This post was last modified: Nov 19, 2017 at 7:49 PM by Aidan.

so the first game on our wild right is walpurgis quintet by a company called DNA softwares i guess?
it’s a madoka magica fan game, judging from the name and box art

anyway legally acquiring all these obscure grey market japanese indie games is fucking expensive so in order to split the cost we’re partnering up with chubby cola for this thread


chubby cola: when you’re at full chubb, you can thank chubby cola


here’s the title screen. i will give them credit for one thing: the two characters you get onscreen is randomized every time, so sometimes you’ll be greeted by the best girls, sometimes you get the worst. title screens changing is a sick trick and i want to give them shout-outs for it. you’ll notice 5 slots with PRESS START all up in their shit. those are permanently affixed to the top of the screen, even when it makes no sense for them to be. i respect the arcade aesthetic but jesus christ that’s a lot of lost screen real estate

before we start i’d like to take a moment for what i call the Doujin Woes. i’m seperating this off as a seperate section because it’s probably incoherent and dull to 90% of you, but i feel the need to chronicle this

japanese pc games are a bizarre world. most games default to fucking windowed mode and have 5 seperate .exe files to configure graphics, sound, gameplay options, controller options, other options, option options, non-options, etc.

basically you’re working off a wish and a prayer any time you actually try to run one of these. this particular game had to install itself to my hard drive and update my graphics drivers even though it was half a gb uninstalled and exactly exactly 420 mb installed.

they decided not to include a config.exe. this sounds like a good thing, as if they somehow became masters of the digital realm and concocted a perfect video game that requires no configuration.

this is not the case. actually, there’s just no way to change the settings at all.

you’ll notice that the above image is cropped off from the sides and bottom. that’s not me being fucking inept at taking screenshots, that’s how the game actually runs.

it’s not fullscreen either. it runs in windowed mode, but assigns itself an arbitrary resolution inspired by, but always larger than, your current resolution. i had to manually change my display settings just to get that much of the screen to show, and literally not a single option on my computer would actually show the whole screen.

holy fuck.


back on track, here’s the character select screen. you get your five girls as you’d expect. it defaults to sayaka but i picked madoka to start because i’m a basic bitch. another nice touch: they’re in day to day clothes here, but when you select them they put on their fighting outfits. cool shit.

so, judging by the 5 character multiplayer and the arcade aesthetic, i was guessing this would be some kind of beat-em-up probably? it kinda looks like the old teenage mutant ninja turtles arcade games by konami. that was a good ass game, i hope they take inspiration from it.


what the FUCK

so basically it’s a platformer. you get three buttons: attack, jump and special. your special move takes some of your health, which is supposed to be a cute nod to the show except it doesn’t really make any fucking sense when you think about it. the concept is that they use magic both to fight and to not get fucking annihilated when they get hit, considering they’re weak untrained middle school girls. madoka’s special is onscreen, it’s that arrow rain bullshit that everyone with a bow always has. the arrows don’t fall immediately either, they must have to call a cab everytime you hit the button because there’s about an hour and a half before the move actually hits. thanks, madoka.

speaking of buttons: in order to accomodate 5 player mode, every single player’s controls is mapped to the keyboard by default. so player one here moves with WASD and has moves on shift, z and x. player 2 would be sitting to their right, so they have IJKL movement and V, B, N for moves.

as an experiment, put your left hand on WASD and your right on Z and X. now control an action game like that with four other people next to you all hunched over a laptop screen.

point is these controls fucking blow so i quit the game and plugged in an arcade stick.


here’s a little montage of my actual run through the stage. i picked sayaka this time because she’s the coolest and i wanted a sword.

first little image there shows a basic enemy type. it’s a familiar that’s a clone of sayaka. this enemy type appears a bunch in different forms throughout the game. the sayaka version pops up and then does dante’s Stinger all the way across the map. i took that screenshot to show that the enemy version actually has more reach, so when you have the default weapon equipped you’re actually strictly inferior to the enemy and can’t safely attack. there’s upgrades to fix that, but by default you swing way too short.

but short is superior with new chubby cola: electric green leprechaun. impress your friends by guzzling down an entire case of chubby cola and keeping it down for a whole day. chubby cola: not your dad’s soft drink.

uh the last new enemy in this stage is a blind tongue kind in a clown car. all the enemies spawn infinitely from those weird symbol things, and this guy pops out at full blast and never stops driving. he’s prob my favorite characer.

