Pink Sweets: Ibara Sorekara

Pink Sweets

Title screen

Developer:	CAVE
Program:	Shinobu Yagawa Yuji Inoue
Art:	Tomoyuki Kotani
Release date:	Arcade JP: April 21, 2006 Xbox 360 JP: February 24, 2011
Previous game:	Ibara Kuro: Black Label
Next game:	Mushihimesama Futari

Pink Sweets: Ibara Sorekara (ピンクスゥイーツ ～鋳薔薇それから～, Pinku Suītsu: Ibara Sorekara, abbreviated: PS) is a bullet hell shoot-em-up developed by CAVE in 2006. In terms of story, this game is a sequel to Ibara.

Pink Sweets was later ported to the Xbox 360 in 2011, included in a double-pack with Muchi Muchi Pork!.

Gameplay Overview

Controls

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Pink Sweets is a 2-button game in normal play, with an 8 directional joystick for movement.

• Not shooting will build up your Shield and charge your Rose Cracker. 142 frames after the last regular Shot from your ship, the Rose Cracker Gauge is fully charged.

• A: 1) Fires your Shot & Rose Hips. However, pressing the button fast enough will raise the internal autofire rate; 2) In case your Rose Cracker Gauge is fully charged, you will additionally release a Rose Cracker.
• B (press): Cycles through your Rose Hip Formations, if you have any collected on your current life. Cycling between: Forward, Wide, Back, Reverse & Turn in that order.
• B (hold): Fires your Rose Hips only.
• A+B (press): 1) Changes your speed; 2) The current charge of the Rose Cracker Gauge is cancelled.

In-Game HUD

1) Rose Cracker Gauge. When fully charged you'll be able to release a Rose Cracker

2) Speed meter. There are 4 different levels of speed

3) Internal auto-fire rate (#10, #12, #15, #20, #30)

Characters

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Each character has 4 different sub-types to choose from. These types usually have slightly different attacks from Shot Level 1 onwards. Shot Level 0 is the same for each type. The types are decided by which button you press when you select a character: A, B, A+B, and Start.

The 4 types of each character and their Rapid Shot as well as their Wide Shot at Shot Level 3 are as follows.

		Meidi Rose & Midi Rose
		Gloire de Meidi & Midi
A	Rapid	Six straight shots to the front
	Wide	Five wide shots to the front
B	Rapid	Four straight shots to the front Two straight shots to the back
	Wide	Five wider shots to the front
A+B	Rapid	Four straight shots to the front Two straight shots to the back
	Wide	Five even wider shots to the front
Start	Rapid	Two straight shots to the front Three wide shots to the back
	Wide	Two straight shots and one shot each at 45° to the front One shot each at 45° to the back

		Kasumi Rose
		Hana Kasumi mk2
A	Rapid	Six missiles to the front, which accelerate in the center and your level 0 Shot
	Wide	Six homing rockets to the front and your level 0 Shot
B	Rapid	Six missiles to the front, which are fired first on the sides and your level 0 Shot
	Wide	Five homing rockets from each side and your level 0 Shot
A+B	Rapid	Six missiles to the front and your level 0 Shot
	Wide	Five homing rockets from each side and your level 0 Shot
Start	Rapid	Six missiles to the front and your level 0 Shot
	Wide	Homing rockets from all sides and your level 0 Shot

		Shasta Rose
		Child of Mount Shasta
A	Rapid	Two fixed laser beams to the front
	Wide	Two laser beams to the front (leaning angle 20°)
B	Rapid	One fixed laser beam and your level 0 Shot to the front Single straight shot to the back
	Wide	One laser beam (leaning angle 60°) and a 5-way shot to the front
A+B	Rapid	One fixed laser beam and your level 0 Shot to the front 3-way shot to the back
	Wide	One laser beam (leaning angle 80°) and a 6-way shot to the front Laser locks on to enemies
Start	Rapid	One fixed laser beam to the front 4-way shot to the back
	Wide	One laser beam (leaning angle 90°) and a 6-way shot to the front Laser locks on to enemies

		Lace Rose
		French Lace S
A	Rapid	Three straight lightning beams to the front
	Wide	3-way wide lightning up to 30° to each side
B	Rapid	Two straight lightning beams to the front One straight lightning beam to the back
	Wide	3-way wide lightning up to 45° to each side
A+B	Rapid	Two straight lightning beams to the front One straight lightning beam to the back
	Wide	3-way wide lightning up to 60° to each side
Start	Rapid	One straight lightning beam to the front Two straight lightning beams to the back
	Wide	3-way wide lightning up to 90° to each side

Speed

There are four levels of speed you can switch to by pressing A+B anywhere in the game. In terms of speed, Meidi&Midi and Shasta are both faster than Kasumi and Lace. The speed values in the table below are measured by counting the frames it takes to cross the screen horizontally. Therefore, a high value corresponds to a slower speed and a low value to a faster speed.

