shmups.system11.org

Before I go ahead and buy Taito Legends 2 (online ), I need to know how Gekirindan looks and plays. Those of you who have it, please give me some quick impressions, and, if you'd like, some other good reasons to purchase it.

Oh, and I'm assuming G-Darius plays (and looks?) better than the PSone port?

Thanks.

G Darius itself is worth the price of admission, and it's the best home version out there. All the others are just an awesome bonus.

I expect that BrianC will be here soon as he's the resident Taito compilation expert

You also get Elevator Action Returns, Darius Gaiden, and Metal Black which are some big hits.

Remember the XBOX version has these exclusives:

Bubble Symphony
Cadash
Pop ‘n Pop
Rayforce


The PS2 has these:

Balloon Bomber
G Darius
Ray Storm
Syvalion


The PS2 seems to have the edge with G Darius.

If my memory serves me correctly Metal Black has an emulation issue in Taito Legends 2 while the Taito Memories compilation doesnt. There is big debates regarding emulation quality of other games on the disc which is discussed in another thread. G Darius is a solid port though on Legends 2.

And also remember that all three of these games have emulation issues, with Metal Black's being the worst of the glitches.

This post refers to the ps2 version

I'm not sure which version of Gekirindan is best: Saturn, or Legends 2? I bet most people here would say Saturn.

No. Definitely TL2. Saturn's is busted up a little in little things in sprite appearance, loading boss fights, and bullets slowed; but Tate-able. TL2 is faster pace and appeared to have no errors, but no Tate.

Taito Legends 2 has infinite continues...

This I know for a fact. And it's the main reason why I made this thread.

I bought Gekirindan earlier this year, and I couldn't play it because my Saturn (grey/blue model) had trouble loading it. The loading screen would take forever. And whenever it actually did load, something would be missing during gameplay (sprites, BGM, background) every single time. I was told that the white model Saturn was the best choice for playing Gekrindan, but I didn't feel like spending more money on another Saturn console. So I just got a refund for the game. Actually, the seller let me exchange it for a copy of Thunder Force Gold Pack 1.

Anyway, thanks a whole lot for the responses guys. I'll be buying the Taito Legends 2 tomorrow.

Skip the XBox version, and get the European PC version. Same games, but you can plop them into MAME and play them without a filter and such. You'll even get the dip switches, since the games are MAME ROMs to begin with.

I say the European version, because the company that brought the PS2 version of TL2 over and botched a number of things in the process, is the same company that brought the US PC version of TL2 over. God only knows what happened in it.

That's a bit misleading. TL2 emulates inserting credits, so you can just insert the credits you want and not insert more if you don't want to continue much. A couple of the games input your name as CNT when you credit feed too.

Gekiridan in TL2 PS2 has some issues with slowdown that aren't in the original. As for the PC version, it ran a bit slow on my Athlon XP, 1.8 GHz computer with 32 MB S3 Prosavage DDR graphic card and about 500 MB of RAM and I didn't like the Starforce, so I ended up using MAME. The ROM sets used aren't all the latest ones. None of the games have the issues of the PS2 version, but Elevator Action Returns has a different issue, in both the shell that came with the game and in MAME. The Elevator Action Returns ROM that came with the PC version lacks the lighting effects, which makes it harder to play for score. Gekiridan plays great under MAME, though.



There is no need to import the European PC version. None of the things that was botched with the US PS2 version were botched for the PC one (the only thing botched with the US PS2 version that wasn't already botched for the EU version was Bust A Move Again. Everything else is intact, including the very same glitches that were already in the EU version. Speed may have actually been improved in comparison to the EU version. The JP Memories collections that the TL2 is based on already had flaws to begin with).

