shmups.system11.org

doesn't the "LE" come with the soundtrack?

The price isn't too bad. I don't get the homebrew argument, its specs are easily on par with SNK's official stuff. If a Ketsui beater came out on homebrew PCB I doubt anyone would argue its worth.

I'm talking about where you can buy the soundtrack and don't have to get it through the LE version of the game.

Dunno, for me watching the trailer I still get the whole homebrew feel. I also like the music by the way, but I think it doesn't fit the game very well. If someone wanna spend that much money for such a game, fine. It's just way too much for my taste and unlicensed products also don't have much of a collection value (again just my humble opinion). I'd pick it up though as an XNA indie or even PSN/Live game.

I know this is probably the wrong thing to say here. NG DEV team are a Neo Geo fan club. Apart from the game itself, a lot of the money your paying is for that Neo Geo Authentic look, keeping the machine alive and perhaps forcing other devs to take notice of the demand of 2D on Neo Geo.

By putting everything in an on screen basket defeats the objective and message of the team. N G DEV Team are a resussitation act and they are using the shmup genre as their tool. If Playmore licenced this game it wouldn't be any better.

that's THE definition of a pipe dream if I've ever heard of one.

Can you explain this?



It's just the title tune, which has a cheesy Eurodance vibe on it.

Licensed games go through a whole lot more of quality control than homebrew games do, so for me this is a big difference. Anyone that disagrees and wants to spend 500$+ on such a game may happily do so.

So you can't explain it.



How does Andro Dunos managed to slip through SNKs quality control?

Sure I can if you want an answer on this so badly:

- Why release a video without real BGM and sound effects but just some trance music (that is nice but completely doesn't suit the game)? It gives zero feel for the game's atmosphere, hence lacks commercial effort.
- The bullets look like taken from a cheap flash game.
- Background and enemy design look almost completely identical throughout the whole video. Either the video doesn't show a lot of the game or there's not much variety in it.

Don't get me wrong, like I said earlier a nice effort but I just wouldn't fancy paying that much money for it and from my personal point of view there's no collector value for unlicensed games anyway. I got a number of NeoGeo games in my collection, but I wouldn't pay much for any homebrew game or buy them at all. I'd still buy for a low price for PC or as Xbox Indie download or so.

Thanks for your observation but nothing of this indicates homebrew at all. In fact you just try to bash it, because you mislabel the game as homebrew.



Explain further please, as this doesn't make sense at all.

Well nothing that you say indicates that it doesn't look like homebrew either. I understand that you are trying to defend your product, I'm just giving my opinion, guess that's what a forum is for. I am even interested in the game (otherwise I wouldn't post here, right?), but it's just not worth the money in my opinion. As long as you find enough people that pay for it, it shouldn't bother you anyway... . I'm a collector, so I guess there might be other collectors around that still share my thoughts.

It's fine to hear your opinion about the game, but you obviously try hard to make the game look like a homebew because you believe it's a homebrew. You're looking at it from the wrong side, you know. I'm asking your you to explain your opinion to improve the product, but your one-liners and weak comparison aren't very helpfully. Telling us the bullets look like a cheap flash game is simply insulting. At least I don't know a single one that has betters bullets.



Okay, then I won't argue with you about gameplay anyway.

I agree that the music and missing sound effects in the trailer don't do the game many favours , but it gets that whole eurotrash amiga feel across though
Also I don't like how the bosses are animated ....they move to fast/silly , like someone is controlling them with a mouse...it looks funny , but not realistic.
Otherwise the graphics look good for a neo geo game (especially the backrounds) BUT neo geo and verizontal was not the best choice for a bullet hell IMO.

I thought the bullets looked quite good in the trailer. The backgrounds though, did look pretty doujin-esque. Game looks like pretty good fun overall I think.

Yeah; the actual animation art looks pretty good, but some the movements lack any sense of inertia, like the bosses are just plastic mock-ups or something (or are e.g. bouncing off of invisible walls). If this is a deliberate sacrifice to make the game more fast-paced it's understandable, but it still looks a bit "off" sometimes.

Neo-Geo is probably the only realistic choice for arcade hardware for a tiny developer that has no established relationship with the big distributors. Other arcade systems with exchangeable media are not very popular/available and/or have all kinds of "security" stuff that makes it hard to release an unlicensed game. I suppose they could have developed their own PCB, but that's a whole other set of skills and costs that have to get involved.

As for it being vertizontal, vertical scrolling is the accepted standard/tradition for bullet hell games and horizontal monitor is pretty much the only way to go for Neo (you don't want your game being the only vertical game on a system that runs lots of multi-game cabs). Anything else would involve a lot more risk.

I don't see this at all. They're a but unorthodox in places, but they don't look like what I'd expect to see (or have seen) in cheap Flash games (some of which just rip graphics from arcade games anyway...).

