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As I've covered previously, Deathsmiles was a big success for developer Cave when it was released in 2007. DS: Mega Black Label followed the next year, but a full-on sequel was only a matter of time away, and in 2009 arcade-goers were treated to Deathsmiles II: Makai no Merry Christmas, because what better way to follow up Halloween: The Shmup than with Christmas: The Shmup?

Unlike Cave's other games going back to 2004's Mushihimesama, which were powered by the CV1000 hardware, DSII ran on an all-new PC-based system and featured real-time 3D graphics for the first time in a Cave shmup. How did that work out? This was the only game to run on this hardware, and if I'm being generous, it looks to be visually on par with a Dreamcast game. Oh well.

But is there a good game underneath the lacklustre presentation? It's time to take a look at how an 11-year-old girl, her pet bat, and her magic scissors saved Christmas.


The controls are the same as the original: shoot left, shoot right, and bomb. Both shot buttons activate your power-up if it's available, and your lock shot if it's not. What's changed is the way in which your power-up is charged up. There are three different kinds of item - red rings, which are spawned by attacking with your normal shot and which build up your main counter (up to a maximum of 1,000, at which point your power-up becomes available), blue rings, which build up your sub-counter (the number added to the point values of items during a power-up, up to a maximum of 10,000 - and unlike the original DS, you keep it after your power-up ends) and silver rings, which build up both counters. Depending on your character, your option's shot will also spawn items.

A word of warning: compared to the original, information on this game - in English, at least - is much harder to come by. There's a very bare-bones page for the game on the Shmups Wiki, and a brief strategy guide posted on the Cave-STG forum (cross-posted to the Shmups Forum), but there are a lot of details missing, and as such, some of what you'll see here is guesswork on my part.

Anyway, on with the show:

0:00 - There are four selectable characters; Casper and Windia return from the original DS, and are joined by newcomers Supe and Lei.

0:10 - A quick introduction to the plot before the first stage. Satan Claws has attacked Mr Dior and made off with the seven Dragon Balls five Wishing Notes, and it's up to our heroes to get them back before he can make a wish.

0:43 - From time to time, there are enemies in the background that can only be attacked with the lock shot.

0:48 - Casper is particularly good at leeching items off enemies.

1:00 - When your main counter is at 1,000 and you're ready to power up, some enemies release revenge bullets that can be absorbed by your option and converted into blue rings, at a cost of 1 to your main counter.

1:03 - For the first couple of stages, I use the power-up mainly for defensive purposes - as if it was an extra bomb. You'd think that this is the optimal way to play through the entire game if you're just going for a 1CC, but there are score-based extends at 40 million and 100 million - the latter of which takes a little effort to reach. The Detritus stage is particularly lucrative, and you definitely want to take advantage of that. (And in any case, the revenge bullets mean that you'll be activating your power-up pretty quickly if you're playing for safety.)

1:47 - Joy to the world, the boss has come... Whereas the original DS had a giant cow, DSII has Lily the giant reindeer, ridden by Satan Claws.

1:52 - When using your focus shot, you have an aura around your character which deals extra damage at close range, similar to the Dodonpachi series. This comes in very handy in boss battles.

2:55 - You know how in the early '80s, before they settled on calling parts of a game "levels" or "stages", they would use all sorts of different terms such as "boards", "patterns", "racks", "waves", and so on? Well, Cave is reviving that tradition by referring to this game's stages as "fields". All joking aside, DSII keeps the non-linear structure of the original, although there's no difficulty selection this time. In this run, I'm going to be boring and play the stages in B -> C -> D order.

3:00 - Not a whole lot to say about this stage - at least not until I reach the boss.

4:43 - I use a power-up for safety purposes as the falling masonry is surprisingly tricky to avoid (even though it only does half a point of damage).

5:06 - A planned bomb, as this is a relatively difficult pattern to dodge.

5:50 - Up until now I've activated my power-up whenever it's available and when there are revenge bullets on screen, but here (and for the rest of the game, pretty much), I'm going to make an effort to build up my sub-counter before doing so, to extract more value from my power-up. This is easy to do here, as these platforms act like the falling rocks in the volcano stage in the original DS, as you can leech copious amounts of items from them.

6:04 - With the sub-counter at over 6,000 and a cloud of revenge bullets approaching, I decide now is the time to cash in.

6:25 - Thanks to these platforms, it takes just a few seconds to recharge after my power-up ends.

