Shmups

[Mrs Horribleman]

On 10/02/2019 at 19:27, Stanshall said:

Thanks for letting me know. Glad to hear it! 

I have a question about the progression in Super Hydorah.

 

If you quit to title and then choose continue, you will start back at the stage select stage with the last weapon you unlocked from killing a boss selectable and the last stage you beat marked as done. 

 

But if you don't quit and just die, you have to start right from the beginning. Are you supposed to do the entire game in one go?

 

Or am I supposed to be choosing continue? It doesn't quite seem to make sense. 

[Stanshall]

@Mrs Horribleman I certainly just carried on with Continue, yeah. I suspect there will be some bonus or achievement type thing for completing without a continue but I won't be managing that any time soon! 

[amc]

Got Mushihimesama for a nice price on Steam. Lovely game, gets my heart pumping even though I'm shit. One thing though, when I rotate my screen and run it in tate my ship feels a bit sluggish when going left and right, fine going up and down. Must be something to do with my refresh rate or g-sync being enabled or something. Can't be my I5 1060 6GB as I can run the game great on my mini Pandora 5s arcade bartop, in none tate obv. That thing runs on some mediatech toaster chip. Hope I can sort it because it's glorious in tate mode.

[Mrs Horribleman]

1 hour ago, Stanshall said:

@Mrs Horribleman I certainly just carried on with Continue, yeah. I suspect there will be some bonus or achievement type thing for completing without a continue but I won't be managing that any time soon! 

Cheers! I'll start using the dreaded continues! 

 

I've conditioned myself to never use them 

[spatular]

2 hours ago, amc said:

One thing though, when I rotate my screen and run it in tate my ship feels a bit sluggish when going left and right, fine going up and down.

 

Just a guess but if your monitor is widescreen there should be borders top/bottom, otherwise the game will be streatched so that might be why it looks like it’s moving faster up/down.

[amc]

I've been away from PC gaming for several years so my monitor knowledge is fuzzy, plus a lot of new modes, G-Sync, high refresh rates etc have came along whilst I was out of the loop. The game seems to be setup correctly, I've stretched the game screen to the ends of the picture around the play field, marquee? and set the game to full screen 9:16. I have no idea if that's correct but it looks the best, just the strange lag going horizontally. It's probably something I can fix in Nvidia control panel, turn G-Sync off, mess with the refresh. I'll twig it. Thanks.

[spatular]

Yeah if the gameplay area fills the screen that will probably give you that weird movement thing, put the streatching thing back to default if you can? The game is 4:3 so I think there should be borders top/bottom.

[Mrs Horribleman]

Steredenn is really good. 

[Stanshall]

On 11/02/2019 at 19:18, Sane said:

Got my flip grip today! Playing psyvariar with it is so much better. I'm pretty useless at it but it just feels so nice buzzing the bullets, hearing 'Level up!' constantly . 

 

Any tips for scoring? And which mode should I focus on? 

 

Sorry, I completely missed this post. Glad you're enjoying it!

 

I tend to play either Score Attack or Replay Mode, which is great not only to practise individual stages but also has its own scoring system, adding up your scores for every individual level.

 

In terms of scoring, it's definitely all about the max buzz chain. My highest scores have tended to be when I've focused entirely on buzzing and barely shooting anything, but shooting stuff does also add to your buzz. Also, you can destroy enemies by buzzing them, too, which is really useful. You'll find that enemies will do maybe two or three attacks, spray a load of bullets for you to chain, before disappearing or waiting to be destroyed. That's pretty much when you want to shoot them but you have to be careful not to destroy enemies who haven't fired their bullets yet. That's where I am, anyway. Hope that's of some use. 

[Sane]

Thanks! It's sort of what I am trying to do, I like shooting too much though . 

[NickyDrinks]

Devil Engine has just come out on Steam. I've only had a chance to play the first couple of levels since it's so late but so far it seems good if maybe slightly on the cheap side with the difficulty. If you accidentally collect a power-up that isn't suited for the current area you can be screwed very quickly and it can feel a bit too much like sheer luck at the minute.  Looking forward to be able to get properly into it this weekend though, my initial impressions are probably more out of frustration than anything else as I remember not being particularly good at the demo either but still wanting to keep trying.

[geldra]

Devil Engine looks sweet as hell though (Switch). 

 

Edit: this is class!! Brutal. But class. 

[Stanshall]

Rolling Gunner coming to Switch on the 28th Feb!

 

 

Did anyone ever play this on PC? I understand it was a bit tricky to get hold of, maybe CD-ROM only (!), but it's supposed to be tremendous.

 

Studio Mudprints dude gave it full marks:

 

 

Apologies for the cross post but for those who don't read the eShop thread which moves pretty fast. This is a big one. 

[Klatrymadon]

I've played the demo and it was great fun. Had a compelling mix of mechanics from Crimzon Clover and Ketsui. I haven't splashed out on a CD copy yet because apparently it's getting a Steam release this year!

 

Will it be on the UK eshop on the 28th too? 

[Stanshall]

I'm pretty sure it's JPN only next week but that Twitter account said news soon about Western release. 

[Treble]

On 22/02/2019 at 10:48, Stanshall said:

Rolling Gunner coming to Switch on the 28th Feb!

 

 

Did anyone ever play this on PC? I understand it was a bit tricky to get hold of, maybe CD-ROM only (!), but it's supposed to be tremendous.

 

Studio Mudprints dude gave it full marks:

 

 

Apologies for the cross post but for those who don't read the eShop thread which moves pretty fast. This is a big one. 

