Showing posts with label Radirgy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Radirgy. Show all posts

Radirgy De Gojaru! - Radirgy's Terrible 3DS Spinoff

The cover character of Radirgy on a 3DS screen

Ah, Radirgy. One of a handful of high-quality shoot 'em ups developed by MileStone Inc. to grace the Dreamcast in Japan, Radirgy boasts a colourful cel-shaded anime style, and a ridiculous plot that follows a protagonist who is allergic to radio waves. It's as Japanese as these shooters come, really, and I bloody love it. Radirgy has enjoyed a quiet cult following over the years, and has received various sequels and offshoots.

A few years ago, I was browsing Wikipedia (as neurodivergent gentlemen like myself tend to do), when I discovered that, sometime in 2014, Radirgy came to the 3DS. "Wow!" I probably thought to myself, "Handheld Radirgy! I need this right away!" When I investigated further, I sadly discovered that it was only available for purchase on the Japanese 3DS eShop, and there was no way for me to access that on my European region locked 3DS (thanks, Nintendo).

A meme where Sonic is showing Tails his hacked 3DS
Credit: Depressed Sonic

Roll on March 2023, and the 3DS eShop was about to shut down for good, with its final day being the 27th of March. The Wii U eShop has now also shut down too; news I'm sure was received with a resounding whimper (no, it doesn't matter how many times a day retro Twitter tweets it, the Wii U is not "the next Dreamcast"). In this hustle and bustle, I learnt about a certain homebrew application that aims to collect and preserve 3DS eShop games, applications and DLC from many different regions - something which Nintendo clearly has no interest in facilitating (thanks, Nintendo). Using a Wi-Fi connection, the app granted me the ability to download any of this content for free, straight to my hacked 3DS that has the means to install .cia files.

As the app collects games from various regions and bypasses any region locking on your console, I immediately headed to the Japanese section, and lo and behold, there is was: Radirgy De Gojaru!. A moment later, it was downloaded onto my 3DS.

Screenshot of the main menu for 'Radirgy De Gojaru!'
Screenshots taken with Luma3DS.

I booted up the game, and everything looked good at first. The startup menu screen featured the same bouncy electronic music and flat, 2D graphic stylings indicative of Radirgy. But this positive first impression all came crashing down when I actually started the game...

What I was playing looked liked Radirgy. It sounded like Radirgy. I was in control of a ship in a cel-shaded world, shooting at a painfully slow trickle of approaching enemies with the A button, or hacking at them up close with the sword by using the B button. For some reason, though, the background wasn't scrolling. Isn't your ship in Radirgy supposed to gradually move through a variety of constantly changing locales? Instead, I was just locked to a single static background, one which featured nothing exciting; just a load of trees and a grey building at the bottom of the screen. I thought at first that I was playing a tutorial level or something, but no matter how long I played for, this scenery never changed.

Screenshot of 'Radirgy De Gojaru!' on the 3DS
On the 3DS' touchscreen, amongst a variety of icons, I could select one of four different weapon options: a wide shot, an x-shot, a shot that shoots from both the front and sides, then finally, the "sword" option, which would make the sword attack more powerful than the bullets I was shooting. While I could freely switch between these options, doing so was weirdly unresponsive, and I often found myself having to hammer the touchscreen just to register my choice. Turns out I needn’t have exerted myself so much, as I soon figured out that just sitting at the bottom of the screen and mindlessly spamming the default wide shot takes care of oncoming enemies with ease. It didn’t take me long to decide I’d had enough. What on earth was I playing?

For you see, dear reader, this game was, in fact, not a port of MileStone's shmup for the 3DS (which is something I would've known if I'd spent just a few minutes with Google), but instead a small, eShop-exclusive spinoff game. Think something in the same vein as DSiWare or PlayStation Minis. This release was not developed by MileStone, but by Klon Co. Ltd., a company formed by ex-MileStone employees after the company closed due to the president getting arrested for violating Japan's Financial Instruments and Exchange Act (he was being shady with money, basically). Klon acquired the rights to previous MileStone properties, and this title, Radirgy De Gojaru!, was released as a result of that.

