Shmups

[Spoonman]

I actually have a few days off, but will be travelling [to a wedding]. I'll take my Switch but not sure how much time I will have for that. In any case, started this morning playing a game I've not played in years!

 

[ImmaculateClump]

Aaaay! I was just playing that in dolphin the other day. Great fun!

 

M2 conference is on now.

 

 

[Spoonman]

Looks nice! Not sure how tempted I am yet. Never played any of them.

 

[Marlew]

Never played any but day one for M2 no matter what. I imagine we won't even know what we'll miss until they're gone. 

[Spoonman]

Yup. Ordering. Switch or PS4? Hmm. Switch maybe.

[phillv85]

I always thought Tiger Heli was one of Toaplan's weaker entries, but with that, I'm off to pre-order 

[Oh Danny Boy]

4 hours ago, Spoonman said:

Has this been shared before?

 

https://seafoamgaming.com/2021/06/26/the-dispatch-games-saga-continues-how-over-ambition-led-to-a-downfall/

 

I won't be purchasing anything from LRG or any of these other companies. I actually have an outstanding order with LRG, shame on me.

Ahhh… Shit. I’ve actually got Radirgy Swag pre ordered from these guys, over a year and counting. They’ve recently cropped up again on Twitter but still unable to give hard dates for their releases and hearing from that article that they’ve recently sold their HQ I’m no longer  expecting 🙁

[geldra]

Anything else juicy announced in the M2 thing?  
 

I noticed that the Egret 2 mini has some sweet shmups on there. Darius Gaiden, Metal Black, Tatsujin, Gun Frontier, RaymondForce

[Spoonman]

@Oh Danny Boy sorry to be the bringer of bad news, but it doesn't look so good, does it?

 

I'll be skipping these limited bundles. They're quite cool sometimes but it's not necessary and is now too high a risk imo.

[Jazz Glands]

2 hours ago, Spoonman said:

Looks nice! Not sure how tempted I am yet. Never played any of them.

 

All over this. Twin Cobra is one of my fave shmups of all time. Sold the PS1 version a few years back and regretted it, so this is great news for me  

 

Shame Kyuokyo Tiger 2 isn’t included, mind you. 

[ImmaculateClump]

2 hours ago, Spoonman said:

Looks nice! Not sure how tempted I am yet. Never played any of them.

 

Yeah, not sure how tempted I am by this collection either just yet.

There doesn't seem to be any arrange modes or added features that'd have me fumbling with my wallet.

 

Just playing twin cobra there. It's canny.
I realise how much of a love letter to that game Gyroblade was now!

 

It's a tad slow, showing it's age a bit, and it's one of those games where if you die, it's real seat of the pants stuff while you try and claw back some powerups to beef up your pea shooter!

 

Good fun! There's your score to beat.

 

 

Will try tiger heli later.

[geldra]

Sure Twin Cobra is vastly different (well, kinda different) from the Japanese version of Kyukyoku Tiger. Better checkpoints and a two player mode or something. Was covered in depth on an STG Weekly. 
 

kinda love Twin Cobra as it’s one of those games you’d always be guaranteed to see down the arcade back in the day. 

[ImmaculateClump]

14 minutes ago, geldra said:

Sure Twin Cobra is vastly different (well, kinda different) from the Japanese version of Kyukyoku Tiger.

 

Oh, right! I'll have to try the japanese version. Says you get both versions of the arcade game here - https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://m2stg.com/kyukyoku-tiger-heli/

 

Quote

"Ultimate Tiger Heli" includes not only the arcade version, but also the overseas version "TWIN COBRA", the phantom 2P version "Ultimate TIGER", and many transplanted works!

 

I think Phantom must have been the Japanese name for the megadrive? Or is that a mistranslation?

[geldra]

 

Gotta love the Airwolf rip off music. Or did Airwolf rip off Toaplan? 😮

[Klatrymadon]

Apparently my Cotton Reboot (PS4) order has reached the ShopTo warehouse, in case anyone was wondering when they'd ship!

[phillv85]

3 hours ago, Klatrymadon said:

Apparently my Cotton Reboot (PS4) order has reached the ShopTo warehouse, in case anyone was wondering when they'd ship!

Good news! I got mine through thegamecollection and I swear the original shipping date was end of June.

[ImmaculateClump]

Woohoo! Donpachi 1cc.

 

 

Here's the fun bit at the end where I had no bombs left.

