By dai jou bu

At first glance, Wartech: Senko no Ronde might seem to be yet another arcade shooter. Given its pedigree, this seemed to make sense - it was created by Game Revolution (or G.Rev for short), a company consisting of former Taito employees who created Border Down and Under Defeat, as well as helping Treasure by providing the engines for Ikaruga and Gradius V. However, instead of simply following in the footsteps on its previous games, G. Rev tried something different by taking the conventions of the shooter genre and melding them with a fighting game. In Senko no Ronde, you control one of eight mechs, fighting one-on-one battles as you and your opponent square off against each other. Since you're always facing your opponent, your mechs fly in circles, rotating around your foe and hoping to catch it off guard with your shots. In addition to your mechs main guns, each has a number of secondary weapons, melee attacks and special moves, as well as various types of shields. Each fighter also has what is known as a "B.O.S.S." mode (the rough equivalent of a super move in fighting game terms) where a mech temporarily transforms into a huge machination and litters the screen with bullets, momentarily turning the game into a curtain fire shooter. If some of this sounds vaguely familiar - well, it should, if you've played Virtual On. Both games are one-on-one mech fighters with somewhat similar gameplay concepts, although Virtual On featured a behind-the-back camera angle while Senko no Ronde uses an overhead isometric viewpoint and is completely restricted to 2D movement. Since there hasn't been an acceptable Virtual On game since Oratorio Tangram in 2000 (the sequel, Virtual On Marz, was not well received), Senko no Ronde is often viewed a spitirual successor to Sega's landmark title. It was initially released on Sega's Naomi arcade platform in 2004 and barely got beyond Japanese arcades. It was pretty impressive that G.Rev was able to program something that looked THIS good alone using such relatively archaic hardware. But despite Naomi's ties with the Dreamcast (their hardware is practically identical), G. Rev decided to port the game to the Xbox 360 when doing a home port. After nearly a year, it finally made it to America and Europe courtesy of Ubi-Soft. This melding of Virtual On and a 2D shooter (or shmup) has never been done like this before, and since this was developed by a company who's had years of experience developing shmups, it should instantly scream "AWESOME" to anyone remotely interested in trying something new. Unfortunately, the mainstream Western press has been giving this game a terrible reputation that's been unjustly deserved, for the sole fact that it was released as a full priced title at $60. While not as graphically intense as most 360 games, it's a real shame that it was disparaged, since it's an Xbox 360 exclusive title that's not only radically different from everything else in its library, it's also Japanese enough to convince people who never wanted to buy an Xbox in the first place because it lacked enough games from these kinds of developers. The title "Senko no Ronde" is some kind of translator's bad dream. The two kanji that comprises Senko means rotation and light; when these two kanji combine, the word refers to polarimetry, which is the science of measuring how much a light wave travels equally in two directions in a circular fashion through an object in order to measure its optical properties. The second set of kanji is the most confusing part of the entire name as it conflicts with the Western text right below it; the kanji says Rinbu, not Ronde. Once you start searching for ronde in other languages, however, it all makes sense: rinbu means "circular dance" and ronde is its French equivalent. The Japanese character no in the game's title is a particle used to connect both nouns together, and if it were literally translated we'd get some mess like "Round Dance of Polarimetry." It sure doesn't sound anywhere near as poetic as what G.Rev was going for, not to mention those that do know what polarimetry means will figure out that the name is redundant. A more meaningful title would be "Encircling Dance of Light," but I'm going to be using Senko no Ronde (or Senko for short) for the rest of this feature to avoid confusion. At this point though, you're probably unsure of which word to use for this game's title when others want to hear the phonetic pronunciation of the name. It's the French word, with a silent e. The Japanese would pronounce this as rondo due to the nature of their language, and the following samples below confirm this, even though they also say "Drama CD" after they pronounce the game's title. Senko no Ronde Pronunciation 1 Senko no Ronde Pronunciation 2 Senko no Ronde is G.Rev's most ambitious project to date, hiring a few talented people to help flesh out the game's world and characters. For the mecha designers we have Koichi Mugitani, who should be well known for doing the mecha designs for Xenosaga Episodes I and II, not to mention his collaborative efforts in the mechanical designs for Mars Matrix. While Nanashiki Yamamoto did all of the illustration work for Under Defeat (G.Rev's game that was released after this one), he's been relegated to only doing the mecha designs here. Last, but definitely not least, we have Shuji Sogabe, who not only was involved in the mecha designs, but was also the main contributor to the character designs and illustrations along with the aid of his partner Mizuki Takayama, both of whom I haven't been able to find anything relevant in their past works other than blurbs that they both did random illustrations together, but it looks like they were popular enough to appear in Newtype USA's October 2006 issue for its How To Art section. For the music, we have ex-Zuntata member