7:01 - After entering the stage with just over 11 million, I obtain the 40 million extend.

7:19 - Another planned bomb - but if I destroyed it with my lock shot (and if I didn't already have full life), I would have picked up a half-point life refill.

7:36 - I find that Casper handles this boss particularly well.

7:51 - That said, I activate my power-up here as these rocks have caught me out on quite a few occasions.

8:34 - One benefit of clearing the previous boss so quickly is that my sub-counter starts the next stage at over 4,000 - it counts down quickly during boss battles, and is halved upon starting a new stage. As a result, I'll be able to make that much more progress towards the 100 million extend.

8:54 - This is the first hit I take all game.

9:44 - There's another life-up item available here if I kill this knight with the lock shot - but I actually didn't know about it at the time I played this.

10:31 - The first death of the run, thanks to an enemy collision. That life-up item sure would have come in handy here, right?

10:53 - The "Nice Older Man", Tamecos, arrives on the scene. How will he aid Casper on her quest?

10:55 - Uh... that's not very nice at all!

11:08 - MEEEEEHHHHHHHHHHHH

11:59 - The normal way to handle this attack is to quickly go over Tamecos' head, move to the left-hand side, and return to the bottom-right  - but because there are a few bullets remaining from the previous wave of this attack, I decide to play it safe and use a bomb here (although in hindsight, this was not difficult to dodge).

13:32 - After a quick cutscene, the final stage begins.

13:47 - I hope you enjoy seeing chess pieces blow up, because those are the only emeies you'll see for the next three minutes or so.

14:21 - The power-up is available once again, but with the second extend still to be collected, I am holding off on using it until I have a good sub-counter - at least 5,000. To handle the revenge bullets until then, I position Casper's option in front of her with the focus shot, and keep it there to absorb bullets while using my normal shot.

14:42 - With 21 million until the extend, I activate the power-up.

14:59 - The power-up ends - still just over 12 million to go. Still plenty of time, though...

15:03 - It's getting a bit hectic, so I use my last bomb.

15:27 - The power-up is back on deck. I wait for some revenge bullets to appear...

15:32 - ... and activate.

15:48 - After this power-up ends, I'm just over 2 million away from the extend.

15:59 - I quickly charge up another power-up, and with the sub-counter at 10,000, the second extend is in the bag.

16:15 - Thanks to all the items I leeched off the high-HP enemies during that power-up, I gain over 20 million points. Either way, I can now go back to using my power-up more defensively.

16:45 - Entering the final stretch before Satan Claws now - with four lives, it's looking good.

17:04 - Staying close to the snake to kill it more quickly, and in so doing, avoid its tricky second pattern.

17:30 - Same deal for the second snake.

17:46 - Finally, we have reached Satan Claws. Let the epic struggle for the last Wishing Notes begin...

18:10 - ...well, actually, it proves to be a bit anticlimactic. On the surface, Satan Claws - particularly his second form - is a significant leap in difficulty compared to the rest of the game. But once you're aware that you can do more damage by point-blanking, he goes from being a major hurdle to being actually pretty trivial to beat, as long as you have a couple of lives in reserve. My process for tackling this boss went like this:

• Is the current bullet pattern difficult to dodge?
• If so, and I have a power-up available, I use it.
• If I don't have a power-up available, I use a bomb if I can, and use the post-bomb invincibility frames to go in and point-blank the boss (and leech some items while I'm at it, to charge up the next power-up).
• If I have neither a power-up nor a bomb available, or if I can easily dodge the pattern, then I just do it the old-fashioned way.

In fact, this wasn't even the first time I had 1CC'd the game that day. The previous run was also a 1CC, including a no-miss of the first four stages. But for reasons I'll get into later, I decided I should get another 1CC and upload that to YouTube instead. Because of point-blanking, I'm able to 1CC the game on command, more or less.

18:38 - With no resources left, I die to this wave of bullets. But each death simply means another set of three bombs - more fuel for my point-blanking strategy.

20:07 - Another death, but with Satan Claws down to about 30% it's only a matter of time.

20:39 - With two lives to spare, Satan Claws is defeated.

21:30 - With Satan Claws banished to the World of Demons and the Dragon Balls Wishing Notes all together, our heroes summon Shenron God and wish Mr Dior back to life. As in the original DS, there are two endings for each character - one where they ask Mr Dior for something, and one where they don't. In my first 1CC, I chose the "ask for something" ending, and I'll just say this - LMFAO if you think I'm putting that on my YouTube channel.