 

https://streamable.com/0ns0r5

[Marlew]

@ImmaculateClump Great work! It seems that boss keeps you constantly on the move. No safe spots! I've still never played it, a big gap in my shmup experience. Looks like fun and much more DDP than I expected. I'll have to emulate it one day. 

 

On that note, I never actually figured out shmupmame on the smint but I am curious. I'll be honest, retroarch confuses me. I set it up on my PS Classic and all was well and then one day it wasn't. Same story on my old melted laptop. Is there an idiotproof guide or pack purely for shmups? 

[ImmaculateClump]

There we go, a bit better score, I got more into the second loop rather than dying before the first boss!
Suicide bullets fly out even when you uncover stars and bees on the ground, which I wasn't ready for!

 

 

I've never tried retroarch, but yeah, I remember someone saying that it can be needlessly complicated even for doing simple things.

 

Though I suppose mame isn't exactly super intuitive when it comes to setting up autofire and stuff, but once you get your head around it, it's fine.

 

I'll send you a PM, no roms, obviously, all above board, but It's hard to get shmupmame at the minute with a lot of the online links being dead.

 

One piece of advice I can you is to make sure you have your arcade stick plugged in everytime you start it up, or you'll have to set up your controls again. It doesn't take long, but it's not something you want to be doing every time.

 

I don't know how familiar you are with mame, you shouldn't need to poke in the options unless you want to turn vsync on which you can do in options > default game options > advanced

 

 

When you start your first game, press tab and go into input (general)

 

 

and player 1 controls. Use cursor keys to navigate the menus, enter to select things and escape to go back.

 

 

and there you want to set up, down, left, right and then buttons 1, 2, 3 and 4 should be enough.

You navigate the menu using the cursor keys, then press enter and then press the button on your arcade stick you want to bind.

You can press enter to rebind and press "esc" to clear the bindings if you fuck up or add two buttons by mistake.

 

 

Then you want to go into "other controls"

 

 

and this is where you can set the buttons for entering a coin and "player 1 start"

 

 

Then go to "user interface"

 

The only one in here you might want to bind to your stick is "fast forward", you can hold this button down to speed up the emulation and skip through some annoying unskippable credits screen or whatever.

 

 

If you ever want to rebind your controls for one particular game without changing your default controls for all games, you can do it in "input (this game)"

 

 

For most cave games you can turn on the full auto shot in the service menu, they're off by default.
I think I've done that for most of them and set up some autofire options for others, but I'll tell you how to do it so you can manage it yourself for any other games you play.

 

When playing a game, hold down F2 until you get to the service menu.

 

Then go to configuration

 

Here you can change the options and turn on the c button/autofire.

and then hold down F2 to go back to the game, this will save, you'll never have to do it again.

If you were playing a game that didn't have this option, like if you had to button mash constantly and then hold it down for focus and you wanted to split those apart and be able to use separate buttons for them.

You could make a custom rapid fire button by going into "custom buttons"

 

 

Then while having "p1 custom 1" selected, press "1" on the keyboard

 

Then you want to bind custom 1 to whatever you want your rapid fire button to be

 

and then change button one to a different button.

 

Then you go into the autofire settings

 

Turn on the autofire for custom 1

 

and then set the speed of the autofire. This'll usually be 30hz, but you can experiment with 20, 15, 10 and so on for different games.

 

So what you're doing is making a custom button for autofiring button 1, but not turning on autofire on button 1 so you can still hold down that button and laser/focus.

 

Sorry, I'm terrible at explaining things and I might have taken too many pictures!

Hopefully I haven't made things even more confusing!

 

Just post in here or send me a PM if you ever need me to try and help with anything.

[Marlew]

@ImmaculateClump That is enormously helpful. Cheers! 

 

I've never used shmupmame successfully but that seems like foolproof guidance. Will aim to get my smint set up over the next couple of weeks when I'm out of my pit. 

[ImmaculateClump]

Nice one!

 

Whoops, turns out I was playing the US version of donpachi, which is a bit easier! - https://shmups.wiki/library/DonPachi#Versions

Check out the honk kong version!

 

I have 1cc'ed the Japanese version to make up for it!
Blimey, that was close. Nearly had to turn in my weeb licence there! Playing the dirty american version! Can you imagine?

[englishbob]

Received the Cotton Reboot PS4 today from TheGameCollection

 

Too hot to play right now, but gave it 10 minutes. First impressions are it's not very well optimised, lots of Now Loading screens between levels and screens etc, I can't believe most of this can't fit in memory in one go, especially the arcade version

[phillv85]

2 hours ago, ImmaculateClump said:

Nice one!

