@chazumaru I‘d like to have em digitally – do we know if the Japanese eShop version of the Saturn Tribute collection has an English option? Guardian Force is definitely on my list (it’ll be my first time playing it), but if I have to buy them piecemeal, I’ll skip out on Cotton 2 in favor of Boomerang.
Pumped about that Shikigami no Shiro news, & G-Darius HD came out today. A Deathsmiles I & II package is also coming in December, off the top of my head. Basically, it’s just been really cool & constant lately in this particular genre.
The Japanese versions of the Saturn Tribute games do offer an English front-end, but the games themselves are not translated.
ICYMI, the standalone versions are also being released worldwide this week, $17.99 / €14,99 each; off the top of my head, these are identical to the JP versions, ie the games remain untranslated. Strictly Limited Games has announced physical version/s of Saturn Tribute for the west but I don't believe they've indicated any sort of further localisation for their versions.
One strange thing about the Saturn Tribute package version (in Japan): it’s a unique app. You select the three games inside the app, like you would do for Castlevania Advance Collection for instance.
By contrast, most physical collections of digital releases (e.g. the ZeroDiv collections, IntiCreates’ Blaster Master trilogy) install the games in the menu as separate apps requiring the same card. This means City Connection applied for a different software submission specific to the physical version. It also means they will need to update the physical version’s app separately in case of an update for any of the three games.
@tokucowboy Yeah, I‘m excited about all these releases too, but so much has come out in this last little while that I’m seriously backlogged, and I’m thinking I need to wait to buy any of them!
I think I may have to pick up Guardian Force sooner rather than later though! It’s been on my to buy list for Saturn for years now, but I’ve never once even seen a copy in a shop, and it goes for upwards of $200US on eBay. That makes $17.99 (or $23.93 Canadian, actually) seem like a huge steal!
@gsk Yep, those standalone worldwide releases are what sparked all this talk about them. But it’s news to me that the games are completely untranslated. That…is a bummer.
@Karasu October is wild on the Switch eShop alone! I feel you, I’m trying to just tell myself “finish what you have & buy what you feel like playing at the time,” otherwise I’d be swimming. I find it easier to excuse shmup/STG purchases because I mostly like to play through them for the audiovisual experience, so it’s like a half-hour thing.
For what it‘s worth, the (admittedly very few) impressions I’ve seen about the ports have been griping about input lag.
edit: I should also mention that these game originally had a ton of input lag, so it may not be a case of bad ports so much as unnecessarily faithful ports of laggy games.
From the looks of this it‘s up at the Psikyo port level where you can press and release the button before seeing your character move, probably 7 or 8 frames. That may well be just because of the original lag but still that’s a bit disappointing.
Well that does sound terrible. Seems to be compounding the original games’ lack of responsiveness with genuine emulation issues. Let’s hope some patches improve things…
I have not had time to try the games yet but I also heard the standard button layout for Guardian Force is pretty dumb (fortunately it can be changed in the options).
@chazumaru I tried Guardian Force and yeah, woof. It feels like watching an arcade attract mode with no quarters in mashing buttons and pretending you‘re having an effect on the game. Shame too because it’s a really neat looking game. Reminds me of Zero Gunner 2 a bit
Yeah, I slogged through a free-play run of Cotton Boomerang and did not enjoy myself much. The combination of the original programming and the new input lag (which I am usually not at all sensitive to) really made it feel like I was just uncomfortably jamming that fire button nonstop. Related, I feel like this one throws substantially more at you than most Cotton games, which really doesn‘t mesh well with the extremely sluggish-feeling movement speed and more complicated (though interesting) boomerang system. It’s a downer, because the pixel art is great and the music goes down so dang smooth:
If you’re wanting a seasonal Cotton fix, I’ll once again recommend Cotton Reboot. The Arrange version really surprised me – it’s extremely fun and flashy, and the rearranged soundtrack goes real hard, with guest compositions from Psyvariar and Galaxy Force musicians:
@tokucowboy Oh yikes, it sure isn‘t the best news that Boomerang’s port isn‘t great! I hope this doesn’t mean we won’t get any more Saturn ports– it seems like a thing they could theoretically address in a patch.
In other overwhelming news, it looks like several more older shooters are getting Switch ports, and I’ve only ever heard of one of them, Xexex (and it’s exciting to get a port of it!). The other three are GunNail (vertical scroll), Thunder Dragon 2 (vertical scroll), and Black Heart (horizontal scroll). All three look great, and while I’m super interested in Black Heart (I’m a sucker for horizontal shooters), I sure wasn’t expecting it to be styled kinda cute and Ordyne-y. But I’m into it! I think I may have played GunNail, but I hadn’t remembered the name, so who knows.
Ugh well, it was uh, not hard to find Rob posting racist conspiracy theories on the shmups forum. I feel bad assuming the worst of people that frequent that place but, time and time again unfortunately
It’s ironic that my enjoyment of his videos as a southerner is hearing southern voices espouse on unexpected topics, the same sort of enjoyment I get from hearing really heavy southern accents say very progressive stuff. And it turns out he’s actually out there spouting something you’d very much expect from that voice, for the worse.