 

I had no idea this was coming to Switch - excellent! I looked into it for PC, and you could only import it from some reseller where the site was entirely Japanese, and I've never heard of it. So fuck that! I have had it earmarked for over a year though. 

 

 

On 21/02/2019 at 17:07, geldra said:

Devil Engine looks sweet as hell though (Switch). 

 

Edit: this is class!! Brutal. But class. 

 

Bought with Steam credit. Hori's are my favourite genre of game, so I'm actually being anally retentive and waiting until I have the perfect amount of free time to dedicate to it. The demo was fantastic though - visually speaking it's a playable anime/manga, and what I dreamed of back in the eighties as some day being possible! 

 

I may have to double down and get the Switch version as well \m/

[Stanshall]

It's genuinely mad that it's coming to Switch before Steam. I'll take it though!

 

I've been playing a few Cave belters for the first time after picking up a 360 yesterday. I managed to get Muchi Muchi Pork, Pink Sweets and Dodonpachi SaiDaiOuJou off the JPN digital store and despite finding the character designs pretty grim, once you skip past the intro screens and stuff, the games are absolutely brilliant.

 

DDP SDOJ is incredibly intense, just a total mental meltdown of explosions and medals and lasers and bullets. I suppose they're all like that really but this is something else. I heard some criticisms that it's all turquoise and that's kind of accurate but I think it looks spectacular, in fact. The Xbox mode has a fourth character/ship which is utterly amazing (must be a kind of easy mode, I can't understand) and I no missed the first two stages and only died on the third boss. I'll definitely be back for more of that.

 

Muchi Muchi Pork is particularly grotesque with its pig/gravure mash-up characters but the whole game is aesthetically mental. Fortunately, it plays fantastically well and in-game there's no sign of the characters for the most part. There's a great balance to be had between the lard attacks, bombs, bomb medals, score medals, power ups and lard attack recharging parachuting pigs. It's tough but seems very nicely balanced to a point. I wouldn't say I've taken to it easily but I'm finding myself making progress and learning the patterns pretty well.

 

I've also played the demo of Akai Katana (my copy is on its way) and this seems like the very best of the lot. I'll reserve more judgements til I've played the full thing, though. 

[Sane]

I kinda regret selling my asian 360 and the Cave games I had for it. It was around the time Cave were bringing stuff out on steam so I figured I'd eventually be able to buy the games again . I miss Akai Katana and Mushi 2 the most. I was never any good at them but I had a lot of fun just playing.

[Stanshall]

I basically got this for those two so I can really empathise. I don't know why they don't just port them all to everything! (because about three hundred people would be buying them, perhaps) 

[Sane]

Yeah I guess the previous ports didn't make enough money. Seems weird though, porting something to pc can't cost that much so even with not that many sales you'd figure they'd be able to make some profit. And I'd expect these games to keep selling for a long time considering their reputation. 

 

Hopefully we will see them at some point, maybe on Switch. 

[Triple A]

my japanese 360 is never coming out of the hifi rack, because of all those awesome cave games!

as to why they don’t get ported? another element is staff interest and availability i suppose - cave isn’t what it used to be, and the guys at m2 like a technical challenge - if a game has been done well already, why bother? and i’m not sure there’s many others out there that would be interested and able to do it?

[geldra]

I’m liking Devil Engine.  But i’m pretty sure i’ll never see past the first boss (the one that kicks up debris). So hard (and I ain’t credit feeding, no way). 

 

I do wish the blue blue laser didn’t feel so much like it felt like a long blue bar. I know that’s exactly what it is but it’s something that just feels a little off. Red and Green are fine though. 

[Triple A]

devil engine isn’t really doing it for me so far - shame.

[Stanshall]

Sorry if I oversold it, gents. It's made me turn on my Switch and I put in an hour or so today. Very hard though even on Easy mode. I managed to get to stage 3 for the first time today but got melted. Stage 2 is actually OK and the boss isn't so bad. My main tip would be to use the bullet cancel thing loads and loads. Also if you cancel the weapon upgrades, it changes them into your current weapon type which is really useful.

 

The tutorial may well explain this but I didn't watch it. 

[Sane]

I love the look of Devil Engine but I can clearly tell its demands are beyond me.

[Mrs Horribleman]

Steredenn is so good. Forget that it's a rogue lite if you general don't like them. The boss bullet patterns are some of the best I've ever played and a game where you normally start from scratch everytime you okay anyway makes loads of sense to be rogue lite. 

 

It's brilliant. 

[Stanshall]

Rolling Gunner is out on the Japanese eShop and it's very very polished for an indie game. It's also absolutely brick! Also, having just got Akai Katana and having recently played Progear for the first time, it's not quite up there with that uber top tier to my tastes but it's still very very good. 

[NickyDrinks]

Cheers for the heads up, just bought it using an eshop gift code from one of the online sellers (I assumed they might be dodgy, but the code worked totally fine). Only had a chance to try the first level but it plays great on the Switch. I didn't see any language options so the tutorial is in Japanese but they're pretty straightforward and are explained in the Bullet Heaven review posted above. I'm gonna have to get Psyvariar on the Switch now that I know buying them that way works.

[Sane]

I wonder if there will be a separate western release with extra languages. Usually it's just the same exact same game.

 

Which site did you use for the credit?

[Stanshall]

Rolling Gunner is coming to the West but no announcement yet. I use PlayAsia for JPN eShop credit because they're very fast if not immediate. A number of other sites can have you hanging around while they verify details.