Speaking of Aero Fighters 2, this week’s Arcade Archives release will be Rabio Lepus, a somewhat prequel to the Aero Fighters series, from back before the Video System/Psikyo split
@TracyDMcGrath Oh dang, that’s an extremely excellent game! Thanks for the heads up.
@tokucowboy OK, BUT you can get Aero Fighters 2 for $3.99, so that’s going on in cheap shmup land. I never thought I’d be frying over a jungle till I saw that deal
Also thank you for this! Aero Fighters 2 is probably my favourite of the series (absent a port of Sonic Wings Special), and it’s a steal for so cheap!
I’ll add that Andro Dunos 2 is also on sale for just a little longer, and I’m seriously considering picking it up. Word is it’s quite a bit of fun!
I was made aware of Schildmaid MX last week and saw that it was on sale and thought it looked cool and went to go buy it. Then I realized I already owned it thanks to the Itch.io Ukranke bundle that our forum host helped organize.
Then I went to look for the forum thread that highlighted it and ... it doesn't exist. It must of been someone almost cool enough to post on Insert Credit I follow on Twitter, but someone who isn't cool enough to have an account and post on Insert Credit.
Anyway, I haven't tried it yet, but the one other reference to the game on the forum is how it's great. I'll play it sometime in the next day or so and report back.
Oh, I am also stuck on what I think is the 2nd level boss in _R-Type Final 2_. It's the two shipping containers that chase you around on the inside of a room. It's awful. I'm just credit feeding at it and I got there in my first credit.
I have a question about the Cotton series. It seems that there have been a tonne of rereleases from the series in the last couple of years however I'm completely ignorant of which ones are worth checking out. I have a vague recollection in reading that some of the ports have horrible input latency whilst others are fine.
(Question prompted by seeing a double-pack physical rerelease).
@LeFish the Saturn Tribute ports that Clarice Disc/City Connection put out (Cotton Boomerang, Cotton 2, and the not-a-Cotton-game-but-a-game-by-the-Cotton-devs Guardian Force) are trash. These are laggy ports of laggy games so even if you‘re not too sensitive to input lag it’s like a half second on these ports and it really feels like you‘re running in mud. Not worth the plastic they’re printed on, just emulate them yourself.
Cotton Reboot and Cotton Fantasy (called Cotton Rock n Roll in Japan) published by ININ Games in the states on the other hand are lovely brand new games that are very worth picking up and have the normal amount of lag you’d expect for their respective platforms.
All of them are developed by Success so the publishers are the easiest way to tell them apart if you aren’t sure. Or just avoid anything with the word Saturn on it
@LeFish Seconding what @TracyDMcGrath said (as someone who likes Cotton, I‘m glad to have the rereleases and they were patched a bit, but they are still not great while simultaneously managing to be expensive). I’d say Cotton Reboot is the way to go, because you get access to a good version of the original game and a contemporary remake (Reboot) that just totally rules
@TracyDMcGrath Thanks! I‘d seen Cotton Boomerang and 2 together with Guardian Force, that’s saved me an awful lot of future pain. I’ll keep an eye out for good deals on Reboot and Fantasy.
Not many of my preferred shooter style being made. I like that pre-danmaku, console-centric shooter period during the 16-bit era.
@marurun yeah there’s really just Devil Engine and GG Aleste 3 that come to mind, but the former is in a very weird situation with the publisher not paying the devs and then the devs having issues with each other, and then the latter is a bit expensive/hard to find
@TracyDMcGrath There‘s also a ton of arcade shooters from that era available as Arcade Archives releases (like both Thunder Cross games, Koutetsu Yousai Strahl, and Earth Defense Force, just to name a few of many many). While I was already aware of many of them (this is one of my preferred STG eras as well), there are a bunch I never played or had even heard of, and they’re a steal at… what, $7.99US? I know they‘re not technically 16 bit, but since actual 16 bit era STGs drew from (and in EDF’s case ported) a lot of these games from the '89-'93 arcade scenes, they sometimes have a similar feel.
I wish there were more like this being made now too, but I also know that it’s a niche of a niche in terms of popularity.
Earth Defense Force is one of my faves. The SNES port even tickled my fancy.
What are people‘s thoughts on Shoot 1-Up? I played it a decent amount when it was released on Xbox Indies but I’ve been revisiting it on Switch recently via the DX version.
I hadn't really taken it in at the time but it dawned on me as I was playing it that as well as being a an accessible and competent STG in terms of difficulty and readability I think it's an excellent game for newcomers to understand the importance of engaging with a game's mechanics to improve your survivability and to improve your score.
Acquring a 1-up in this game immediately adds a ship to the playfield instead of to a bank of lives. If a ship gets hit by a bullet then it is lost. You can choose to spread your fleet out to cover a wider screen area, and to activate a wide beam, or you can contract your fleet down to the size of a single ship at the expense of the wide beam. You control every ship in unison, and expanding your fleet puts your ships more at risk of being hit by a bullet. When you have upwards of 15-20+ ships at once then maintaining shot power and survival requires frequent contraction and expansion.
