Combine 'Otome' (Maidens) with Gradius and you get Otomedius, Konami's latest side-scrolling shmup. Whimsical characters, dozens of unlockable weapons, and plentiful references to other shooters make the game easy to love. If only the 3 player co-op held up as well as everything else.

Otomedius Excellent is a 3-player co-op shoot-em-up from Konami. Besides carrying on the legacy of the classic Gradius series, the Otomedius games are most noteworthy for their unusual character designs. Rather than serious and masculine fighter pilots, players control a number of anime-style ladies who pilot ships inspired by other Konami titles. Some gamers may look at these flying femmes and exclaim ‘WTF’ letter-by-letter, but that would be missing the point. The girls of Otomedius lend the game a ton of Japanese charm and levity. Each one has her own personality and voice, plus completely different weapon loadouts that instill ample replay value.

We first played Otomedius Excellent, Konami’s 2.5D shoot-em-up, at this year's E3 convention. Since then, Konami has steadily updated the game’s Facebook page but hasn’t otherwise spoken about the game too much. This has been mostly due to a few delays as they worked hard on preparing the English version of the game for release. Retailers Amazon and GameStop have been playing the guessing game with Otomedius’ release date, giving it a November 1 placeholder release date. Co-Optimus has some good news for shmup fans today: Konami has informed us that the November 1 release date is now official!