I think some people are being overly critical. I totally understand NGDev's choice to go with MVS hardware. You get to combine 2 different sets of deep-pocketed fanboys. Shmups + Neo = $$$

However, these are also the most critical of assholes [no offense, I'm one of them] But come on, shmups fans are holding magnifying glasses up to cardboard and nit-picking the most trivial of details. So, criticism both constructive and retarded are to be expected...in triplicate.

I think the game looks solid and retail-worthy. BG's do look repetitive if the trailer video shows everything. Music sounds great to me, but I'm a galuda fan. Looks WAY better than Last Hope, but these are two completely different styles of game. Fast Striker looks much less "homebrew" to me. I think the suggestion [that came with Last Hope as well IIRC] to maybe release a demo rom would be a big help.

I gotta' be honest, all the sweet schwag included in the LE makes it very tempting...if those numbers were USD and not Euro I'd probably throw in an order. But the exchange rate makes it not-so-great.

Great looking game though!

I counted 6 different backgrounds in the trailer. So... probably the latter. I like how the smooth the boss animations look.

For what it's worth I bought Last Hope and Dux on the Dreamcast and enjoyed them overall. If Fast Strikers comes to the DC I'll probably get it too!

Was hoping for a cart only (maybe with mini-marquee) deal.

And whats with the "only-licensed" nonsense? Only SOLD, I'd hope?

An unlicensed product done by hobby programmers in their spare time. It's homebrew. Not to say there's anything wrong with that. It's not a knock on the quality of the product at all.

Visually this is a huge improvement over Last Hope. I think the biggest things letting it down for me are the explosions and the player laser. A 20 px brush tool does not make good graphics. That an the enemy craft looking a bit derivative, but I'm sure that one is a conscious design decision.

The graphics are fine. If we did side-by-side comparisons with aspects of this game and big JP shooters, it's doubtful people will be able to tell. That said, graphics don't really sell a shooter long term so there are still a lot more questions that will eventually be answered.

agreed, think about some of those early "pre-rendered" games...or even mushi sama for that matter

I think it looks fine as well.

The backgrounds do kind of repeat, but I never really concentrate on whats going on in the background when playing. The bullet patterns fit my style exactly in both speed and design. The ship movement speed looks good in comparison to the bullet patterns and speed.

I do wish we could hear a sample of the music, especially when the LE version comes with the OST. Is there any hope for a small music sample?

If I had the money sitting around for this game, I'd be all over it. The exchange rate isn't as horrible as I thought it'd be. A few online conversion tools tell me it's $600 USD. Really, that's not terrible. I could easily drop that much on a Japanese Xbox and the region-locked games, and I honestly think I'd enjoy Fast Striker more. Would like to see more videos, but that's my initial impression.

papyal adds to the exchange rate considerably to scrape off the top for themselves :thumbsdown:

Herm... That's disappointing to hear.

Do you know how much they usually add on? I obviously don't have the money for this now, so it's not as if I can go try.

Even Cave admitted to using pre-rendered sprites for their ESP.Ra.De PCB for all three main playable characters as they were having difficulty doing them by hand. Still looks awesome nevertheless when done right/excuted properly.

It sure would be nice to try out MVS Fast Striker at the upcoming 2010 CAX show/sale just to see what the intial reaction/opinions from the hard-core arcade gamer crowd is like. This'll be the first time an indy developer released a MVS cart indeed, let alone a shmup one. Why don't we see any Japanese indy devs cranking out shmup titles for the MVS platform?

It'd be interesting to see/hear the intial reactions/opinions of the hard-core shmup crowd in the Japanese game centers should Japanese game center owners/operators take a chance on buying a MVS FS kit that "accept coins" at 100 yen per credit. Btw, is it possible to counter-stop MVS FS or has that issue been resolved? You might recall the issue of Capcom's arcade CPS2 release of Mars Matrix was counter-stoppable and in the DC console release of the same name, an extra zero was added to negate that particular issue.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

I'm a bit concerned that there are bullets from nearly every point on the Photoshop™ color wheel, with 3 or 4 different colors and shapes onscreen at the same time. At least they reserved blue for the pickup items. I hope.

Yeah, while the bullets themselves look good individually, the rainbow storm is a bit confusing; though I'm sure it's the type of thing you can get used to from a gameplay standpoint, I don't think I'll ever get ever the garish visual spectacle that it produces. That said, the game looks great overall, and it's clearly a cut above most other unlicensed games. Unfortunately, the price completely precludes me from playing it any time in the near future, but I'm glad there's interest in this project; it honestly wouldn't get the attention it deserves as a XBLA game or something, even though I would be able to play it then

Not really, the Neo*Geo was in active service for nearly 14 years so I actually am shocked that the console doesn't have a strong homebrew following. Hard to relate, but SNK claims they went bankrupt because of piracy.


How do any Visco games get through quality control? Because they're good.


And yet Strikers 1945 Plus was fantastic.