It's such an easy, visual system to get to grips with as opposed to often obtuse mechanics and scoring systems whilst also being a good exercise in dodging bullets for people new to the genre. What does everyone else think?
Yeah true there are a metric ton of them generally just not many new ones.
Xexex certainly feels in this ball park. The Darius Console Collection has 2 of the best SNES shmups. The thunderforce sega ages ports.
We do need a Star Soldier Collection though one of these days. Or a Naxat Summer Carnival one.
@LeFish loved the 360 version, but haven’t played it in nearly a decade
Who is ready for my hotly anticipated Schildmaid MX thoughts based on a few hours of gameplay?
If you go back through my SHMUP posting history, it’s… probably pretty specific. I think I like certain games because of an aesthetic and certain games because of mechanics and I bounce off all the rest. This one is pretty great and I recommend it.
The tagline is “Neutral, Shield, Danger” which summarizes the gameplay pattern.
- In “Neutral” enemy bullets are purple, and the first one you touch turns on your shield.
- When you have a shield up, the bullets turn blue and you absorb them. Doing so powers up your ship’s strength and adds missiles, options, etc. Absorbing bullets and killing enemies extends your shield timer and you ideally want to spend as much time in this mode as possible. Eventually, the bullets turn gold and that’s where you get your huge scores.
- When your shield timer runs out, you are in “Danger” mode. Bullets are red and will kill you while your shield cools down.
The game seems like a very good score attack game (for me) in that a single run takes about 30 minutes. It’s a good length as it’s long enough for you to “Get In The Zone”, but not so long that you have to dedicate an evening to the process.
The beginner mode is an OK way to learn the mechanics, but I would jump into “Krieger” mode which is what the game calls “The main competitive mode” ASAP. I actually struggle with the beginner mode now because the enemy density is so low you can’t keep your shield up for very long.
The PC I have dedicated to running arcade/emulation games is a 9th Gen without a video card and can (mostly) keep up at full detail with integrated graphics, but if you’ve got any kind of recent GPU, it shouldn’t drop any frames.
Fun game with the most clever bullet dodge/catch design I’ve personally seen since Ikaruga. Highly recommended.
@s this looks great
@marurun They‘re not new, but Arcade Archives released the first home port of Gunnail recently (1992, feels like 16-bit-plus) and I’ll take any opportunity to mention the fantastic (and cheap) re-release of Gleylancer, which is very 16-bit and previously as rare as it is wonderful, just in case you haven’t gotten to that one
Unrelated, here’s an update on the G.rev shmup in the visual novel-STG hybrid Yurukill: you get access to play it without the VN stuff from the main menu after completing the second chapter – you can play through any levels you’ve completed individually or as a group, as well as the levels in your current chapter, or play a score attack mode. There’s some stuff we didn’t see in the demo, too, like rankings and – most notably – the fact that each character from the VN has their own unique ship with unique abilities (the first character is your basic ship, but the second one has a turret that can fire 360 degrees in addition to the normal front-facing fire, etc.), and you can choose to play as different characters from the chapters you’ve completed across the available levels.
@tokucowboy I tried the Yurukill demo twice now– once when I first heard about it and again when you first said you‘d tried it and enjoyed it, and while I liked the STG bits more than I expected given I’m not a G.Rev fan at all, I really didn‘t enjoy the VN parts! It’s just my personal taste, so I‘m sure folks for whom this isn’t a turnoff would enjoy it. I really wish the STG parts were available to play without having to move through the VN parts at all (I know that’s unreasonable).
@marurun I’ve also talked briefly about getting Andro Dunos 2, which is also quite 16-bit in presentation, and an entirely new game rather than a port. I’ve yet to start playing it, but when I do, I’ll post some impressions.
@Karasu For sure, it‘s one of those games that’s just going to be highly specific to the individual, and maybe even their specific gaming mood. I haven‘t played many VNs, so that might help along my enjoyment of what I know to be the very tired “game of death” (i.e. Zero Escape, Danganronpa etc.) framing – so I’m finding it breezily written low-calorie pulp, and then I get to play a solid STG as a palate cleanser, which is really hitting. But it‘s certainly two genres thrown into a salad mixer more so than two genres thrown into a blender, if that makes sense. And, yeah, I’d love if folks could play the STG part alone somehow, especially as a modern polygonal shmup with decent lil production values is getting rarer to come across these days
It sure is an odd coming together of two different types of game, which feels like fans of only either of those halves are being serviced poorly. Luckily for me, I‘m a casual fan of both parts – I’m a super casual STG player (I‘ve hardly been in this thread for example because I simply have nothing to offer this audience. I’m a toddler amongst giants here) and also a rather casual VN player (I‘ve only played a few, and only “big” ones that VN fans yawn at and say “of course you’ve played that one, full of all the rote twists and tropes”).
It seems like the full version of the game will allow you to just play STG sections right from the main menu, but I have no idea if you need to unlock them first in the story mode or not.
I can likely report back soon-ish, I plan on grabbing this game.