 2 that I can’t clearly remember where it’s like, Niigi makes Sayo and Fumiko, who are both romantically interested in Kotaro, think that he’s only into little girls? Meanwhile, Fumiko’s magic goes wrong and her appearance turns to that of a child though in response she’s like “hee hee maybe Kotaro will like this”. basically more On-Brand early 2000′s anime unwokeness than average. Speaking of Fumiko, she’s a 400+ year old militaristic witch who constantly teases Kotaro (who’s like 16 or 17) and she wants to marry him for his magical potential since he’s like one of the candidates for becoming God??? From the official CoS 3 character descriptions, “Her hobby is to steal the men from other women. Her second hobby is trampling upon people.” She canonically stole her stepmother’s husband from her stepmother (the 3rd boss of CoS 3). I don’t get how that shit would have worked

3. The game itself is HARD af but to be fair I’m a scrub gamer. I can’t get past stage 3 on easy difficulty without continuing. Yes i bought CoS 1 on Steam, Yes it has a port on steam i feel like i should have mentioned this earlier

4. Besides CoS 1 having a port on Steam, CoS 2 and 3 might be hard to obtain legally. The poorly translated CoS 2 was apparently super cheap back then, but since it’s an old game, its value might’ve increased. When I tried looking up prices for English CoS 3, all the listings were like at least $40 and being broke I wouldn’t want to spend more than $29 for a Wii game in 2019... honestly I just emulated CoS 2. shout out to PCSX2

Last month I was desperate, bored enough, and deep enough in the Shikigami rabbit hole that I tried to find the manga based off of it online. The CoS manga only tells the events of the first two games so I still don’t really get anything about CoS 3, like who Mihee, Batu, and Emilio are supposed to be. However, the plot events also differ. For example, Roger Sasuke exists as a character in CoS 3 but in the manga he literally Dies. There���s 11 total volumes of this; 3 volumes dedicated to CoS 1 and the latter 8 (the “Twisted Castle arc”) dedicated to CoS 2. Only the very first 3 chapters were scanlated to English all the way in 2011. Fortunately, I did find the entire manga uploaded though............... in CHINESE. So you know what I did? I “read” the entire thing using my phone’s Google Translate OCR app to take pictures of each page and comprehend the translations. Of course I still don’t understand CRAP because of the Mumei Sekaikan jargon + machine translation but I understood enough to get emotionally attached to some of the characters. I wish I hadn’t. At least through the manga I learned that the characters DO have some depth and pre-established relationships. For instance, the reason why Roger Sasuke became a ninja is because when he first landed in Japan as a kid, he was getting bullied or something and he didn’t know Japanese then Kotaro saw this and told the bullies to stop. Then after Roy /sorry i mean Roger learned that he was set to home-stay with the Kugas in the first place, he decided to dedicate his life to Japan in order to protect Kotaro back. I think. DO U SEE HOW ABSURD THIS SHIT IS Anyway Nanayozuki takes place between the second and third games and sets things up for CoS 3. There’s a full playthrough of it uploaded to YouTube and I think it contains a lot of juicy lore, but it’s just too much to go over with Shitty Google Translate OCR. There’s also Shikigami no Shiro novels which apparently contain the most backstory, but I have a 0% chance of finding these online for free. Not to mention that these would ALSO be too much effort to Google Translate.

in conclusion: You don’t HAVE to play Castle of Shikigami. Like, I’m not gonna recommend it for the content, but if you love shmups and are looking for a shmup game you haven’t heard of then I will recommend it for the gameplay (old touhou mutuals assemble theres a POWER-UP-BY-GRAZE MECHANIC). I’ve counted like 4 total fans outside of Japan that like this series for the story, and I don’t think that number is going to increase because I doubt CoS 2 will ever get retranslated and ported. I just want you to know that this series exists and that there’s a ton of wacky shit behind it besides the bad Castle Shikigami 2 dub. also if someone knows enough japanese or chinese and has an INKLING of interest in this series umm talk to me and help me decipher stuff

