Karous

Karous

Title screen

Developer:	Milestone
Release date:	2006
Previous game:	Radirgy
Next game:	Illmatic Envelope (Illvelo)

Karous (jap.: カラス, karasu) is a cel-shaded, vertical shmup from 2006 developed by Milestone. It was published by Sega and released November 15, 2006 in japanese Arcades on Sega’s NAOMI platform and later ported to Sega Dreamcast on March 8, 2007. It was the last Dreamcast game, that was officially licensed by Sega.

For replay videos, visit the Video Index.

Gallery

See Karous/Gallery for our collection of images and scans for the game.

Gameplay Overview

Karous is a vertical scrolling shmup with 5 Stages and a TLB. Each stage has boss, stage 3-5 also have midbosses. The player’s ship has 4 different weapon systems, a regular spread shot, a sword for melee range, a shield and a D.F.S. Bomb. The shot, sword and shield can be powered up by earning experience points from destroyed enemies or collecting specific power up items dropped by special enemies. The D.F.S. gauge can be filled by destroying enemies and cancel enemy bullets with the shot or shield. When the gauge is full it can be consumed to use the D.F.S. Bomb. During the D.F.S.-attack the player ship is invincible and the player gets a bonus on experience points and score from destroyed enemies. As soon the shield is leveled up to 20, it acts also as an offensive weapon by refelecting enemy bullets. The overall level of the ship is displayed on the right side of the screen and also appears on the leaderboard. The weapon power-ups dropped by carrier-enemies can be changed by hitting them with the sword. They can also turn in to speed-up or speed-down items.

Some enemies also drop items that increase your score. These look like small, blue triangles. By slashing them with the sword, they can be upgraded to bigger triangles, that are worth more points. Sometimes they also turn into special items like instant D.F.S., unlimited shield, extra lifes, weapon power-ups or a rare item that turns Bullets into score bonus (orange triangle).

Items

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Normal Items

A small point item spawns when you defeat all enemies in a formation of flying enemies. 10 small point items and a D.F.S. Change item spawn when you take a damage. Slashing a normal item with sword pushes it upwards and can change it into another normal item.

Item	Item(Localized)	Description	Log
		Point (small and large): increases your score. A small and a large point item have a base score values of 500 and 3000, respectively.	Small: 500(your level)=score Large: 3000(your level)=score
		Experience Points: gives you experience points. The color of the item corresponds to a specific weapon with a similar color.	Shot: SHOT EXPERIENCE GET! Sword: SWORD EXPERIENCE GET! Shield: SHIELD EXPERIENCE GET
		Auto Shield: deploys a shield in front of your machine for about 6 seconds. After that, the shield is retracted and you have to wait the usual shield deployment duration to use it again.	AUTO SHIELD ON!
		Bullet Conversion: changes all enemy bullets on the screen into small point items.	ITEM CHANGED!!
		Recovery (small and large): recovers your HP gauge a little. A small recovery item increases your HP by 1. It has a larger variant that gives you 5 HP. Your HP does not go higher than 60.	Small: RECOVER!!(+1=your HP) Large: RECOVER!!(+5=your HP)
		D.F.S. Charge: completely fills your D.F.S. gauge.	SP GAUGE FULL!

Career Items

• Light Blue (Shot)
• Green (Sword)
• Orange (Shield)
• Red (Speed up)
• Blue (Speed down

Item Cycle: light blue → green → orange → red → blue → light blue

Game Modes

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At the beginning of the game you can choose from three different difficulty-options:

• Easy: Only the first 3 Stages, enemies shoot only destroyable bullets
• Normal: All 5 Stages, Enemies also shoot undestroyable bullets
• Hard: All 5 Stages + TLB, Enemies shoot more and also bigger undestroyable bullets

Every stage has a hidden bonus with the shape of the Milestone symbol. It can be unvieled by attacking a certain spot in the stage with a specific weapon (Shot in Stage 1 & 2, Sword in Stage 3 and Shield in Stage 4 & 5). Collecting all hidden items is a requirement to unlock the TLB fight. The other requirement is to beat the Stage 5 Boss before he times out.

Controls

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• A : Shot
• B : Sword
• C : D.F.S. (when available)
• Not holding A or B : Shield

The 2025 Ports also offer a rapid-fire option.

Characters

• Karous (カラス) – Player's ship pilot
• Shigi (シギ) – Navigator
• Akahara (アカハラ(赤原))
• Hakugan (ハクガン(剥眼))

Scoring/Strategy

The main strategy is to fill your D.F.S. - gauge as quick as possible and use the D.F.S. to absorb bullets, destroy enemies for score and level up your preferred weapons early. High scoring requires a very aggressive playstyle.

Also try to make use of the score items as much as possible by "juggling" them and picking them up at their maximum worth.

Bigger enemies, midbosses and bosses have destroyable parts, so you want to destroy them piece by piece.

You can earn a lot of points from bossfights, by destroying single parts and absorb bullets with your D.F.S. The bosses can be milked, but time out pretty quickly so if you take to long you won’t earn points for destroying the boss.

This also makes it pretty easy to dodge the bossfights by sitting on the bottom of your screen and hiding behind your shield.

Ports / Releases

• Milestone Shooting Collection 2 - 2010, Wii (JP)
• Sakura Flamingo Archives - 2014, Xbox 360 (JP)
• Karous - The Beast of Re:Eden - 2015, 3DS (JP/NA/EU)
• Karous - 2025 by RS34, Steam (JP/NA/EU), Switch/PS5 (JP)

References

1. 1CC Log for Shmups (https://1cclog.blogspot.com/2015/09/karous-dreamcast.html)
2. Manual for the Steam version (https://store.steampowered.com/manual/4090420?l=english)