Is she referring to Satan Claws, or whoever came up with her "ask for something" ending?

24:42 - I can't find exact details about the clear bonus, but if I had to guess I'd say about 15 million for each remaining life, plus smaller points for remaining bombs and counters.

25:02 - At time of playing, this run is twelfth on the Steam leaderboards, with the top score at just over a billion. Of course, this game didn't start out on Steam, and there is video out there of a 1.5 billion run, while the world record stands at over 2 billion as per Shmups Wiki.

Conclusion: It's a decent game in its own right, but in most respects - obviously the graphics, but also the gameplay, character art, and music (although credit where it's due, the final stage theme is excellent) - it comes across as a watered-down verion of the original DS. Cave seemed to agree, and their initial plan for the Xbox 360 port included just X Mode (essentially version 5.00 of the game, with four different revisions - 1.00 to 4.00 - of the arcade game having been produced) and a weird Arrange Mode that I don't fully understand. At the last minute, version 4.00 of the arcade game was added, but it was clearly a rush-job, as basic features such as replays and practice mode are missing. Unfortunately, these issues aren't rectified in the Steam port.

I have two more games currently planned for this series, and then I'll see where I'll go from there. Until next time...

(Note: I originally posted this on Cohost back in August. As I sit here typing this, it's the evening of the 31st of October, and what better way to mark the occasion than to repost this article on Halloween: The Shmup?)

This is (hopefully) the first of a series in which I play through an arcade game on one credit and do my best to explain how I did it and talk about the game in general.

First up is Deathsmiles, Cave's gothic-themed horizontal shmup from 2007. This was Cave's attempt to appeal to a broader audience - they had been keenly aware for a while that a lot of people will buy any old crap with a cute anime girl on it (and it didn't hurt that their games are, in general, actually pretty good), and in Deathsmiles they paired this approach with more approachable gameplay. The result was a clear success - it became Cave's first shmup to get a worldwide release (a few racing and extreme sports games they did for other publishers in the PS1/Saturn era got international releases), and after they eventually pivoted to mobile games, their flagship product, to this day, is Gothic wa Mahou Otome, a gacha game set in the Deathsmiles universe that has been running since 2015.

When the game's European release finally arrived in early 2011, I picked it up on day 1 (alongside Marvel vs Capcom 3). I had been interested in shmups for some time beforehand, mainly Cho Ren Sha 68K and the demo of the original doujin version of Crimzon Clover, even running high score tournaments for them as side events at my fighting game locals.

As alluded to previously, Deathsmiles is not a particularly difficult game, and before long I was able to perform a basic 1CC. I picked up the other Cave games that were released on Xbox 360 here, and have played shmups on and off since then. Mostly off for the past couple of years... until earlier this week, when I watched Raelcun's Crimzon Clover: World Explosion run while catching up on the recent SGDQ:


I decided that it's about time I started playing these games again, so I put on Deathsmiles to see how long it would take me to be able to 1CC it again. I did it first try, and that run will be the subject of this post.

A few things to note:

• This is intended to be a demonstration of a basic 1CC, with some light scoring - I don't go to the optional EX Stage or activate Death Mode. It's not the bare minimum, but this is very much an any% as opposed to a 100% run. An example of top-level play can be found here.
• As for the controls, this is a three-button game: fire left, fire right, and bomb (it's mostly a side-scrolling shooter, but at times it scrolls upwards, downwards, and to the left. Enemies come from all directions, and so you have the ability to face both left and right). Hold either fire button for a laser. There is also a lock-on shot (press one fire button while holding the other), and a power-up activation (press both fire buttons at the same time).
• Throughout this post, I'll be referring to this detailed strategy guide as well as this glossary of terms from the Shmups Wiki.
• I am playing on the 2022 PC port from City Connection, as part of the Deathsmiles I/II bundle (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1884300/Deathsmiles_III/). There was a previous PC port, but this new version includes reduced input lag and much more accurate slowdown...
• ...wait, slowdown? This is a game from 2007 (and which looks quite a bit older than that) running on a PC I built, at quite considerable expense, about a year and a half ago - why would slowdown be a factor? Well, you have to consider that slowdown is considered by shmup players to be an integral part of the genre, practically a standard gameplay mechanic (to the point where it's generally believed that Cave were deliberately programming slowdown into the game, as the hardware they used was capable of rendering all but the most dense bullet patterns at 60fps), and when a port deviates noticeably from the arcade original in this regard, they are not happy.