Yasuhisha Wanatabe at the helm again, fresh from the completion of composing the soundtrack for a hentai game which I would link to the actual site itself if it was safe for work. G.Rev also hired some pretty recognizable voice actors to add personality to the characters as well. There's a reason why players of this game are called Senkoroids. Hiroyuki Maruyama, the founder of G.Rev and concept designer of this game, originally was curious as to how to implement a versus shmup since although the genre is one of the oldest in the industry, almost no one has really tinkered around with the concept of two ace shmup players shooting at each other instead of blowing up the same enemy formations and bosses over and over again. Twinkle Star Sprites was interesting, but was also abstract; in a real fight, you would be directing your firepower right at each other and maybe even move in close enough to your opponent so you can punch them right in the face. Change Air Blade was a little bit more believable since at least both of you were on the same screen, and it kind of simulated a dogfight since each player was forced to stay on either the top or the bottom of the screen until the player on the bottom received a special powerup that would make both players switch their locations on the screen. It even toyed around with the shmup boss concept by giving the player at the top of the screen the opportunity to transform into a shmup boss themselves by temporarily attaching their airplane to a much larger aircraft. How he came about on deciding to use Virtual On as the basis for the game's engine completely eludes me, but that's what happened; I'm guessing it's because what the players control in these games aren't designed for interesting fights against each other and bosses seem to have all of the fun, so why not make the participants modern shmup bosses and grant them some mobility yet are still restricted by their classification in this genre? Senko no Ronde an isometric view that both players share, with two of the three weapon gauges represented by circles around your Rounder that determines its ammunition status, with the outer circle representing the Main Weapon and the inner circle representing the Sub Weapon. These circles also serve the purpose of determining the minimum distance needed before your long-range attacks turn into close combat attacks. Whenever you dash and fire a weapon at the same time, you'll momentarily be unable to move after coming to a stop. This freeze time penalty is essentially the same as it was in Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram. When you get close, you can start wailing on your opponent with melee attacks. Senko doesn't have any real advanced close combat techniques (you can't even block.) Obviously, your Rounders are controlled by the joystick, making it more intuitive than the dual joystick set-up of Virtual On. There's a single Action button, and just like it was used in Virtual On, this button will initiate a dash if you're already pressing a direction on the arcade stick. Pressing it without moving the stick in any direction also modifies the attack properties of your weapons, but in Senko no Ronde, it also has two other purposes: Most importantly, a barrier will activate to protect you from incoming projectiles, reducing the damage to a mere fraction of what it normallys deals, as well as preventing your Rounder from getting stunned from these attacks. The other purpose is slow down the movement speed of your Rounder, but you will break target lock and can aim at an angle slightly away from your opponent. Like Virtual On, Senko no Ronde has three different weapons, except they've streamlined it by indicating that one button will be the Main Weapon (the button you'll be pressing a lot almost subconsciously) while the other will be the Sub Weapon (the other button you'll have to be consciously aware that it's ready to be used again by watching its circle change from red to its original color). Pressing both buttons simultaneously initiates a third attack (called a Barrage in this game), which depletes a specific amount from the Charge Gauge located right below each player's Armor (Life) Gauge, where the amount consumed is based on which character you've chosen as the image below demonstrates. The Charge Gauge plays a pretty big role in Senko no Ronde since it has even more parameters that determine how fast it will fill up and what causes it to empty. By default, it's only around half-filled at the start of each match and fills up slowly. Blowing up destructible objects deployed by your opponent such as missiles or getting hit by them fills it up even faster. When you activate your barrier, it stops charging up, and slivers of the Charge Gauge empty for each projectile it absorbs. Getting hit by certain attacks (mostly melee attacks) also drains a set amount of your Charge Gauge. Besides your Barrage attack, using your special moves also drains a set amount from your Charge Gauge as well. Yes, there are special moves in this game. Since some of G.Rev's members consisted of Taito's former arcade division, they decided to implement Psychic Force's method of executing special moves by using controller motions. It's been streamlined so that you only need to press the buttons needed to initiate the Barrage attack after you performed the required movements needed. Psychic Force's special move execution is slightly different from typical fighting games, as regardless of your orientation to your opponent, as long as you did the required movements for the move to execute before pressing the necessary buttons, it'll still go off. So, for example, if your special move required you to do this, You can instead do any one of these: and that specific special move will execute.

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