Legendary shooter developer Cave is as famous for unnecessarily region-locking its games as it is for making them. But as a pleasant surprise, they're considering not doing so with their next disc-based retail release.
Cave's Makoto Asada recently posted on the company's blog, saying that the region for its upcoming Mushihime-sama Futari Ver. 1.5 has yet to be decided, and probably won't be until this year's Tokyo Game Show. He then says that Cave is very happy to have recieved so many emails from fans overseas, and being responsible for more than a few of those, I would like to say "you're welcome" and suggest that they heed them.
What the company fails to realize is that they've got a great many fans in other countries who are just as hardcore and dedicated as the ones they have at home, and they stand to profit greatly fom that fanbase by simply not region-locking. This is especially so when most (if not all) of the usual reasons to region-lock don't apply to any of their games. Many of Cave's already-published titles are too late, but with sevices like the Xbox 360's new Games on Demand, there's an opportunity for a lot more revenue from those of us who have yet to import an entirely separate console just to play them.
Either way, there's still hope for Mushihime-sama Futari and it would be a great door-opener, excellent shmup that it is. If you'd like to join the rest of us in pestering them until they give in, there's a simple image in the gallery which can be downloaded and emailed to Cave without needing to be translated. In the meantime, let's cross our fingers.
Additionally, the results of Cave's recent XBLA survey were part of this same blog post, and you can check out a list of the top ten most popular responses after the jump. Number one is probably all but confirmed to be on its way to Xbox Live Arcade shortly, be it region-free or not.
1. Guwange
2. Esprade
3. Dodonpachi
4. Progear
5. Pink Sweets
6. Mushihime-sama
7. Dangun Feveron
8. Muchi Muchi Pork
9. Espgaluda
10. Ibara
I'd happily take any one of those, but I'm not in disagreement with
Guwange as the winner.
Contest:
7:20 PM on 09.02.2009
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though this is quite awesome. I'll be more than welcome to pester them with a email of that image once I get home.
oh and if they bring Death Smiles over...i'll be sure to fap off to something and pass it to Cave as a gift.
I would SO love to see some of these come over here!
Shmup have more chances outside of japan i guess and the language don't matter much in these types of games.I don't think Dream C Club or Idol master will make it outside of japan though.Maybe UN will ban xbox360 when they find that hostess groping game :D
That way publishers may notice that we care about this kinda stuff here.
That would be awesome.
Making this region-free is cool and all but makes little difference to those that want to play Deathsmiles, DOJ-BL, Otomedius Gorgeous, Shooting Love etc, but I guess you have to start somewhere.
Lets hope they follow through with it and continue with Galuda 2 and Ketsui!