[Steam] Akai Katana Shin - 1CC - 6,272,549,793 Pts (Type B)

Akai Katana came out in arcades in 2010 and was the second last arcade title Cave ever made.
Playing this on the Shin (or Slash) mode, which is an arrange mode that's basically a different game as it completely changes all the game mechanics, adds an additional stage, adds a TLB and makes the game 16:9.
The Shin version was first released alongside the arcade version on the 360 port of Akai Katana in 2011, which was then later ported back to arcades in 2012 via NESiCAxLive.

Akai Katana bombed pretty hard in arcades back when it was first released. Part of that might be because the original arcade release was somewhat underwhelming; the system wasn't that engaging as you spent most of your time invincible and the slowdown was greatly excessive.
Shin GREATLY improved on the game, but at that point the damage was already done I feel like.
Cave had a lot banking on Akai Katana as a new IP, so that not working out was a big blow for them. They followed this up with a sequel to an already popular series and then basically stopped making arcade games altogether.

Shin is incredibly good, easily one of my favorite Cave games and probably one of the most underrated Cave games in general.
The system is incredibly satisfying, where you build up these huge swords to then 'surf' on top of them through massive bullet waves to gain massive points.
Lots of cool things you can do to optimize these too, like shooting them out vertically or diagonally, and more subtle things you can do to speed up your steel and sword gain.
It's definitely one of the more developed arrange modes Cave ever made, it was so good in fact it got ported back to arcade and completely overshadowed the original.

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Akai Katana came out on Steam and all modern consoles last December, courtesy of City Connection's new TAKE×0FF branch. This is a separate group from the usual City Connection guys and are also the ones that did the latest Deathsmiles I & II collection.

This new port is based on the old Xbox 360 port but comes included with some new features:
- A new Matsumoto arranged soundtrack.
- Better practice options from previous ports. You can now start from midbosses among other adjustable variables.
- A new optional screen frame like you see in this video.
- All previous DLC comes included.

So they pretty much hit it out of the park with the Deathsmiles release last time, how did they fare on Akai Katana?
Well... launch was a trainwreck. The game had almost no slowdown, input lag was not great and it had horrible graphics and gameplay bugs.
Weird gameplay bugs like lasers not pushing you back while in Gennin mode and graphic issues where the screen got more blurry the further away you got from the middle of the screen.
It has to be said though that they've admirably been patching every issue that was brought up since, and the latest version of the port is quite good now.
In terms of bugs it seems like the only thing that hasn't been fixed yet is the new arrange soundtrack not properly looping.
But it was clear this needed at least a couple more months in the oven before it should have been allowed to release.

In terms of input lag BrianReboot has measured the Steam port at about 5.25 frames (6 for Switch).
This sounds high, but according to his same measurements, the 360 port was also roughly 5.5 frames, so there isn't really much difference there.
It doesn't feel the best, but it's still plenty playable, like you see me do in this video.
The EXA version is only 2 frames for only 2000 dollars.

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Explanation of mechanics:
   • Akai Katana - Slash Mode Tutorial [HD]  

Learned most of this run from NAT's incredible Akai Katana Shin guide, highly recommended:
https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm3891...
Please NAT finish Part 2 at some point. :(

Run of my current PB.
Was trying to get the no-miss for the TLB clear for a while now, but I haven't been able to put much time into this lately, so I'm uploading this for now.
This run could have been a TLB entry but I think I got rolled by the game? Like in the video it looks like I just run into those last lasers for no reason, but during the run my life meter displayed that I still had a bit of life left. So I died there and I was extremely confused as to why I died. In the live recording you can even see that I still had a bit of life left:    • Akai Katana Shin - 6,272,549,793  
I re-recorded this from the replay a while later, so I have no idea if this got patched or if the life counter just doesn't display correctly during actual runs, it's incredibly bizarre.

Special thanks to Flubman for gifting me the game!

Buy the game on Steam here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/20...

00:00 - Intro
00:39 - Stage 1
02:50 - Stage 2
06:40 - Stage 3
11:09 - Stage 4
16:54 - Stage 5
24:34 - Stage 6
31:10 - Stage 7
33:33 - Ending & Credits

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