Deathsmiles



Deathsmiles is a horizontally scrolling shooter developed by Cave. It is notable for its manually selectable difficulty ranks for each stage, which create branching paths in the game's difficulty.

Branching Paths Through The Game
There are 4 paths possible through the game's Rank system: 2 avoiding the Gorge stage, and 2 including the Gorge (aka 'EX') stage.

The 6 'Chapter and Verse' (C/V) stages have a selectable Rank of between R1 (easiest) and R3 (hardest), and your choices in these stages influence the difficulty of the Castle and Gorge stages.

Choosing 5 stages at R3 (N.B. the Non-EX Castle counts as R3 for this purpose) will cause your 5th R3 stage to introduce suicide bullets when enemies are defeated. This is known as Death Mode, and has its own rank levels depending on your path. Choosing the Gorge always adds +1 to your existing Death Mode rank from the C/V stages, so the Gorge ALWAYS has suicide bullets. *If* you choose to visit the Gorge, the Castle always adds +1 to the Gorge Death Mode rank!

The paths are as follows:

NON-EX

1) <4 C/V stages at R3 means Death Mode will not be activated at all, and the Castle will therefore have no suicide bullets.

2) >=4 C/V stages at R3 means you will activate Death Mode L1 in the 5th R3 stage. The castle will therefore definitely have Death Mode L1 suicide bullets

EX 3) <5 C/V stages at R3 means Death Mode will not be activated in the C/V stages. Your existing Death Mode rank is therefore = 0, Gorge adds +1 so will be at Death Mode 1. Castle adds +1 again, to reach Death Mode 2.

4) >=5 C/V Stages at R3 means you will reach Death Mode 1 in the C/V Stages. Gorge adds +1 so will be at Death Mode 2. Castle adds +1 again, to reach Death Mode 3, the highest rank in the game.

Console Release Notes
Xbox 360/Steam

- Save States - No - Level Select - Yes - Customise Resources - Yes, all. - Save multiple sets of training configurations - No - Boss Fight Select - No :( - Mid Boss Fight Select - No - Save Training Run Replays - No - Can slow playback to 1/16 speed.
 * Physical Release? - Yes
 * Region Locked? - Yes, but available in all 3 regions
 * Arranged Modes - Yes: Version 1.1, Mega Black Label, Mega Black Label Version 1.1
 * Online Leaderboards? - Yes
 * Tate Option? - N/A - Hori
 * Original Arcade Graphics - Yes in 'Arcade' mode (and Xbox 360 can be forced to output 4:3 ratio at 480p)
 * Internal Scanlines Generator: No :(
 * Graphical Filters: Smoothing On/Off
 * Training mode - Yes
 * Save Training mode config? - Yes
 * Training Mode Configuration:
 * Replay Mode - Yes (& can download high scoring replays from Leaderboards)
 * Replay Options: