IGN, D3, and The Guildhall have teamed up to host an exclusive Bangai-O Spirits level contest between game industry professionals. The winner will have a $10,000 graduate fellowship donated to The Guildhall in his name -- which means that some graduate assistant is going to pay the rent with one of these Bangai-O levels.
IGN has all nine levels, from designers at Infinity Ward, Infinite Interactive, and other such prestigious studios, available for download and voting. It's really interesting to see what people who think about levels for a living do with the Bangai-O rule set. Harvey Smith, lead designer of Deus Ex, made an arena for super-annoying FastBots; Infinite's Steve Fawkner replicated the Atari classic Warlords.
All of the levels -- many of which tend toward the baroque -- are great, but our favorite is the simplest one: Shane Hensley's "Pinball Wizard," designed to imitate a pinball playfield. It looks stark, but explodes into bullets in a way that is startling even for Bangai-O.
If you've ever played a Treasure shooter, or almost any Treasure game outside of, say, Stretch Panic or Wario World, you know a bit about what to expect from Bangai-O Spirits. For years, Treasure has been creating incredibly strange games with overt humor and colorful graphics overlaid on top of complex mechanics and piles and piles of enemies. Each game has a "gimmick" that drives the gameplay and defines the player's abilities: swapping colors in Ikaruga, throwing in Gunstar Heroes, and so on.
Bangai-O Spirits has all the hallmarks of a Treasure shooter. It doesn't take itself seriously, but provides more than enough of a challenge for any gamer. It features the same gimmick as the other Bangai-O games, and will be instantly familiar to fans of those. In fact, it seems to be the ideal Treasure game. At the same time, it completely subverts the usual Treasure dynamic, with brilliant results.
For once, U.S. gamers have a reason to lord over their counterparts in the rest of the world. Why? The other major markets are seeing either token releases, as in Europe, or none, as in Australia and Japan, while we here in the States are blessed with a bevy of games. Not just any games, either, not with Bangai-O Spirits leading the pack.
We knew immediately when we heard that a new Bangai-O game was coming out that it would be something special. How could we be so sure of an unknown game? The answer lies in the history of its developer, Treasure, an offshoot of Konami who has been making idiosyncratic action games for years (as well as the occasional McDonald's game to fund said action games, but that's a story for another time).
They've made very memorable brawlers and platformers, but Bangai-O Spirits is part of a long tradition of innovative shooters with insane storylines and unique rulesets, which is why we've chosen to look at Treasure's body of work in that particular genre. If you don't consider run & guns like Gunstar Heroes shooters ... well, we debated that, a lot, and decided that since they're games primarily about firing projectiles at enemies, they belong in the same discussion as scrolling shooters. Of course, if you think enough about shooters to make that kind of distinction, you probably know all about Treasure already.
I went to D3 Publisher along with Joystiq's Justin McElroy to look at Bangai-O Spirits. Justin brought his mysterious space phone along, and I saw an opportunity. After I looked at the new Treasure stages (which include detailed pixel images of the Bangai-O robot and other things made out of stage elements), I asked if we could try out the Sound Load feature -- live.
Justin loaded up a level on YouTube, stuck an earphone up to the mic, and the D3 rep started the Sound Load, but to no avail. "Transfer failed," "Too quiet," "Too loud." That doesn't mean it's a finicky feature, necessarily, just that it's not the ideal feature for the loudest place ever. Owners of the Japanese version haven't really reported problems. I have full faith that it works great in regular noise situations.
I asked the D3 rep if there would be downloadable stages on the US website, and he told me that they were planning a YouTube channel. Furthermore, I was told that Japanese stages would work in the U.S. build.
For the past few months, we've bombarded you with regular updates on Bangai-O Spirits like so many missiles. You might even say that we have an obsession, and you'd be right: we adore -- nay, love -- Bangai-O. If we were in charge of this scummy joint, it wouldn't even be DS Fanboy, but Bangai-O Fanboy. All employees would have to work while dressed as Riki or Mami. All readers would have to provide photographic proof that they owned the original, Japan-only N64 game.
But we're not in charge -- we're snivelly, subservient slaves to our paymasters. So the most we can do is upload these ten new screenshots and hope that you view them.
That's how Treasure rep Arthur sums up Bangai-O Spirits (2:28), and we're struggling to concoct a more befitting description. The lucky blighters at Gamespot's "On the Spot" show got a chance to chat to Arthur (and his colleague Kaori) about the game, which launches later this year in the States.
The first few minutes are dedicated to chatting about and showing off some of the now-familiar shooting action and the level editor, while the second half deals with the game's amazingSound Load system. Arthur admits that this idea "took a lot of explaining to Nintendo," but then demonstrates how easy it is to share files (5:20) -- simply holding two DSes closely to one another does the trick. This idea still seems like witchcraft to us, but we absolutely love it.
Arthur also confirmed that there was no official U.S. database planned to host Bangai-O sound files (9:05). Not that this should bother you -- after all, there's at least one other (really accessible) way to share your masterpiece of a level.