I get the impression that the US PC version IS the EU version. Even though they aren't advertised on the box, Rayforce, Pop 'n Pop, Cadash, and Bubble Symphony are all present. All ROMs are the parent versions and play as the world version when played using the included shell (aside from Rayforce, which uses a Gunlock ROM, but uses a cheat to play as Rayforce. Also, Puzzle Bobble 2 is the Puzzle Bobble 2 version and completely intact). The US PC version has "Xplosive" on the splash and install screens and uses the exact same version of Star Force the European PC version uses.

Also, yes, Destineer also brought the PC version over, but they are only the publisher. I doubt they actually did anything aside from publish considering the lazy job they did on the packaging for both the PS2 and PC.



Sweetness! Sounds like a nice exchange.

Growl is toned down too. The demo screen is taken away along with the gore as well as the logo and it's only 2-player.

Saturn Geki had tate, TL2 didn't have tate (iirc).

It was. To be honest, I was suprised he let me. I thought the TFGP1 was worth a little more. But hey, I'm not complaining.

On my way to Walmart now. They have one copy of Taito Legends 2 (PS2) for $15.

I'm very satisified with this collection. The only thing I dislike is the colored borders when you play Gekirindan and the other vert shmups in their original screen aspect. Is there any way to make them black?

No tate=Fail

The collection lacks tate, but it still keeps the original aspect ratio and is of decent size. It's the other issues with the PS2 collection that bother me more than the lack of tate.

This port was not that great on the Saturn.

Shitty programers in the end, because Darius Gaiden and Rayforce/Layer Section (both F3 hardware games like Gekirindan) run with no problems at all.

The Rayforce/Layer Section/Galactic Attack Saturn port rocks! I heard the ports of Bubble Symphony and Elevator Action Returns also turned out excellent on the Saturn.

Ok here goes-

Taito of Japan ported GDarius and Raystorm themselves and are untouched on TL2 for US ans UK. Also GD and RS are not as good as the ports for the PS1 in my opinion. They re-ported the two using the Ps1 level hardware, but somehow mucked up the visuals (i dont like it). Now the other titles were re done with the help of Nick Salmoria of Mame. You see Taito of JP were being dicks and would not release the sources for there in house coded emu. So the boys in the UK had to code a new emu. Sadly its not as good, but some games did benefit from there emu (dont remember which one or ones). I will try to find the thread with the info i mention, stay tuned its real intersting

Taken from Empire Interactive forum

Apologies guys,

Honestly it wasn't an attempt to rip anyone off. The explanation is somewhat complex but I'll try and lay it out below.

Taito Japan produced Taito Memories for the Japanese market only and hence only developed it on PS2 - it was released in Japan a bit before Taito Legends 1 was released by Empire in EU/US (on PC/PS2/XBox). It didn't include Bubble Symphony. Some of the later games are beyond the power of the PS2 to emulate (Eg. G Darius/Raystorm which use PS1 level hardware), however Taito still had the source code for these and so made proper ports of them, they also spent some time getting the F3 system games running on PS2 which involved removing the F3 sound CPU and replacing sound generation with very long pre-canned sound streams.

Empire had licensed Bubble Symphony for Legends 1 however Taito didn't provide us with any source for any of the games or the rewritten sound cpus, all the Empire versions are true emulations of the original hardware. Consequently despite our best efforts we couldn't get the F3 games running at 60fps on a PS2 under emulation. So we cut Bubble Symph, Darius, Dungeon Magic, Pop N Pop and Rayforce from Legends 1 - despite having them working acceptably on XBox/PC.

For Legends 2 it was decided that as Taito were unwilling to provide the source for these games but they had already done the work of porting them, they would do the PS2 version and Empire would do the PC/XBox versions.

A compilation was constructed that made the most sense as a follow on to Legends 1 and Taito took their Memories 1 and 2 code and made us a new version (Legends 2 PS2) - they also translated it for Europe/US.

Meanwhile Empire got on with the XBox/PC versions - G-Darius/Raystorm (and a couple of others that weren't included in Legends) were software ports on PS2 and would have been impossible to have running on an XBox as emulations and so we substituted other games. On the flip side of the coin Taito Japan had never got Bubble Symphony, Cadash, Rayforce and Pop N Pop working on PS2 so including these wasn't an option for them.

