Umihara Kawase doujin/fan games

[Alc]

Has anyone found any clones or similar games that are worth talking about?

The first one I remember finding is Ganbare Natsuki San (video), which I think I played on PSP homebrew initially and later on Xbox Live Indie Games, where it should still be available on all regions. It's also available free for PC and there are links to versions for the Pandora and GamePark2X open-platform handhelds on the developer's homepage. It's a fun little game - nothing like as deep as Umihara Kawase but worth a look. It seems to have seen somewhat intense speedrunning on SDA (you know people are getting serious when they start talking about "saving a few frames").

I also dug these up recently:

http://www.papota.jp/uni.html
download

http://www.geocities.jp/xaxxi0529/meril/README.html
download
video

But I can't get either to work on Win7/64.

I also remember that the team behind N+ were working on a game called Robotology, and name-dropped Umihara Kawase a bunch of times in interviews, but after a while they went quiet on the topic and that was ~5 years ago now so I'm guessing it's not going to see the light of day.

I've given most of the Bionic Commando games a shot at one point or another, but the swinging is nothing like as nuanced as Umihara Kawase, and always felt secondary to the shooting anyway.

Any others?

[texh]

There's also this http://www.wheeloffortune.jp/kabegiwa/soft/takenoko/. The engine works similary to SFC/Shun except for the stiffness. Feels like playing obese Kawase in a way.

You should try to fiddle with the compatibility settings for Meril since I remember getting it to work on Windows 8 but Papota wouldn't run even with Japanese locale. Always got some Internet Explorer 4.0 error, no clue what's up with that.
Hmm, actually looks like there's some sort of Vista Wiki link at the bottom left which may provide some help? I'll look into it later.

[Alc]

Thanks! I knew there was another that I'd played ages ago but couldn't find, and it's that one. There was a physical release of it too:



I tried a bunch of different compatibility settings for both of the other two but no dice. I should probably try an XP VM. Were either of them really worth playing? My memory of Takenoko is that it wasn't that great.

[texh]

Takenoko is kinda ok, Meril feels a bit better but it's not that much of a Umihara Kawase game. Dug up these on niconico recently, some of them may be worth a shot:

http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm11418421
http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm8636502
http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm18624707
http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm3795577

[rafi]

SUPER HOOK GIRL is a recent(?) doujin game semi-inspired by Umihara Kawase game. Can't find a DL link, though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHcKy57_ipM

[Alc]

Thanks for the links both of you, and apologies texh for not replying, could've sworn I did at the time. They mostly look a bit amateurish, the fourth one looked pretty close in terms of physics, I think I tried to get a hold of it, but either couldn't find the download link or it didn't work when I did. It's kind of remarkable how different (and, uh... backwards, technologically) the Japanese web is. I also can't help noticing that the Japanese games that do make it over to Steam tend to have pretty peculiar graphical issues - Sayonara is an obvious example of graphical scaling weirdness, but I had another that would literally only run in 4:3 640x480, which for a game in this decade is just nuts. Last time I was routinely running PC games in 640x480 it was on a 300MHz Celeron.

[texh]

SUPER HOOK GIRL is a recent(?) doujin game semi-inspired by Umihara Kawase game. Can't find a DL link, though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHcKy57_ipM

Here's the DL link. It's really fun, probably the best free Umihara-esque game I've played so far.

Funnily enough looks like its sequel got announced just yesterday.

EDIT: Just had to share this awesome New Year Greeting pic that was posted on Studio Saizensen's twitter account!

[Princess Rescuer]

I'd like to play decent clones that are themed around something other than cute girls and fish. Maybe a similar game starring an adventurer with a whip? Or Spider Man?