Want to get your hands on Bangai-O Spirits before its August release? Then head on over to California and go to this year's Anime Expo. Not only will you get to play this gem of a game, but the entire DS Fanboy staff will envy you for your hands-onBangai-O experience.
Another DS game that will be playable is, of course, Naruto: Path of the Ninja 2. Would you really expect the orange-clad Ninja not to make an appearance? So, if you plan to stop by the Expo, make sure to check out D3 Publisher's booth (901) for some fun times on the DS.
Let us make our position on this subject absolutely clear: any website that wants to post new videos of Bangai-O Spirits between now and the game's August 12 release has our blessing. For that matter, we'll be happy watching playthroughs of new stages long after the game is out. The video above, from IGN, is especially awesome, featuring numerous enormous scatter bomb shots in a level devoid of anything but missile-firing enemies (which feed the scatter bombs).
The two videos after the break feature the game's gentle first level and a bizarre gimmick level in which the player hits soccer balls with the bat weapon as they fall from a chute, pinball-style. There certainly appears to be enough variety in the level designs.
These English-language gameplay videos of Bangai-O Spirits give us a look at a few of the game's weapons -- the yellow Shield "weapon" there seems like a good choice for obvious reasons (including the number of bullets on screen and their tendency to blow you up upon impact). The "Mix" icon in the weapon selection screen (which can now be read) indicates that the two chosen EX weapons can combine into a new scatter bomb attack. Amusingly, within the first few seconds, we see the demo player fail a level. That's the mark of a hardcore game!
The video after the break shows off two of Spirits' more labyrinthine levels, as well as the awesome bullet-destroying "Sword" attack. We cannot express how thrilled we are that the release date is approaching. There hasn't been a DS game yet to match the few minutes of demo time we've had!
Posted Jun 24th 2008 2:00PM by JC Fletcher
Filed under: News
Bangai-O Spirits is packed with amazing features -- the level editor, the Sound Load system, the shooting of stuff. But as if that weren't enough, it also has co-op. It's local, and limited to two players, both of whom require their own cartridge, but everyone should probably have their own Bangai-O Spirits anyway.
You can be joined by another shooty robot in any stage in Free Play -- which means any stage. This includes stages you've created yourself or transferred via Sound Load. IGN's Daemon Hatfield reports a lot of slowdown, especially in multiplayer, but slowdown in Bangai-O games is inevitable given the nature of the super attacks, and may even be part of the design.
At the end of May, Treasure announced the winners of their Bangai-O Spiritsstage contest. The 1st place winner, MKLL, received a 50,000 yen prepaid debit card, a soundtrack CD, and a Bangai-O Spirits t-shirt (which we'd like to see) for the "Tokimeki Doukasen" stage. The 2nd place winner, NeoGAF's Sp0rsk, won a Wii in addition to the soundtrack and shirt. All the contest-winning stages are now available for download and play via Sound Load.
That means that we won a bunch of downloadable stages that we're going to grab now and hang onto just in case they work in the U.S. version of the game. We wouldn't be surprised if these contest-winning stages made it onto the cartridge anyway!
If you're wondering why the DS Fanboy staff is so wired up for Bangai-O Spirits, you only have to watch this trailer to understand. Packed into a minute of explosive goodness, this video manages to highlight all of the completely sweet features that will be in the game. With so much content and such a deep stage editing/sharing system, you can bet that this Treasure title will be keeping us occupied for a long, long time.
Those of us in North America and Europe that are waiting for its localization can expect the game in August.
European shooter fans (and people who listen to us) will be playing MP3s into their DS Lites along with us this August. D3 Publisher of Europe announced today that they will publish Treasure and ESP's Bangai-O Spirits in Europe. While no actual day was named, the release is planned for August, which is, at least, more specific than "Summer," "Q3," or "Soon." Just save some of your game budget for an August expenditure.
We couldn't be happier to see Bangai-O Spirits being released so soon in Europe, because it means that (as long as you guys buy it) we'll have even more players hard at work making us awesome stages.
We're pleased to report that being able to read all of the text on the screen in Bangai-O Spirits does not ruin the hype for us. Obviously. We got by just fine on limited Japanese skill during our GDC playthrough, but we are dying for a chance to explore all the options and menus in full. Our gallery is now rife with delightful English screens. Now you can see which weapons are being displayed onscreen!
More importantly, now that screens of the English menus are available, we can see that stages in the Edit Mode are divided into categories. "Treasure's Best" must be the new stages we were told would be added between the Japanese and U.S. releases. We find it interesting that the puzzle stages are separated, as well.
We're so happy to see progress being made! Get here soon, Bangai-O.
For once, U.S. gamers have a reason to lord over their counterparts in the rest of the world. Why? The other major markets are seeing either token releases, as in Europe, or none, as in Australia and Japan, while we here in the States are blessed with a bevy of games. Not just any games, either, not with 
I went to D3 Publisher along with Joystiq's Justin McElroy to look at 
For the past few months, we've bombarded you with regular updates on 
Want to get your hands on 
At the end of May, Treasure announced the winners of their 
European shooter fans (and people who listen to us) will be playing MP3s into their DS Lites 
We're pleased to report that being able to read all of the text on the screen in 
