Cave bringing boxed shooter to West

Cult Japanese developer Cave is seemingly on the brink of bringing its first ever boxed Western release to the UK High Street.

In recent times the studio has enjoyed great success on iPhone with hit releases DoDonPachi Resurrection and Espgaluda II, but its recent love for Xbox 360 has been mainly focused on the Japanese market.

However, Eurogamer Sweden reports that the Xbox 360 version of DeathSmiles, which is already available in Japan and the US, will be published in Europe in early 2011 by Rising Star.

Aside from DeathSmiles, Cave has previously published a number of games on Xbox 360 including DoDonPachi Dai Ou Jou Black Label, Ketsui, Espgaluda II and Mushihime-sama Futuari.

The developer did deliberately make the latter two titles region free to allow Western gamers to import them.

A version of Cave’s 1999 arcade shooter Guwange is due out on Xbox Live Arcade this year.

Speaking to sister site Develop in June, Cave made clear its intention to make bigger waves in international markets, both by brining more of its core product to the West and by expanding its IP into new genres, as will be seen with upcoming iPhone release Mushihime-sama Gaiden: Bug Panic.

MCV has contacted Rising Star for clarification.