After years of on-and-off development, Vanillaware artist and vintage game fanatic Shigatake's vertical STG DEVIL BLADE REBOOT is finally complete and on the verge of release—this is the latest game in a loose series of hobbyist STG they've been making since the original Famicom version of Dezaemon way back in 1993, and their first commercial, self-published title. Shigatake's understandably been busy with their day job in recent years—not just the likes of Unicorn Overload1, 13 Sentinels and the GrimGrimoire remaster, but also helping out KEIZO with new HD illustrations and assets for Astlibra Revision—but they've been very insistent about getting this game done, and I think it stands a shot at finding a large audience.
This new game was developed using Shooting Game Builder, a STG-specific shooting game creation tool that underpins many of the more interesting doujin STG of the last 10+ years, including globally and/or Switch-ported games like Mecha Ritz, Kaikan, GRAND CROSS: ReNOVATION and many others. Shigatake handled all the art, programming and game design, with music by hasu2010, who you might recognise by their recent work on the early-access dungeon crawler Path of the Abyss; they also received production help from buddies in the STGBuilder scene (many of whom also got their start with Dezaemon, unsurprisingly).
The "reboot" aspect comes from the fact that this game is basically Shigatake reimagining all their old Dezaemon-era ideas and wishes using all the new tricks afforded to them by their new engine, not to mention their own ever-expanding skillset and eye for production tricks. They've also thrown in a retro mode that recreates the look of the PS-era Dezaemon version—this isn't just a fun extra but, as they've explained, an attempt at staving off refunds from those people who bash STG for a dearth of content.
They put out a one-stage demo way back in 2018, which you can still find here. At the time, Shigatake wrote up their concepts behind the game systems as they relate to the "STG Dilemma"—I translated them way back when and I'm reposting them here, mostly just to get them off pastebin, but I can't guarantee these ideas will still be reflected as-is in the final game:
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never not saying this
Indie/doujin STG folk have been waiting years for this one, and a lot of the bigger doujin STG of the last half-decade or so were developed with this game as the benchmark/unrequited rival, which extends all the way to the trailers—I've already seen a few of 'em attempt to directly replicate Shigatake's last trailer, and that's only ~a month old!
Here's their newest one, which clocks in at an interminable 30 seconds:
