If "fan-service" is the only thing Kaminari Games had without anything else like a message or mistake realization when making a shmup game based on Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid franchise, perhaps, I sense a bigger gaming controversy drawing near. Back then, during the game development of Omori from Omocat and her team, there were already some controversies including the one involving some indecent words on the main character's T-shirt. She already realized her mistake at the time and fast forward to when the game, Omori, was finally released, it was quite successful with positive reviews. This one from Kaminari Games will put the previous gaming controversies I discovered to shame. Of course, there are other shmup games out there that are more disturbing than this and they happened to be released in recent years.
These are the following reasons on how the controversy-to-be regarding the game based on Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid franchise could happen:
- Damage portraits taken from Caladrius - The bosses have multiple phases and when you complete one phase like that, a portrait of the boss character can be displayed. For the player character's side, the same thing can happen if you lose a life in Caladrius. In the Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid shmup game, you can switch between three active characters and each character has her own health gauge. Taking damage decreases health and triggers such portrait taken from Caladrius. For boss battles, the same thing applies to some of the bosses. Needless to say, the game consists of the characters of multiple age-ranges with some of them looking like pre-teens or something. It's basically a gaming controversy waiting to happen since even the pre-teened characters are put in the mix for the gameplay with Caladrius elements.
- Questionable character design and hybrid - We can complain about weird character hybrids all we want but rather than complaining about it countless times, why don't we redo something with more decent character design unofficially? The character concept from the source material is already questionable enough and Kaminari Games had made things in the game quite disturbing.
- Worst way the enemies and bosses are defeated in a shmup game - We thought that Natsuki Chronicles had the worst explosion effects when enemies are defeated in the land of 8th-Gen console era but this one from Kaminari Games goes in an unusual way. The enemies are blown away with trails of static smoke when defeated like you're playing a modern Bomberman game or Super Smash Bros and the bosses retreat upon defeat like you're playing a platformer game or something. At least, in Sisters Royale, the enemies explode upon defeat and the boss characters blow into large amounts of particles, pieces of crystals and other effects upon defeat while the game still resembles Castle of Shikigami series. Even KOF Sky Stage has the modern boss defeat effects that slow down the game.
The first reason as described above is the most obvious one on how the gaming controversy could happen for real but as this is the game based on Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid franchise, it's not like Kaminari Games or Bushiroad is fully to blame for such controversy. The others' opinions on the game may be positive just because it's based on Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid franchise like they can dismiss my thoughts on how controversial it is as something bullshit and whiny.
A game like this that's disturbing and released on Switch had become one of the reasons on why Tommy would make offensive remarks on that console on the forum while manufacturing the Amico. Indeed, the Switch has tons of mature games besides the family-friendly games and the games with ESRB T ratings but the real offense from him is the lack of research and labeling the Switch in such an ignorant way that the Switch owners would get offended by him. The recent crowd funding from Intellivision at Start Engine also had a share of ignorant remarks about how such games like the one developed by Kaminari Games had divided families apart.
For the game center Mikado's part, I think that their support streams for Raiden IV are the final straws for MOSS and Kaminari Games after the Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid shmup game's release.