I‘m kinda sad that the series is pretty much Dead though. This is the most recent piece of official Castle of Shikigami art I could find, and this was for the 2018 New Year. The next most recent piece of official CoS art I found was also drawn by the character designer Sonoda Miku all the way in January 2008, commemorating the end of the CoS manga serialization. Alfa System released a spiritual sequel to Castle of Shikigami on the Japanese Switch eShop called Sisters Royale, with character designs I think are still by Sonoda. By “spiritual sequel” I mean that it has some of the EXACT same shot types as CoS and the same mechanic where grazing bullets increases your power and score. This is the closest we’ll get to a Shikigami no Shiro 4. I wonder what the business decision behind that game was but it actually looks like fun and I want to play it so OK Go off i guess

[asumplicity]

NieR: Automata - game diary pt. 1

Hey. I've felt like doing something with the games I play for a while. Like creating some kind of content with them, written or video or whatever. Recording and uploading let's plays to Youtube or something. But that wasn't really my thing. Just writing reviews seemed boring to me, too. So I decided I'll do game diaries. I started playing NieR: Automata yesterday. I'll do a write-up of my day 1 experience. Full spoilers ahead.

I honestly was really excited for what was expecting me in NieR: Automata. I looked at the series and knew what kind of genre it was, that it was made in Japan and some of the history around it. I hadn't really looked at much more than trailers and Wikipedia articles for any of the games though. I didn't know how the actual gameplay would go, what kind of story it was or anything. All the actual info that was known to me was that it was supposedly good, the main characters were called "2B" and "9S" and there were mech enemies with kinda cute looking faces (I find them fucking adorable for some reason), so I decided I would want to give it a try.

(Just for the info: I’m playing the game with Japanese audio, English subtitles and on Normal difficulty.)

I jumped in. The game didn't give me a lot of time to breathe. First thing I get is a white screen and a female voice talking to me. "Everything that lives is designed to end. We are perpetually trapped in a never-ending spiral of life and death. Is this a curse? Or some kind of punishment? I often think about the god who blessed us with this cryptic puzzle and wonder if we'll ever have the chance to kill him."

Well that's unsettling. Here I am, not knowing a thing and some unknown voice gives me that. Stating life as something like a curse and wanting to kill their creator. Alright then. I wasn’t expecting that, but I was already getting excited. The game goes on to start with a fun to play and decently made shmup sequence, which I didn't even know the game had any of, in which my allies just died like flies and I got left alone. Five allies. Just wiped away. They all got one shotted by some huge scary laser. Did I already say it all felt unsettling to me? I wasn't prepared for anything the game threw at me to that point.

Eventually, it settled down a little, when my flying mech-thingy was destroyed and I was left on foot. That's what I actually was kinda prepared for. Seeing my character and fighting on foot. I encountered the mechs with the cute looking faces and killed 'em. I felt how I wasn't ready to take in the combat system yet and took hits all over the place. Since there was auto-use of healing items when you got low hp it was all good so far though. I got through my first on-foot fighting sequence and got to meet 9S. He’s a polite and really chill dude imo. Before moving on I ran in circles, admiring the scenery for about 5 minutes. Everything looked nice. It was some kinda factory and some things looked kinda broken and everything, but I really enjoyed the atmosphere and I‌ still liked the looks of everything.

I moved on, ready to face and kill more mechs and complete my mission, which apparently was to find and destroy some "Goliath". I figured "Goliath" would translate to something like "real fucking big machine" and I got a destination marker on my map, which I supposed would be where the fight will take place. Every fight on the way was rather clunky on my part. I tried to get used to the game's mechanics and how they worked and took a lot of damage and used up a bunch of items in the meantime. I already noticed how there were a few alternative paths to take, which rewarded me with items, if I saw and took them. The game felt really immersive to me, I really got into the atmosphere and everything that was going on. Not much before I reached my first destination, I saw birds and a patch of green and when the birds flew away 2B slowed down and in disbelief mumbled "Are those..?" and 9S was like "You mean the birds? Yeah, there are more plants and animals here than there used to be" and I was feeling that moment.