Now for the run itself:

0:04 - There are four available characters; from left to right, Casper, Windia, Follett, and Rosa. Rosa has the strongest shot and laser, and is therefore considered the easiest character to 1CC the game with, although she has her drawbacks - she can only lock on to enemies behind her, which makes scoring more difficult, and her movement speed is slower.

0:08 - Unlike most other shmups, progress through the game is non-linear. At first, you can choose any of the three stages from the bottom row, then after clearing that stage, you can select any of the three stages from the top row. you then choose either of the two remaining stages from the bottom row, and so on until all six normal stages have been played. After that, you have the choice of going directly to the final stage, or tackling the fiendishly difficult EX stage. You can also choose which level to play each of the first six stages at, with 1 being the easiest and 3 being the hardest. Levels 1 and 2 are limited to once per row (in Arcade mode, anyway; the home ports include an arrange mode with upgraded graphics and the ability to play at the lower levels the whole way through). Selecting level 3 five times, or entering the EX stage, will activate Death Mode, where enemies will fire yellow cross-shaped revenge bullets upon death, which you can absorb with your option. This is the first of two times I select Level 2.

0:34 - When most enemies are killed, they drop items, depending on whether you killed them with the shot, laser, or lock-on, and whether you are powered up. The strategy guide contains a chart showing what attacks are optimal to use on each enemy. There are small Skeleton Rings, which advance your item counter by 1 (when not powered up - I'll cover what happens in power-up mode later), medium-sized Crown Tiaras which are worth 5, and large High Crowns which are with 10. If they hit the ground they split into two items from the level below, so in normal mode you want to collect them quickly.

0:58 - I mistakenly use the lock-on against this cyclops, even though the laser gives the most items against this enemy, and as it costs items to use the lock shot, I end up with fewer items than I had before.

1:49 - The stage A-1 boss, Deathscythe. More or less trivial; for his second form, you don't even need to move as long as you're plaing as Rosa, as she will just melt his life bar by the time his attack even reaches you. There is a third form which appears if you're playing the stage on Level 3, and is somewhat more challenging.

2:10 - When you item counter reaches 1,000, you are able to activate power-up mode. Also, you start earning a bonus, known as the plus value, for every item you collect. Before entering power-up mode, the plus value increases in the same way as the item counter.

2:26 - On to stage C-2 (Volcano). I don't activate power-up mode immediately, because lurking just underneath the platform on the right...

2:37 - ...is an absolute fountain of points. I enter power-up mode and head straight for the falling rocks on the right-hand side - each of them yielding copious amounts of items. In power-up mode, all items advance the plus value by the same amount, small items are spawned whenever your option's shot hits an enemy, and the amount depends on the current plus value, with items incrementing it by 1 initially, and by 20 once it reaches 5,000, all the way up to the maximum of 10,000. This means that you now want to wait for items to hit the ground and split into two, where applicable, as this will increase your score more quickly.

2:47 - By the time that first fountain of rocks leaves the screen, my score has exceeded 2 million (after scoring about 500,000 for the entirety of the first stage), my plus value is over 7,000, and I still have over 80% of my power-up remaining.

2:55 - Just as I reach the second fountain of rocks, the plus value reaches the maximum of 10,000, and is therefore displayed in gold each time I collect an item. The score right now is just under 4 million.

3:08 - By the time the second fountain leaves the screen, 13 seconds later, my score is now 16 million, and I am still just over halfway through my power-up.

3:14 - The third fountain appears; this takes the form of a large rock in the centre of the stage spitting out smaller rocks.

3:20 - Extra life for reaching 20 million points.

3:36 - The power-up runs out with my score at over 30 million. The plus value and item counter are both reset to zero, but I am able to collect a number of large items from rocks I destroyed in power-up mode, and which only appear in fever mode (i.e., you're powered up and the plus value is 10,000). With the help of a well-timed bomb or lock-on shot, it is possible to collect enough large items to immediately re-activate power-up mode - this is known as a recharge.

4:16 - Your life bar decreases by 0.5 on enemy contact in normal mode (you are invincible to this kind of damage in power-up mode) - for some reason, this flame is counted as an enemy.

4:45 - The stage C-2 boss, Bavaria, poses slightly more of a challenge...

