I know that at least one person reading this blog actually reads my GSW column. It is the reason that I don’t really update this Live Journal as much as I did once, so sorry about that.

Anyways, I recently did a write up on Umihara Kawase because I have been obsessed with it on and off for the last 3 or so years. At one point it was just an obscurity, but recently I really focused on getting good at the game and actually did! Well, sort of. Anyways, I did a lot more research this time for the game than I have done for others and I have quite a bit of excess information to share.

Apparently this game has quite a healthy following, or did until the late ’90s. The initial SNES game was released in late 1994 and it seemed that when the internet was in its adolescence many people used it as a place to dump their many Umihara Kawase accomplishments. This site has a nice run down of full completion times of Umihara. If you notice, unfortunately, there has not been an update since 2004. Still, for those aiming to speed run the game it is a nice place to gauge your skill against. You can get a full breakdown of the fields and their times for each run. Yes, those times break down into Min:Sec:MilSec. Here is a tool assisted speed run if you want to take a look.

Next up is a fairly comprehensive site on Umihara, but unfortunatly it mainly focuses on the PS1 release of the game: Umihara Kawase Shun. I will just point to the interesting stuff for now, but the whole site is worth a look. I should take a moment to note that this site also hasn’t been updated in about three years. This page has a breakdown of the difficulties of all the fields for the PS1 version of the game. If you scroll all the way down to the bottom you can see images for the SFC version then some striked out text which basically says “failed at creating a difficulty chart for SFC version.” This page shows a lot of neat little bugs and tricks. If you are looking at that screen and questioning the (5 min) part: that happens if you hit select 100 times. Also, that compass trick is from field 57, not the field in the beginning of the game. The only other interesting thing to note is that the link page is composed fully of dead links.

Now, here is the last site, and it is semi-NSFW (nipple less breasts): Umihara Kawase Fan Art. There is not really too much to look at and most of it is poor fan art, but it is funny to see this collection put together. Again, note that almost all the links are dead. That aside I am surprised that any of the art is still there considering that the site hasn’t been updated in 5 years.

So that’s it, a lot of old and dying information. So why keep pointing out that all the info is old (still relevant though) and a lot of links are dead? I am going to take up another side project of sorts: I plan to make a new Umihara Kawase Site, and I plan on completing and possibly speed running the game. So as a start I have already begun with ordering both the SFC and PS1 “complete guide books” from Japan, which I will try to scan in and write up techniques for important parts. I have also recently acquired a copy of the PS1 game (not the re-release with the extra fields unfortunately) for an excellent price.

Isn’t everyone excited?! You should go play the game if not.

Yeah, well, ok, so it is not terribly interesting, but I haven’t decided to do a project like this in quite a while so it’s a little nerve wrecking for me. Also the last time I attempted something like this (with DonPachi), even though I managed to get everything put together, I never managed to follow through with it. So please don’t be upset if I fail!

Also, if you have any other important, interesting, or bizarre Umihara Kawase links or information, please let me know.