Thats it really - to sum up. Taito Japan did the PS2 version and had a ported version of G-Darius/Raystorm, Empire didn't and wouldn't have been able to get it running emulated on an XBox. Empire had a working version of Bubble Symphony (and others) on XBox/PC and Taito Japan didn't.

I heard the JP emu for the two Taito Memories 1 collections isn't the best. I heard Purulia (sp?), a JP exclusive in the collection is choppy. I also heard that the Memories collection, while lacking the input issues, still has the slowdown issues for games like Elevator Action 2. I also heard reports of input lag, which I haven't heard for the US or EU Taito Legends 2.



This isn't completely correct. They got Cadash working on PS2. It's in one of the Taito Memories 1 collections. Also, the PC collection creates an empty folder for Syvalion, which gives me the impression that it was planned for the PC collection but removed.

(All platforms)

* Alpine Ski
* Arabian Magic
* Bonze Adventure (Jigoku Meguri in Japan)
* Cameltry
* Chack'n Pop
* Cleopatra Fortune
* Crazy Balloon
* Darius Gaiden
* Don Doko Don
* Dungeon Magic (Light Bringer in Japan)
* Elevator Action Returns (Elevator Action 2 in US)
* The Fairyland Story
* Football Champ (Hat Trick Hero in Japan)
* Front Line
* Gekirindan
* Grid Seeker: Project Storm Hammer
* Growl (Runark in Japan)
* Gun Frontier (arcade game)
* Insector X
* KiKi KaiKai
* Kuri Kinton
* Legend of Kage
* Liquid Kids (Mizubaku Adventure in Japan)
* Lunar Rescue
* Metal Black (video game) (Gun Frontier 2)
* Nastar Warrior (Rastan Saga 2 in Japan, Nastar in other countries)
* Puchi Carat
* Puzzle Bobble 2
* Qix
* Raimais
* Space Invaders 95 (Akkan-vaders in Japan)
* Space Invaders DX
* Super Space Invaders 91 (Majestic Twelve: The Space Invaders Part IV in Japan)
* Violence Fight
* Wild Western

(PS2 exclusives)

* Balloon Bomber
* G-Darius
* RayStorm
* Syvalion

(Xbox/PC exclusives)

* Bubble Symphony (Bubble Bobble 2 in other countries)
* Cadash
* Pop'n Pop (exclusive to this collection)
* RayForce (Gunlock in other countries)

Bubble Symphony (Bubble Bobble II) is perfect on the Saturn. Elevator Action Returns is just about perfect except some parts of the background in certain stages (when it scrolls) has some wavy lines.

I never found those lines when playing on MAME.



Not only that, but they lost some of the game's original programing code (Bubble Bobble is a big one).



It makes me glad that I spend more money on Taito ports on the Saturn, PSX, and etc. then buying a emulated collection. Of course buying ports means you can't get all the games you want but most of these games that are on the list did have some good ports on various systems. Plus ports most of the time are high in quality.

The Capcom Collections for the PSX and SAT in my opinion better than the same games on the PS2 collections.

BTW Rayforce made it to TM2vol.1 in Japan, dont know how it runs emulated under Ps2 hardware (unless they ported it)

TM2 Joukan's version of RayForce is awesome. When you play in Tate, forget about upscaled or filtered graphics. It looks like it's 240p.

Aside from the ones not in the Generations packs, the games used in CCC1 are based on the PSX versions. They aren't arcade emulations. The PS2 versions have filtered graphics, but still keep the playability intact. Sound is off, but that is expected with PS2 hardware and some sound was off in the Generations packs too.

G-Darius is wonderful on this collection. It plays much smoother than the PS port, which makes it a little more difficult. The same goes for Darius Gaiden and Rayforce.

$15 for 39 games = money well spent