 

Whoops, turns out I was playing the US version of donpachi, which is a bit easier! - https://shmups.wiki/library/DonPachi#Versions

Check out the honk kong version!

 

I have 1cc'ed the Japanese version to make up for it!
Blimey, that was close. Nearly had to turn in my weeb licence there! Playing the dirty american version! Can you imagine?

I didn’t realise there was such a difference. Will have to check which region my PCB is. Pretty sure it’s Japan.

[ImmaculateClump]

17 hours ago, englishbob said:

Too hot to play right now

 

It's too hot to do anything else! Unless you're just sitting there in your grundies drinking rum

 

14 hours ago, phillv85 said:

I didn’t realise there was such a difference. Will have to check which region my PCB is. Pretty sure it’s Japan.

 

Yeah! It's quite subtle, the survival rank doesn't go up so hard and you get rewarded with more bombs after the stage ends.

 

I must have been playing the Japanese version at first, then took a break, and when I've gone back to try and clear it again, I've loaded up the US version by mistake, but it worked out pretty well since when I went back to the Japanese version, I got the clear straight away, so it's definitely a great way of training yourself up for the Japanese version.

 

Look at this poor fella trying to catch a bomb. Heartbreaking

 

https://streamable.com/023dbm

[Rsdio]

Yeah, yesterday when it hit 28c I was like 'You know what, this is the perfect time to have a nice, laid-back play of Ketsui.'

 

Now I've got access to my PS4 again I figured I should probably prioritise those M2 jobs I waited ages and paid a fortune for. Fuck me, that game seems like it's an absolute sweatfest at the best of times. Just casually trying the Deathtiny mode I felt more stressed than when I'm actively trying to 1cc the normal mode of something else. Just a constant 'oh fuck, oh god, oh Jesus Christ' like a cross between Edward Woodward going to the Wicker Man and Ric Flair watching the Shockmaster's entrance.

 

Well, I managed to get to the end of stage 4 on one credit first attempt then saw the end second time around using three credits. Fun mode which I didn't 100% grasp the mechanics of while I was playing but I'm not sure if time spent trying to 1cc it would be better spent on the game proper?

 

I can sort of see how you're meant to approach a lot of it now (lock on to the bigger enemies as soon as they appear, take out the smaller ones with your laser at the same time) so it doesn't seem quite as scary as it did but it's still mad how aggressive you have to be and how heavy playing it that way must be on memorisation (by CAVE standards).

[phillv85]

I only played Deathtiny mode for the first time last week, but I found it quite easy (1CC on second attempt) with all the extra lives and auto bombing that are on by default. You need to play it aggressively (I just played it like Ketsui arcade which I play aggressively for the points) but found if you’re all up in the face of the enemies you get loads of blue cubes which refill your Deathtroy meter which I treated like a lifebar. It does get really heavy in the last two stages and I found myself just forcing through with my built up lifestock and using a lot of bombs. I’d stick at it, I thought it was a really good mode, far more forgiving than the arcade game! 

[Rsdio]

Yeah, it's definitely a lot easier and was useful for me in getting to grips with how to approach the arcade mode, as I say. I'll stick with it a bit then, I'm just in the habit of thinking of normal modes as the 'main course' I guess.

 

I don't think I've extensively played a game where point-blanking is so important before so that's a bit of a change of pace. Sounds pretty daft (though I guess there's a fair amount going on visually) but I didn't notice while playing that your laser doesn't go full screen either. Need to figure out which ship to stick with as well, having just checked on the shmups forum most people seem to think that A is a no-brainer but then there are one or two others who swear by B for the extra speed.

 

The arcade challenge mode in this port is a fantastic idea, it's pretty much like having loads of save states all conveniently set up to practice specific areas. I wish everything had that.

[phillv85]

Oh yeah, it’s a hell of a release, it’s made a game that’s pretty unapproachable into something anyone can enjoy. Those guys at M2 know what the people want!
 

I use ship A, always have for Ketsui, try them both though and see what works for you. I find speed confers no advantage in it, I actually prefer smaller more deliberate movements.

[Rsdio]

Forgot to say, thank god that that Doom TLB who you can have turn up at the end of the other modes won't be part of any prospective 1-all attempts since he only seems to appear at the end of the second loop once you've cleared the first loop scoring at least 120,000,000 points.. And also without dying or bombing

 

That turret pattern. Good lord.

 

 

[phillv85]

Pretty sure I fought him at the end of my Deathtiny run, the patterns certainly look familiar. Will have to have another blast and check.