Comic Market edges ever slowly closer and those of us who are stuck here in the States curse those who can attend this huge event. And while some of us are looking forward to the huge amount of porn that's coming out of this otaku mecca, I'm looking forward to something completely different (usually): Doujin Games (同人ゲームズ).

Doujin games have really advanced in the past few years. With the release of Tsukihime, Melty Blood, and Eternal Fighter Zero, we saw a huge jump in the complexity, quality, and popularity of these games. In fact, when I actually visited the games section during day 3 of Comiket 69 (2005), I saw the huge lines for the (previously) doujin circles TypeMoon and French Bread (フランスパン).

Anyway, since Comiket 73 is coming up, I decided to add to my weekly lineup a Doujin Game Roundup. So, let's see what I've found this time...

First from the circle Fly Systems (飛翔システム) is the game MAGICAL BATTLE ARENA.

Most likely inspired by the great battles in Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha, this game takes Takamachi Nanoha and Fate Testarossa of the original series and A's and has them battle it out on the ground and in the skies. If limited to that, it would most likely be a fairly boring game though. So Fly Systems has decided to spice it up a bit... by adding Lina Inverse from Slayers, and Kinomoto Sakura from Card Captor Sakura!

Anyway, better than my writing skills can describe it, I'll just post some screenshots:
STARLIGHT BREAKER !!
Van Rail!

DRAGON SLAAAAAAAAAVE !!

The gameplay reminds me of a cuter version of Virtual On (Fei Yen excluded or course). Anyway, it looks like a demo version will be released this year at Comiket 73, so pick it up if you can (and one for me please).

ミク☆ラッシャー！
Because no post of mine is complete without mentioning my current love: Hatsune Miku.

This has been mentioned a few times before at other Miku Blogs, but I felt that I had to bring this one up. It's a free download over at the Yoshiba Works website, or if you're lazy you can find the links for it at the Miku Rasher game here.

The controls are pretty simple: Left and right arrow keys move Miku left and right. The 'Z' key shoots the negi to encapsulate enemies in bubbles. The 'X' key is a sort of jump/boost thing a la Joust. All in all, it's pretty much exactly how ミクミク Blog describes it: a combination of Bubble Bobble and Joust. The boost allows you to boost into the air, and slowly increases in strength the longer you hold it down. Your negi bubble bullets will only fly straight for a small period of time before they start falling toward the ground. And you still have to pop the bubbles after you hit each enemy or else they come out angry, much like Bubble Bobble.

For XP users, you'll want to create a shortcut then set the compatibility to Windows 2000 mode in order to play it (confused me for a while).

Alice Senki 2B is the new iteration of the doujin fighter Alice Senki by the circle Yume no Tsuzuki. Much like Melty Blood, all the characters are based off other games, this time from the eroge maker AliceSoft. I don't know much about how the original game reviewed, but the game looks absolutely gorgeous with several new characters from the original.

Here are some screenshots (different resolutions from different updates on their site... sorry):





You can find some gameplay videos on their site as well.

Anyway, that wraps up this week's roundup. I'll have more for ya'll next week.