Screenshot of 'Radirgy De Gojaru!' on the 3DS
I'd love to give you a better variety of screenshots. But this was all the game had to offer!
So Klon had the Radirgy license, and they produced... this? Radirgy is beloved for its high energy and zaniness, but what they created here is frighteningly dull. I'm not sure what "Radirgy De Gojaru!" translates to in English, but I can only imagine it means something like "Radirgy: Shed Defender!" Because that's all you do here. Defend a shed. Or a bunker. Or whatever the hell the grey cube at the bottom of the screen is. The game is basically one of those old flash tower defence games with a Radirgy skin, although even those flash games were more enjoyable than this… and they ran better too. I hate to say it's true, but even on my New Nintendo 3DS (the more powerful, upgraded 3DS) this game suffers from slowdown. When the larger enemies are on screen and bullets are flying, the game chugs. Badly. Not even Ryo Hazuki running through Pigeon Park on a rainy day had frames dropping like this.

Screenshot of the scoreboard on 'Radirgy De Gojaru!'
Believe it or not, this wasn't Klon's only game for 3DS to feature a previous MileStone license. They also released a spinoff of Karous, called Karous: The Beast of Re:Eden, which was actually a more fully-fledged release, featuring multiple levels and modes. It even went as far as to receive a physical release, exclusively in Japan. While I haven't played this one myself, I did find a very informative video about it by Briareos Kerensky, and, despite Klon's best efforts to flesh it out a bit more, Karous: The Beast of Re:Eden is pants too.

Klon folded in 2016, before being succeeded by RS34, Inc., who went on to release the excellent Radirgy Swag for Nintendo Switch in 2019, which is a much more faithful Radirgy title. If you're really looking for a portable Radigy experience, I'd probably just go play that instead. Or, for the diehards, there will always be the original on Dreamcast...
Photo of Radirgy for the Dreamcast

Have you played Radirgy De Gojaru! before? Had you even heard of it? Let us know in the comments below, or by dropping us a line on one of our various social media pages.

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Two Dreamcast shooters now playable in English!

We're not even a week into 2022 and we've already received not one, but two English fan translations of Japanese Dreamcast games! This community sure works at a rapid pace. Both of the games are vertically scrolling shooters, or 'shmups,' as the cool kids like to say. Let's check ‘em out...

First up is Radirgy, which was originally developed by MileStone, Inc. for the Sega NAOMI arcade platform. It was eventually ported over to the Dreamcast in 2006, exclusively in Japan, years after the West presumed the rest of the world had given up on Sega's swan song console. Radirgy replaces the usually dark, space theming of other shoot-em-ups with a colourful, cel-shaded anime style. With gameplay that verges on bullet hell, and a protagonist that is allergic to radio waves, this one is about as Japanese as they come. Even the box art is slightly odd, simply opting to feature said protagonist pushing her glasses up her nose in that cool way anime people do (should probably go to your local optician and get those adjusted, bud). Check out our Radirgy retrospective here.

An English translation of Radirgy appeared seemingly out of nowhere on the 2nd of January, submitted to RomHacking.net by user wiredcrackpot. The translation is based on the official US Wii release of the game, which wiredcrackpot admits isn't the best translation ever, but it's at least something that can serve to help us non-Japanese speakers understand the bonkers story that is taking place. 
You can download the translation patch at RomHacking.net. If you can't be bothered with all that patching stuff, though, you can simply go to the Dreamcast-Talk thread, where you will find an already patched .CDI and .GDI available for download. Burn the game onto a CD-R or throw it on to your GDEMU. Whatever you do, take a moment to speculate what drugs the people over at MileStone were taking when they made Radirgy. We'll have a debate about it next time we talk.