the big mustachio dandelion is the boss for this stage, and he’s just a copy of the other cool toothpick but resized 200%. they both throw scissors at you, presumably asking you to give them a shave. not really much more to say about those assholes. you can also see sayaka’s powered up slash in that shot. it looks a little bit like an upgraded strider weapon, but feels a thousand times worse and less fun.


woo stage complete. in arcade tradition they give you some point bonuses at the end of the stage.

because of the shitty screen cropping i couldn’t actually see what the bonuses were for player 1 so i had to replay the level, controlling two characters at once, so i could actually get a screenshot of this. don’t ask how i managed to pull this off.


stage 2 is set in the first witch’s realm or zone hole or whatever the fuck it’s called. anyway the background is weird and there’s a flower garden motif.

they reuse the dandelions, but also add a flying potato wearing a tutu to the mix. you’ll also notice the gay ice cream cone has a spiffy new spawn point to endlessly pop out of, while butterfly dick man is still using his meme wheels.


the boss here, as fans of the show would expect, is a magic pancreas oozing green boogs with roses stuck to them.

she fights by giving birth to a kaleidoscope of butteflies and occasionally sliding messily along the floor. there can actually be a dozen plus butterflies flapping about at times, but they tended to all get dead pretty quickly after.

also in this shot is sayaka’s special power: dashing. the reason it took me until now to find it is because the input is forward+special. there’s absolutely no reason for this. special by itself does nothing, and it does nothing when you’re holding any other direction. thanks sayaka.

it’s not invincible and you don’t get any movement tricks with it, like starting a dash and then swinging your sword mid-way or air-dashing or whatever. basically it’s shit.


stage 3 woo. this one is based on episode 3 of the show, where mami is kind of a dick to homura but homura kinda deserves it even though mami also really overreacts. other shit also happens

from that episode you get floating eyeballs and eyeball nurses. the eyeball suicide bomb attack you i guess? there’s not really any indication of an explosion but they die if they hit you.

the nurses have syringes. they’re actually just full of flu shots, but sayaka is an anti-vaxxer and she’s pretty sure this is all a plot to give her autism.


the boss is charlotte! my fav character!

this fight is a lot more fun than the previos ones because charlotte actually has a pattern. she gets distracted by the candy glued to her nose and tries to chomp your asshole, then gets bored and flies away. it’s best to hit her when she’s attempting autocannibalism.


after you’ve slashed her shit for a while she succumbs to alcohol poisioning and passes out on the floor, likely to die of unrelated causes. smh watch the blue curacao girl it’s dyed your fucking tongue

in the interest of time i’m not going to talk much about stage 3 because it’s fucking boring and ugly and it sucks. there is one interesting thing and it’s at the verrrrrry end of the level. i found it after killing the boss even though i really wish i could’ve got it sooner.


it’s a piece of cheese discarded on top of a knocked over vending machine. sayaka is a member of the parks and recreation department so she picks it up to dispose of it in the proper receptacle


then oh shit it’s charlotte again!

this is the SUMMON BEBE item and it makes charlotte call a designated driver and come in to annihilate some bitches for you.

under normal circumstances this would be really cool but it’s actually a reference to the third madoka movie so i’m legally required to hate it.

you’ll also notice a pop-up in the top right saying that we unlocked a new item in the gallery for doing this. i guess it’s like an achievement except you don’t feel hollow and miserable after getting it.

and what else leaves you feeling hollow and miserable? that’s right: chubby cola, official sponsor of the greater texas area girls’ rollerblading derby.


this stage is also quick and boring but i wanted to show off the boss which is a flying tv trained in the ansatsuken arts to fire hadoukens. akuma had a duel with this television to determine the rightful master of the style many years ago. to this day, his vision is still poor from standing too close to the tv screen. let that be a lesson to all of you.


i was starting to pass out at around this point in the game but the next stage is actually pretty cool. there’s a ton of the doppelganger enemies in this stage, in all different types. some are based off your playable characters but there’s also some wierd ones, like a ballerina dancer that shits meteors and a generic ass Wizard of Oz style witch on a broomstick.

you also get a bunch of stage hazards like living hat racks carrying a switchblade and weaponized meme wheels. no one would ever fucking get hit by any of these but the effort is nice. cool background too, it’s a stained glass window with an absolute fuckton of sunlight blasting through it.



this boss fight was sick and i figured in an action game you probably want to see the action, so i recorded a video of it.

really cool stage overall. i think they must’ve put way more work into this than most of the previous. the boss has like, probably 10 times more animation than any of the others and an actual good variety of attacks.