I arrived at my destination. I had thought right. A boss fight took place. At this point, let me mention how much I like the music. Even in fights before that boss I already was lifted up by the music, featuring very distinct vocals and instrumentals which I really enjoy. It's hard for me to describe. Go give it a listen if you're interested in music, because it's fairly interesting (and good) music imo. Anyway, I died miserably after two giant sawblades hit me like 20 times in 5 attacks, because everything was way too much for me. Then, the game returned me to the main menu. I thought "wow, that looked quite hard. Weird it returned me to the main menu. But I'll restart at some kind of checkpoint for sure, right?" Let me tell you, I was wrong. I got returned to the very start, with the voice telling me how everything is designed to end and the shmup sequence. I looked at the time. I had played for like 40-45 minutes. I closed the game, mad, googling if that's actually what's supposed to happen, since the PC port, as I had noticed, did have some problems. Luckily nothing was spoiled storywise, but it was confirmed that that's what's supposed to happen.

I was pissed. I was going to go back to that guy and beat him up real bad. I jumped back in. The shmup sequence's controls came to me quite intuitively on the first run already, so that went equally good. When I got into the first fight on foot I noticed how it went much better than the first time. My determination to go and beat up the guy certainly helped with the speed I went through. Within 15-20 minutes I was at the same point I was at before, again fighting the boss. The sawblades-phase I died at before went flawless, if I recall correctly I didn't get hit once. It was a really satisfying feeling. That wasn't all there was to it though and the fight was a lot more than just beating up two sawblade-arms. It was a fun ~10 minute dance of kicking ass and getting ass kicked. However, I managed it. When I took the Goliath down, the game went into a cutscene, where I went to 9S' aid, who got badly damaged during the fight. There was some dialogue. The camera angle changed and I saw how there were 5 or 6 or something more of the same Goliaths surrounding the destroyed one we were chilling on. 9S held up a black cube and told me that the "black box" is ready. I had one too, I don't know if I didn't pay attention or if it wasn't introduced before, I didn't know what it was and where it came from. They triggered it, and everything blew up, including 2B, 9S and supposedly the Goliaths and the mech-producing factory the prologue took place in (not confirmed though).

The screen faded out and the next thing I know is that I was on some kinda space station. Everything seemed strange to me tbh. I just exploded right? So how did I get there? Dialogues happened, I learned that 2B and 9S are androids, that don't really die and even though we blew up ourselves, we simply were brought back. (I think for the sake of this moment of surprise + the message this sends combined with the opening dialogue of the game, the whole prologue had to be started over on death?) I encountered operators/commanders and other fighting units on that station called “Bunker”, which I imagine is going to be something like the main hub for the game. People told me I did great and stuff and sent me off to the next mission, to meet up with the human resistance on earth. To a stunning place introduced as “City Ruins”. I was allowed to roam around freely. There were more machines, but they were neutral/only hostile if I attacked. Plants everywhere and peaceful music.

I went exploring for a while, because I was amazed and wanted to look around before heading to the camp. I found loot lying around a lot, some hostile machines that I could kill without feeling too evil and saving points, which also provided map data. (I saved at every one obviously after the traumatic prologue death.) I didn’t have any problems with any encounters, though I found a couple of dead bodies by other players lying around the place. I approached enemies with care and was able to take them down smoothly. Eventually I went to the resistance camp and did some quests, but honestly it was more of a side thing. I was much more focused on absorbing the beautiful environment, exploring, enjoying the music and having fun. I afkd at least 10 minutes in the camp just listening to the music. Eventually while exploring I found an old rusty tower I could climb up, which I did and decided that beautiful sight was a great point to stop playing for the day.