If you are also interested in playing an English translation of Radirgy's darker kind-of sequel, Karous, head here to download that.

Next up is Chaos Field, which was the first game ever developed by MileStone Inc. and was released in 2004 for the Sega NAOMI, with a Dreamcast release following a few months later. Perhaps a more standard shmup affair compared to Radirgy (stylistically, at least), the game consists entirely of boss battles, and has a pretty unique mechanic in which players can flip the environment at will between two parallel worlds. 

The Chaos Field translation patch was created by Derek Pascarella, whose work we've previously featured on the Junkyard (multiple times, in fact) and has also appeared on an episode of the Dreampod (check that out here). Inspired by wiredcrackpot's Radirgy patch, Derek started poking around in the code of Chaos Field to find the game actually shipped with about 80% of the text and images already translated into English - it had just been hidden away in the game’s code this entire time! Derek then translated the remaining 20%, and voilà! We now have Chaos Field completely in English, for the first time on Dreamcast.

You can download Derek's patch by going to this project’s GitHub repository. Patched CDIs and GDIs are available from the Dreamcast-Talk thread.
These projects are a good start to what is hopefully another big year for the Dreamcast community. Have you played any of these shooters before? Are you excited to play them in English? Let us know in the comments below, or by sounding off on our various social media channels.

A Quick Look At Radirgy

You say Radilgy, I say Radirgy...let's call the whole thing off. Is what Fred Astaire was really getting at when he sang that song that time. The proper title of this slightly unorthodox vertically scrolling shmup is Radio Allergy...so I guess either is technically correct. Just don't call it Radallergy, at least not in my presence anyway.

So Radirgy then. Not a game I was overly familiar with until quite recently, simply because it usually fetches quite high prices when listed on eBay and because I like a bargain I was unwilling to shell out for such a frivolous item. That changed when I noticed the game on sale for a rather decent price over at Games World and decided that my life needed more cell-shaded, 2006 Dreamcast shooting in it. Nary a day later, Radirgy was sat spinning in my NTSC-J Dreamcast and now I've had time to play the thing properly I'm going to share my thoughts on it.
As mentioned in the previous paragraph, Radirgy was released on the Dreamcast in 2006 after being ported from its native NAOMI by developer Milestone. A stalwart of the shmup genre, Milestone were also the same outfit behind those other well-known NAOMI/Dreamcast games Chaos Field and Karous - the latter of which I have never played, again due to its rarity and high price. Before acquiring Radirgy I was aware of its existence but really didn't take much interest because it's a game I never thought I'd own, and as alluded to several times in my Ghost Blade review, I'm not a massive fan of the shmup genre in general. That said, upon playing Radirgy quite a bit since I got it, I can now comfortably say that it hasn't really changed my opinion on vertical shmups: that they're fun and mildly diverting for a while, but ultimately a bit repetitive and they get boring quickly.
That time already?

Back to the scene

My Dreamcast hates me. And the worst part is, she's (yes, you all know I call me Dreamcast a "she") right! I've been neglecting her, only playing with my many other consoles (except for the N64, that one's sitting quietly in a dark corner). Maybe that's why the laser slowly began to fade away... But now it's back! I really have no idea what's going on, maybe it just needed to rest for a bit, but, anyway, what matters is that I've been playing the hell out of that thing lately, with 3 particular games, 2 I already had, neglected in the shelf, and a new one. Let's break it down:

Le Mans 24 Hours


Amazing game. The only reason I didn't play it much when I got it was because at the time I was more into arcade stuff. Now that I'm seriously in the simulator business this game is a godsend in the Dreamcast's library. The gameplay's just...right, you know? The cars respond to every move you make, with fully analog control that lets you turn or accelerate exactly how much you want, depending on the pressure you apply to the analog pad or the triggers, and it just feels good, driving those hi-powered machines in a variety of different tracks. The graphics are pretty damn awesome, and, of course, it gives you the option to race the whole Le Mans challenge, in 24 hours real-time!