the episode that inspired this stage is really good too. i kinda get the feeling the developers were especially inspired and wanted to work extra hard to get this part right, and weren’t really feeling it for a lot of the other stages.


the next stage was fucking ridiculous. idk how well it’s conveyed in the screenshots, but most of this game is wide open spaces with like, a couple platforms to jump on if you want. there’s usually plenty of room to jump over shit or just walk around it.

then out of nowhere this shit shows up and there’s bullshit everywhere. you got your castlevania style crushers and swinging pendulums, some good ol’ spikes, tons of enemies, some bullet spam. it’s not necessarily difficult but it’s still a massive step up in difficulty. point is i died here and that was my last continue lol

at least the last person to see me alive was a weird fucking puppet wearing a bowtie and dancing a little jig. thanks puppet.


after getting my ass kicked i figured i should get shots of the other megucas

here’s kyouko. she has a spear thrust for her basic attack and a slide for her special. the slide moves pretty quick, but it also brings her low to the ground and you can actually kill enemies with it, making kyouko objectively superior to sayaka in every way. also when her spear is fully upgraded it shoots energy blasts. what the fuck


oh sh*t it’s homura. normal attack is a gun as you’d expect, and when you upgrade she gets an assault rifle instead. her special is to throw a grenade. you can spam the fuck out of it and have grenades flying everywhere. specials take health though, and the explosion can hurt you, so if you fuck it up you’re dead. i actually managed to die right at the beginning there because i mashed grenade for like a minute straight and then walked into the first enemy.

might be fun to pick her in two player and stand at the back blowing shit up from afar.


and last but not least is my home girl mami-san. her basic attack is a rifle, and when upgraded she gets more rifles that she controls with her mind. she’s probably some x-men psychic shit going on idk. on the ground her basic shot is like madoka’s, but in the air mami shoots in free-fall while madoka makes a magic pink dinnger plate to hang out on so she can aim better.

but fuck that shit because we got TIRO FINALE. takes three episodes to charge up as you’d expect but it annihilates the whole screen.

i think pretty much any of these characters would’ve been more fun to play as than fucking sayaka. she sucks

just like you will when you buy a delicious chubby cola. chubby cola: suck it down, choke on it.


last thing to cover is the gallery. it’s the second option on the main menu, and i guess it fills up as you accomplish shit in game. there’s a bunch of fan art from various artists. you can full screen it to see the whole thing in its glory.

i think this is the art we got for summoning bebe earlier. the artist’s name is koruri. thanks koruri.

this game is obviously ugly as fuck and has major issues. however, like a bottle of chubby cola, once you get past the initial nausea and suffering, there’s some good stuff in there.

i was expecting a beat em up, but i guess the closest comparison would be those really early arcade action platformers. something like RASTAN SAGA or even castlevania. it’s primitive as fuck, but occasionally they poured some love into that tiny plastic bottle. a couple of arcade lovin’ weebs could probably get enjoyment out of this.

overall, i give it two curly braces out of five.

great review, though this game confuses the fuck out of me because it seems like it's trying to be grief syndrome but worse in every way even though it came out later. hell grief syndrome even had a better deal going with the whole "specials make part of your health turn blue which will go all away at once if you get hit" rather than having them sap life directly. very strange.

seems kind of janky. i get that it's a doujin game but a lot of those wind up surprisingly polished... like... grief syndrome.........

also fuck you rebellion is great.

Thank ylu fkr ghe review. You have potential to go far ib this industry.

the game looks kind of bad but you can tell that the devs put a lot of passion into it

i really wanted to like it but it plays like ass
picking someone like kyouko or mami would probably make it way better but the level design is still pretty uniformly terrible

thank god grief syndrome exists. that game is fun af

also fuck you rebellion is great.

I want you to know that my thumbs down is for exactly this

GREAT STUFF, i very enjoyed this review!!!

making kyouko objectively superior to sayaka in every way.

"making"? but she already was ??? ?????????????????? ??????????????????????? ????????

making kyouko objectively superior to sayaka in every way.

"making"? but she already was ??? ?????????????????? ??????????????????????? ????????

sayaka and kyouko are both simultaneously the best, loser

making kyouko objectively superior to sayaka in every way.

"making"? but she already was ??? ?????????????????? ??????????????????????? ????????

sayaka and kyouko are both simultaneously the best, loser

wrong, and false? possibly the wrongest anyone has ever been. delete youre account

youre all wrong

Walpurgi: the other Mario brother