5:43 - ...but not that much more that I should have taken a death here, especially with three bombs still in stock. On death, you lose 30% of your item counter - this means it will take a bit longer for me to re-enter power-up mode.

5:46 - Another half-hit, becaues apparently that laser beam counts as an enemy and not a bullet? Not that I'm complaining, though...

6:10 - Off to stage C-1. It gets off to a relatively slow start...

6:34 - ...then as you descend to the train tracks, things begin to pick up somewhat. The train enemies give plenty of items...

6:44 - ...which means I am soon able to power-up. The fact that all items give the same increase in plus value becomes more important, as I can now wait for the items to break apart on the train tracks.

7:38 - mooooo...

7:41 - ...here comes Mary the Giant Cow! She's a bit of a pushover, though.

8:45 - Stage A-2 begins.

9:35 - Extra life for reaching 45 million points - this is the last score-based extend.

9:49 - There are a number of life-up items you can collect, based on what level you play the stage at - this one is only available at level 3. You cannot increase your life beyond what there is space for on your life bar - this item took me from 3.5/5 to 4/5, but had I been at 5/5 I would have only received the 100,000 point bonus.

9:58 - A good, if unplanned, partial recharge here - I exit power-up mode with plenty of large items on the screen, I go to pick them up, and within a few seconds I am already two thirds of the way to the next power up.

10:22 - Jordan is the A-2 boss, and he does not put up much of a fight either.

11:27 - Stage B-1 begins. It's pretty uneventful until I reach the boss.

12:54 - The stage B-1 boss, Whroon. For the fourth pattern (the one with the giant apples), you can just go to the top of the screen and avoid the apples - I forgot about this, and took a death. The final attack is also potentially tricky (although staying at the top of screen helps, as you only have to deal with the vertical apples), but I was able to get through it without dying or bombing this time.

14:00 - Off to B-2, the last regular stage, switching back to level 2 to avoid triggering Death Mode. Despite the reduced difficulty, there's still some decent scoring to be had here.

15:45 - The B-2 boss, Sakura, arrives. Pre-battle dialogue? She might be important to the plot...

16:44 - After the (relatively easy) battle, we get more dialogue.

17:08 - After clearing the first six stages, we see a cutscene where the girls meet Sakura again. We find out what her deal is - the girls are all here because they were in mortal peril at some point, and are missing, presumed dead, in the real world, but instead of actually dying they found themselves in the fantasy realm of Gilverado. It turns out that Sakura's father, Jitterbug, is also here, and in trying to return to the real world, has opened a portal to Hell, allowing demons to terrorise Gilverado. Sakura wants to lead our heroines to Hades Castle to put a stop to this once and for all, but do they want to take a detour to the Gorge on the way?

17:46 - Nah, we're good.

19:05 - A silly mistake leads to me taking a death.

20:04 - Mary is back...

20:09 - ...and she's gone again.

20:23 - I can't actually remember why I bombed here. Finger slipped? Recharge attempt?

23:53 - Another two-thirds recharge - not that it's going to have much impact at this late stage.

24:59 - After some dialogue. the showdown with Jitterbug begins. I use the lock shot to try and speed up this boss battle.

25:10 - This wave of bullets took me by surprise. Under normal circumstances I would have bombed here, but if I don't...

26:13 - ...as soon as Tyrannosatan appears, a large life-up (two extra lives) appears. Even with the death, I am ahead on life compared to before the Jitterbug fight.

26:56 - I mess this attack up a bit and end up having to use two bombs.

27:37 - The plan here was to use the lock-on shot against this, but as Rosa's lock shot isn't very good, I can't get locked on and end up taking a hit.

28:43 - Another death, but with two lives remaining the 1CC is more or less in the bag at this point.

29:06 - Tyrannosatan is defeated.

30:19 - Each character has two endings; one where they return to the real world, and one where they remain in Gilverado.

32:50 - The total score is revealed - 105,979,462. You may have noticed that the score was only about 91 million at the end of the Tyrannosatan fight - where is the rest coming from? There is an end-of-game bonus based on your lives, bombs, and item counter, but following the formula given in the strategy guide (6.5 million per remaining life, 1 million per remaining bomb, and 10,000 per item in the item counter) gives a total of 111,589,462, so I'm not 100% sure on the details.

In closing, it seems like a bit of a cliche to say "if you're looking to get into shmups, there are few better places to start than this", but that's pretty clearly what Cave intended, and, for me, it's what they delivered.