DeathSmiles Message Board

Deathsmiles and DoDonPachi series creator Cave Interactive is shutting down its Western-facing public presence, ending its long-running English-language blog and closing up shop on Twitter.

After marketing its games exclusively in Japan for many years, Cave made great strides toward establishing a presence in the West with iOS ports of its popular bullet hell shoot-'em-ups DoDonPachi Resurrection, Espgaluda 2, and Bug Princess. This week's announcement follows the recent departure of studio head of development Makoto Asada as the company restructured its business to focus on mobile and social games.

Cave ported many of its arcade shoot-'em-ups to the Xbox 360 in Japan, and partnered with North American publishers to produce localizations for games like Akai Katana and Deathsmiles. The studio previously self-published an untranslated version of Deathsmiles 2X in North America via the Xbox 360's Games on Demand service in a bid to gain a foothold in the Western market.

Cave Interactive, revered house of bullet-hell shmups with funny names, has lost its head of development today. Makoto Asada announced his departure in a blog post, where he thanked fans for supporting his five-year tenure with the company and revealed he's moving on to next-gen console projects.

Asada's most recent contributions were on Dodonpachi Maximum, a Windows Phone installment in Cave's popular series. Asada also worked on Deathsmiles, EspGaluda 2, Guwange and pretty much every other shmup the company put on Xbox 360.

#deathsmiles DeathSmiles is a horizontal shmup from bullet hell developer Cave. It's not my favorite Cave title by any stretch, but it does have a sizeable following due to its Christmas-in-Hell asethetic. Plus, the game stars Gothic Lolitas, like batgirl Casper. People seem to like those. More »

It's easy to forget sometimes that video games are a business, as well as a means of artistic expression and recreation. Even developers like Cave, whose sterling reputation is due almost entirely to its long-time devotion to the incredibly esoteric bullet-hell genre, have to make tough decisions in order to continue existing.

The Deathsmiles developer's fiscal outlook isn't shaping up to be quite what it had expected, and as a result the company will be placing unknown projects on hold in order to devote more resources to social gaming, Andriasang reports.

Originally expecting to earn ¥1.4 billion ($18.9 million) in sales between June 1 and November 30 2011, the company now anticipates earnings of ¥1.3 billion ($16.8 million), which has prompted Cave to change its forecasted operating gain of ¥10 million to an operating loss of ¥31 million for the period. Operational earnings for the entire year were lowered from ¥310 million to ¥50 million.

In a nutshell, people aren't buying as many infuriatingly difficult games as expected, which is surprising considering how popular masochism has become recently.

#gamingappoftheday Cave's bullet hell shooters aren't exactly the types of games many players don't even like to play with control pads. So how's this iPhone version supposed to work? More »

This month, Cave gave the iPhone version of Deathsmiles a "2011" date. We didn't have to wait long to find out when in 2011 -- and we won't have to wait long to play it. Cave announced that you'll be able to enter Deathsmiles' moe gauntlet portably on July 7. For the first four days, it'll be priced at $4.99/£2.99/€3.99, then the price will go up to $8.99/£5.49/€6.99.

If you're uncontrollably thrilled about the new iPhone shmup, you'll be able to get an early look at it on Friday, July 1. Cave is hosting a Ustream "live sneak peek" event introducing Deathsmiles and revealing new content for the iPhone version. The 30-minute broadcast will be translated into English on the fly, for those of you who are into Cave shooters, but not so into them that you learned Japanese.

DeathSmiles has arrived on iOS with brand new BGM.

Do you want to play games on your iPhone, without being accused of being a "casual gamer"? Here you go: Deathsmiles. If someone regards you in a manner that suggests they doubt your core-ness while you're playing a Cave shooter, you can be secure in the knowledge that that person is so wrong. Also, don't worry so much about being a core gamer, you hypothetical person.

The iPhone version of the side-scrolling arcade/Xbox 360 shooter is due sometime this year. Prepare yourself with the trailer after the break and the new screens in our gallery.

Our mothers always said "If death smiles at you once, you should try to wrap up your personal affairs. But if death smiles a second time, he's probably just flirting."

Imagine our disappointment then when we read the ESRB listing for Death Smiles 2X to find it was not, as we'd assumed, a dating sim set at River of Styx High, but rather an Xbox 360 follow-shmup to Cave's bullet hell release Deathsmiles (seen above).

Cave will take over publishing duties from Aksys on the game, which features shooting "various projectiles (bombs, bullets, lasers, arrows, etc.) at elephants, pigs, goblins, bats, and monsters in constant air battle." ... OK, so that's probably a better concept than ours.

Probably.

Once more, the angels descend upon Gilverado as DeathSmiles makes it's way from the Xbox 360 to iOS devices.

Along with its big Xbox 360 release announcement, shooter company Cave had some good news for iPhone fans at its event over the weekend. Deathsmiles, the flying-magical-girl shooter released on Xbox 360 last year, is coming to iPhone and iPod Touch. "From arcade to Xbox 360," the trailer reads; "and then, from Xbox 360 to iPhone."

Deathsmiles will be released in spring. Unlike packaged games, Cave can self-publish on iOS, and it's been good about localizing its games in a timely manner. So the insane shooting action in the trailer after the break need not be tinged with sadness.

If you want to play Cave's Xbox 360 shmup Deathsmiles, but don't need a big box or a faceplate, you'll be able to pick it up cheaply next week. A listing on GameStop.com revealed a standard version of Deathsmiles, coming out for Xbox 360 on September 28 for $29.99.

A representative of Aksys Games confirmed the release to Joystiq, saying that "the Deathsmiles Standard Edition will be $29.99 at GameStop for now." If you buy this and then something falls on your Xbox 360, cracking your current faceplate ... be sure to tell us. We'll do our best to be sympathetic while marveling at this unlikely, ironic happenstance.

#review Little girls. In frilly dresses. Shooting things. Yep, you're about to read a DeathSmiles review. More »

Hopefully, the 2D shooter will never die.

Deathsmiles, the bullet-hell smash hit, arrives to U.S stores today on the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft.

#limitededition As if Xbox 360 gothic-lolita shmup Deathsmiles could get any more attractive, publisher Aksys reveals the Deathsmiles Limited Edition, packed in a super-sized box with a Xbox 360 and a soundtrack album. Now how much would you pay? More »

The bullet-hell smash hit, comes to the U.S on Xbox 360.

Shmup fans will smile, too.

Check out the Japanese version of this gothic horror shooter.

click to horizontally scroll through our gallery Japanese developer CAVE is famous for its hardcore "bullet hell" shooters -- at least among importers, because the console versions of those shooters have never been localized. Nobody's been crazy enough to put the time and money into one of the super-hard niche shoot-em-ups, until today, when Aksys Games (the company crazy enough to localize Cho Aniki Zero) announced that it will publish Deathsmiles on the Xbox 360. While this is going to be incredible news to shmup devotees, Deathsmiles may be a hard sell to general audiences, with its "gothic lolita" aesthetic and punishing difficulty. Those who do check out Deathsmiles for whatever reason will find a horizontal shooter with branching paths, online co-op play, and, in the words of Aksys's Cherie Baker, "little girls flying through a gothic otherworld to destroy the horrific, necrotic Imperator Tyrannosatan." Aksys has yet to announce a release date for Deathsmiles.

The 360 is being dragged back to bullet hell.

The shmup lives.