Must be Monday. New podcast! Just click on the fancy logo below.
Laconic Main TearJerker Trivia VideoGame YMMV main index Narrative
|
![]() It's a story from long, long ago — Fortuna was born in the nook of a small village. Ever since she was born she never stopped crying. Her wailing voice caused many people to suffer. If she didn't stop her wails would eventually cover the entire world. "Fortuna will surely be gone in 100 years time" The people held to that hope and entrusted it to the distant skies. The people ran from the ark known as Earth... And so Fortuna, who was all alone, cried until she took her final breath. — In this way, the old world came to an end. And a new world, began. Senko no Ronde is a Bullet Hell Shoot 'em Up-meets-Fighter produced by G.rev and arguably one of their most ambitious titles, as the team enlisted the help of doujin artists Shuji Sogabe and Mizuki Takayama to handle the character illustrations while Koichi Mugitani handles the mecha design, ex-ZUNATA member Yasuhisha Wanatabe to compose the game's music, and a cast of various seiryuus to help bring this title into inception.The story setting of Senko no Ronde and character art-style is heavily influenced by Keiko Takemiya's Space Opera manga series, Toward The Terra. The game is set in the future in which human beings fled Earth following a great disaster, and after 1,500 years are only now returning to the planet. Much of the story takes place in colonies set up across the solar system. While the Aria Federation acts as a system-wide government, much of the police activity and military work is actually handled by private security organizations run by large corporations such as Goddiver. Many character backgrounds harken to an incident in the past known as the Embassy Occupation Incident, where terrorists took several hundred people hostage, then self-destructed, killing dignitaries, ambassadors, and civilians.The game pits players in a circular field where they pilot mechas called "Rounders", each with their own variety of bullets, missiles, and laser weaponry. The game is best known for incorporating shoot 'em up gameplay elements into a fighting game, particularly each Rounder possesses a super-powered Shell called B.O.S.S., which when combined, turns the player's Rounder into a large-scale shoot 'em up-esque end-boss with many intricate bullet patterns. Each characters' Rounders also uses two different cartridges, one emphasizing on power and the other for speed, with varying bullet patterns between the two. Aside from it's shoot 'em up style of gameplay, it has been often considered as "a 2D version of Virtual-ON" due to sharing many general gameplay concepts and mechanics.The game first debuted on arcades in Japan on Sega's NAOMI hardware on April 26th, 2005, although the game was, in some areas, incomplete. Senko no Ronde NEW Ver. was later released on August 8th, 2005, four months after its initial arcade debut to fix many of the game's issues such as the character and gameplay balance, Ernula's availability, and adding costumes to allowing Mirror Matches to be possible. On August 27th, 2006, Senko no Ronde was ported to the Xbox 360 in Japan as Senko no Ronde Revision X, or simply Rev.X. As the title implies, this version of Senko no Ronde received an overhaul from of the arcade predecessors, boasting High Definition visuals and online play over Xbox LIVE.Unfortunately, the original Japanese release suffered from region-locking, effectively making it impossible for anyone without a Japanese Xbox 360 hardware to play it. Thankfully (and miraculously) Ubisoft localized the game to North America and Europe in 2007, allowing those outside of Japan to play it. The game's localization is rather scathing for some since it suffers from a case of American Kirby Is Hardcore by slapping on "WarTech" as the game's title just to make it pronounceable for those who can't pronounce "Senko no Ronde" to save their lives. Not only that, but the cover-art for the North American and European release only gives the impression that the game is all about cold-hearted machines duking it out for the player's amusement rather than its space opera storyline. The game's final iteration was released to arcades again on August 6th, 2006 as Senko no Ronde SP, which serves as an Updated Rerelease for the arcade version since it features the additions seen on the Xbox 360 port and further balancing.The game later received a sequel in 2009 titled Senko no Ronde: Dis-United Order (or Senko no Ronde: DUO for short) in, which also got ported to the Xbox 360 a year later, with an extended character selection and an expansion of the story. Sadly it's only released in Japan with no intentions of bringing the sequel overseas; it was also later released in arcades in Japan to the NESCiAxLive arcade service. Unlike its predecessor, Dis-United Order is a 2-on-2 fighting game where players can use another character to perform support attacks.A follow-up title is currently in the works for the PlayStation Vita and it's expected for a 2013 release, although this title will be something of a Spiritual Successor as it will not be set in the universe of the other two games.And last thing: the game's title is pronounced Sen-Ko No Rond, not Ron-DAY. "Ronde" comes from the French word with a silent "e"— Senko no Ronde's opening Senko no Ronde provides trope examples of:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||