Radilgy/Radirgy/What-the-fuck-you-want-to-call-it


Personally I like to call it Radilgy, as in Radio Allergy. Because that's what the game is all about, your character having a radio-wave allergy, and her father's being kidnapped, and you taking control of a flying robot shooting wave after wave of enemies... Pretty generic shmup storyline, you see. As I stated sometime ago in a comment to a Martin's post, I had it, though, as what happened to Le Mans, at the time I got it just for collection's sake, not exactly to play it. Well, now things are different. In the past months I've became a huge shmup fan, so I inevitably had to play this. Here's what I think.

The graphics are awesome, pure cell-shaded, bright colours, delicious animations goodness! The gameplay is tight, the controls respond well and the game's not impossibly difficult (although it's far from easy). There's the regular shot, a special move identical to the bombs in other games but which is used primarily to render you invulnerable for a period of time and a close-range sword attack, powerful but dangerous to perform since you're right next to the enemies, making it difficult to dodge incoming fire.



I only have two major gripes with the game. First, you can't use the analog pad. This is just stupid. If the damn thing is the closest you have to an arcade stick, why the fuck shouldn't they allow you to use it? The d-pad's fine, but it just isn't the same... Second, the main shot is weak as fuck. Even when you power it all up certain enemy ships take about half a minute to blow up, which leaves you felling like you have a peashooter on your hands.

Other than that, great shmup, specially considering the rather weak competition when it comes to the Dreamcast (face it, it wasn't a particularly great machine for shmup fans...).

Wind & Water: Puzzle Battles


Finally! I thought I would never get my hands on this game! (now I only have to get that Dux...) Played just a little bit yesterday, not enough to pass judgement, but I can already tell you two things. First, the gameplay is rather unique, so be prepared to suck at it at first. The game features a nice tutorial, explaining everything in detail, but still, don't expect to master it right away. Second, this game was made with love. Seriously. The attention to detail, to make this game appealing to the player and has solid, complete and polished as a game can be is really astonishing. Also, the soundtrack's great.

Now, I've only really saw the tip of the iceberg, but I can already tell I'm going to love it. By the way, Gagaman and Father K, would you be so kind as to send me your custom character's codes? I'd love to play as both of you :P


(Gman's rummage vid)

Radilgy / Rajiruji / Radirgy

Radilgy or Radirgy, shortened from Radio Allergy, the proposed North American release (Rajiruji in Japanese ラジルジ) is a vertical shooter released late into the Dreamcast's official life; February 16 2006.



In addition to the game, which could only be bought through SEGA Direct in Japan in 2006 (how I ordered mine) is a phone card for use in Japan. This was quite frequent with releases in Japan through SEGA Direct, but seems more fitting in this game as you essentially play a girl (or boy) that has to rescue her father from terrorists so she (or he) can get the medicine for their radio allergy. Mental I know, but this is Japan!



So, how does it fair with the other Dreamcast shooters? (what shooters I hear you ask??). Well, it's pretty solid, but it's no Ikaruga - but what is. The styling of the game is pretty unique; cell shaded graphics (think Jet Set Radio) over VGA really make the Dreamcast seem like it was released in 2006. If you're a collector, or just into shooters; I would heavily recommend this game. There's a really fun soundtrack to the game as well - which is a refreshing change as many shooters decide to go down the 'dark and dismal' route.


There's a variety of button commands, including shoot, bomb and a like of sword attack. This adds hugely to the strategy of the game. The casing of the game shows off some of the attention to detail given within the game. It's hard to think a title of this quality was released so late in the [official] life of our beloved Dreamcast.



So sure that this would be a great title; I bought two. Yes, that's right, I have a sealed copy up for sale on eBay and you can bid on it here. I'll leave you with a little gameplay video. Enjoy!