	Speed 0	Speed 1	Speed 2	Speed 3
Meidi&Midi	140	105	71	53
Shasta
Kasumi	171	128	86	64
Lace

Items

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	Shot Power Up Increases your Shot Level by 1 Surplus score value: 1,000
	Rapid Shot Changes to Rapid Shot or increases your Shot Level by 1 Surplus score value: 1,000
	Wide Shot Changes to Wide Shot or increases your Shot Level by 1 Surplus score value: 1,000
	Rose Hip Adds a Rose Hip to your ship Surplus score value: 1,000

1 Up item There are three general methods of making a 1 Up item appear:

1. There is an invisible counter that goes +1 if an enemy or a destructible bullet is destroed with Shot and goes -1 if they are destroyed with Rose Cracker. Every time the counter reaches 2,500 a 1 Up item will appear and the counter resets to 0 again. Destroying enemies or other objects with Rose Hips does not affect the counter in any direction.
2. A midsize tank rolls over another standing tank. This can be achieved in Stage 3 and Stage 7 (twice with the correct setup). Damage the wheels of the first tank and then let the second one roll over it.
3. Destroy all 12 towers in Stage 5. The 1 Up item is in the last one if done correctly.

Rose Items

100	200	400	800

Rose Medals

100	200	300	400	500	600	700	800	900	1,000	2,000	3,000	4,000	5,000	6,000	7,000	8,000	9,000	10,000

Item Drop Order

Generally speaking, ground enemies drop Rose Items in a fixed appearance while airborne enemies drop regular items determined by the item drop order below. Moreover, a couple of ground enemies, e.g. the laser towers in stage 2 or the trains in stage 5 are also guaranteed to drop regular items.

As for airborne enemies, under normal circumstances, every eighth popcorn enemy destroyed will drop an item. Airborne enemies with more than 1 hp will always drop an item. These kills do not contribute to the popcorn enemy count.

When a popcorn enemy is destroyed in the deadzone, it will neither drop an item nor does it contribute to the kill count of 8 (it does, however, still contribute to the ZAN counter). On the other hand, airborne enemies with more than 1 hp will always drop an item, even in the deadzone or when they are off screen. In this case, if the spawned item happens to be a medal, it will immediately break your medal chain.

The items are determined according to a specific order, governed by the following table.

Drop Number	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
Item

• If you fulfil the conditions for a Special Power Up, it appears as the next Shot Power Up, Rapid Shot, or Wide Shot item. As a visual key, this item is blinking rapidly.
• If you fulfil the conditions for a Search Rose Hip, it appears as the next Rose Hip item. As a visual key, this item is blinking rapidly.
• If you fulfil the conditions for a 1 Up item, it appears before the next item drop. Succeeding this, the regular item drop order then continues. The 1 Up item will not replace a regular item.

Rank

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See Pink Sweets: Ibara Sorekara/Advanced Rank for a detailed discussion on rank in Pink Sweets.

Rank in Pink Sweets can only be kept low by not making it escalate. As there are no regularly gained score-based extends in this game, suiciding for rank control is not advised. The best way to keep rank low is to collect as few items as possible and avoid using Rose Crackers whenever possible. Moreover, excessive speed and formation changes can have a bad effect on rank in the long run. A higher autofire frequency has no effect on rank.

When playing for score, the player does not have to worry much about rank control as a higher rank generally also means higher score gains all throughout the game.

Scoring

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See Pink Sweets: Ibara Sorekara/Strategy for a detailed discussion on score routes and character-specific considerations in Pink Sweets.

Scoring in Pink Sweets involves the following main mechanics:

• Item Collection Maintain a chain of maximum-value Rose Medals throughout the entire game. In addition, other items will also award bonus points when collected in excess.
• Destruction with Shot or Rose Cracker Many enemies throughout the game will award different point values depending whether they are destroyed with your Shot or the Rose Cracker. Particularly important are Shot kills of midbosses and bosses. Killing them with Rose Cracker instead is often worth only 1/10 of the score. See Pink Sweets: Ibara Sorekara/Enemy list for more information.
• Dismantling Bosses and Milking Some bosses consist of several parts that yield additional points. Moreover, many bosses have milkable phases, e.g. the discs on stage 2 boss, phase 2 which also drop items.
• Grazing If the player ship is close to a bullet or an enemy, the score increases by a tiny bit. The score gain increases with the number of projectiles and objects in close vicinity. Moreover, the closer the player is to these objects, the higher is the score increase. Grazing usually gives negligible amounts of score while involving a high risk. However, in some sections of the game it can turn out to be very lucrative. When playing with the infinite lives bug, grazing during the iframes after respawning is one of the key scoring mechanics.
• Tick Points Hitting a target will award tick points. While this source of points is incredibly important for Lace and Kasumi, it is less so for Shasta and can generally be ignored with Meidi & Midi. Tick point optimization includes shooting enemies (particularly bosses) beyond the invincibility line to milk extra points without dealing damage.

Enemy point values

Main article: Pink Sweets: Ibara Sorekara/Enemy list

Video References

Video index for Pink Sweets

References

1. Primary info provided by Pearl and Plasmo
2. All item sprites taken from CAVE's official website https://www.cave.co.jp/gameonline/pinksweets/system/item.html
3. Rank info from Archer's website: http://archerstg.web.fc2.com/pinksweets/bitterrank.htm with additions by Serrara Mayfield