Ibara
Ibara is a vertical scrolling shoot 'em up. The back story revolves around a group of sisters, led by Professor Teresa Rose, who want to destroy all technological progress in the land of Edelweiss, essentially turning it into a rose garden. Players can choose to either lead the characters Bond or Dyne and their airplanes through several levels of "bullet hell"-style gameplay in an attempt to defeat the sisters. The player's weapons arsenal consists of a main gun and bombs. Bombs must be collected in fragments, and once the player has all of them, the Hadou Cannon can be used. Staying behind the cannon will make the player invincible for the duration of the effect. Additionally, enemies drop various "options," up to two of which can be attached to the wings of the plane to further increase fire power. The game has a ranking system. If the player does really well, they go up in rank and thus boss battles will be a lot harder. Rank can be strategically decreased either by dying or by collecting roses, which are created from enemy bullets when the player sets off a bomb. Scoring works by collecting gold medals dropped by destroyed enemies. They must be quickly collected to keep up a scoring chain. Once a new medal pops up, and the medals on screen already haven't been collected yet, the chain is broken.
SCREENSHOTS
PHYSICAL
HISTORY
Ibara (鋳薔薇) is a 2005 vertically scrolling shooter developed by Japanese developer Cave and published by Taito. It was ported to the PlayStation 2 in 2006.
Gameplay
Ibara is similar to 8ing/Raizing's Battle Garegga and Battle Bakraid games and there are several similarities between them. These include combining archaic technology such as biplanes with more advanced machinery; firing and a power-up system; and a medal collecting system which drastically increases scoring. The game features a similar method of earning bombs and a delay when launching them as well. Some of the enemies and their attack patterns are familiar such as the large cranes in stage 1 and the minigun-wielding first boss. The enemy's explosions spiral around when destroying some of the heavier weapons/scenery and thin, while seemingly camouflaged enemy bullets are scattered around the play area in comparable patterns. More subtle references include the HUD layout which lists the name of the current stage at the top of the screen and, when starting a stage, tells users the title of the background music that is playing.
A notable feature of Ibara is the inclusion of a variable, real-time difficulty system by way of the Rank system. The player's rank increases as they acquire more items and cause more damage, increasing the difficulty of the game along with it. The number of enemies does not increase but the number of bullets fired towards the user does, often reaching a ridiculous level of bullet density. There are ways of lowering this rank system if the odds appear too much. The only known way of decreasing the player's Rank in Ibara is to die. The more lives the players have, the less the rank decreases when they die. In the later version, Ibara Kuro: Black Label, rank can be decreased by cancelling bullets with a bomb, but it also increases much faster in this version, potentially increasing from minimum to maximum in a matter of seconds.
Development
Programmer Shinobu Yagawa previously worked on the games Recca and Battle Garegga.
Release
The game was released in arcades on July 15, 2005, and was released on the PlayStation 2 on February 23, 2006.
To remedy some of the concerns fans had with the original version of the game, Cave released an updated version in limited distribution called Ibara Kuro: Black Label, released on February 10, 2006. The update contains many additions, some of which appeared earlier in the released PlayStation 2 port in the form of Arrange Mode.
A sequel, Pink Sweets: Ibara Sorekara, was released in the arcades on April 21, 2006.
Reception
Weekly Famitsu magazine awarded the PlayStation 2 version of Ibara a score of 26/40 based on four reviews (7/7/6/6).
STORY
Ibara takes place in an alternate version of the 20th century. The steam-powered engine has recently been invented, and the Northern European country Edelweiss is at the forefront of the technological and industrial development. However, a great threat appears: the insane Dr. Theresa Rose has decided that the human race is filthy and needs to be exterminated to make place for a beautiful rose garden, and her very first target is none other than Edelweiss. She and her five daughters (Lace, Shasta, Kasumi, and twin sisters Midi and Meidi) wreak havoc across the country under the name Rose Garden, leaving the Emperor with no choice but to send out his finest: the "negotiators" Bond and Dyne, to defeat the Rose Garden and save the country.
1CC RUNS
One-credit clears we point to as the benchmark for this game.
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RELEASES 2 systems
PHYSICAL RELEASES 1 box