Aight, that’s it for the write-up of my first session with NieR. I’ll be quite amazed if you actually read this far. It’s been fun writing this and I can’t wait to continue playing, haha. So far I’ve really enjoyed it and I absolutely can’t wait to fight the next boss and learn more about the story, even though I kinda also want to just explore everything around the City Ruins. I hope I’ll have the commitment to finish my diary throughout the whole game. I imagine it’ll be a lot to write once I start going for progress-heavy playing sessions, but I guess I’ll also get a little more routine into it and I’ll be much faster. We’ll see. If you did read up to here, I’ll admit that it would make me happy if you shared this, as I don’t have a real readership, but this has been a bit of effort and I imagine future entries to be as well and it would motivate me if people would read. No pressure though, I’m happy if you read this either way.

I’ll send you off with a listening recommendation, since I really love this song. Thanks for reading, cya.

[evilisk]

I know they‘re called the Scoundrel Team but GEEZ

Here’s all the Scoundrel Team’s exchanges. While I’m thankful that RNG was on my side for this (for the first time, I didn’t need to do any extra runs to fight all the bosses), I am actually, legitimately concerned by how much of a jerk Kuroji is in this game. My theory is that JynX may have tried to contrast this team with the New Emperor Team by having the former heroes (Kuroji and co.) be more unscrupulous, while having the former villains (Fumikado and co.) be more heroic than you’d expect.

Even if this was the intention, though, I do think JynX went too far. Their treatment of Saragimaru is probably the worst offense but them not having a single nice exchange, even with characters like Jun, make the team very hard to like. They might be the only team, aside from Suzumi, that I’m actually hoping lost in their route (I specifically want them to have been served humble pie by Mitori in the Brilliant Pagoda Route)

[evilisk]

Going from RNG Heaven to RNG Hell

This run was so cursed. Even though the Shrine Team has the least amount of total necessary runs (all 3 characters on this team can only be fought as final bosses, so that’s 3 less complete runs than every other team), actually getting every boss to spawn can be a nightmare depending on your luck (I’m looking at you Sese). Even the edit for this was cursed, as my video editor refused to import my Xeno replay with its audio intact. Had to record my Xeno replay almost five different times... RNGesus.

Anyway, uh, whoa. Look at that length. I did consciously go through the dialogue slower than in the other videos, but I didn’t expect the end result to be almost 2 hours long... I guess I understand why JynX has started to branch out of STG’s. Despite the length, most exchanges are pretty basic. It definitely feels like you’re supposed to play this team first for story reasons.

[evilisk]

I love watching this Tired  Parent looking out for their two Youkai Kids

I saved the best (and also easiest) team for last. Seriously, this team is so good both from a gameplay and story perspective. With regards to gameplay: Tenkai is the only character who doesn’t feel like garbage to play as without upgrades, Sukune with Upgrades is pretty fun and Sese is just straight up broken with full power. And with regards to story, their conversations are the most varied.

Not to say JynX doesn’t have certain punchlines they fall back on (take a shot every time someone calls Tenkai a melon) but between Tenkai’s knowledge and Sese’s mysterious background, there’s only a few exchanges that really feel like filler... Though despite what I’ve said, I still think the Team’s best exchange is with Iyozane. Just bc unlike every other character who apologizes for calling Tenkai a melon after learning who they are, Iyozane actually doubles down on calling them a melon. Like, dang. That’s pretty gutsy.

[evilisk]

Len’En 4 but it’s 20 minutes of Fumikado being cool (...followed by 40 minutes of them being dumb as a doornail)

(If you think an hour is long, just think of all the time spent actually playing to record all these conversations... The Len’En addiction is real.)

Anyway, here’s a compilation of all the boss exchanges while playing as the New Emperor team in Brilliant Pagoda or Haze Castle. The story for this team is actually quite good with lots and lots of interesting reveals... if you actually stick to the main routes. Every neutral exchange, by comparison, is usually some skit about how dumb Fumikado is, with Tsugumi and Iyozane just dealing with it

I’m gonna do compilations for the other teams... but it’ll take a while (blame Len’En 4 for making 80% of all the neutral route bosses 100% random)