Ray'z Arcade Chronology [Taito x M2] - PS4/Switch [2023]

[jehu]

This didn't occur to me until now, but:

Is it enough to have Prime in the U.S. to capitalize on these Prime Japan exclusives? Or is there a separate subscription for Amazon Japan Prime?

[heli]

I readed before it is seperate saying some forum member.
What you need a demo for ?, another subject please.

[XtraSmiley]

This didn't occur to me until now, but:

Is it enough to have Prime in the U.S. to capitalize on these Prime Japan exclusives? Or is there a separate subscription for Amazon Japan Prime?

It's completely separate (and is a monthly 500 yen), but they have a free month you can do for this bonus.

I don't mind the pre-order to get it, but to make it a Prime thing is annoying.

[Bassa-Bassa]

I readed before it is seperate saying some forum member.
What you need a demo for ?, another subject please.

The other subject is 25-years-old games which have been discussed in their whole extent at this point, so you'll have to forgive us.

[jehu]

"Raycrisis sucks" announces a thread title circa year 2005 of our lord and savior system11.

The upcoming Sweet BB Ray'z collection got me curious about the games' legacies, and the history of their reception. When I went back and looked at conversations about the game on this very forum, and the landscape looked a lot different than I expected.

Rayforce seems to have almost always enjoyed the veneration of the crowd. The game continues to place well in the yearly STG stack-up, so no great surprises here.

Raystorm seems to have fared better than its younger brother. The community's opinion was buoyed by the feeling of an epic scale (now in 3D!), a good soundtrack, and a classic, linear 7-stage set, and an accessible, near-arcade accurate port on the PS1. Though plenty of grumbling about the game 'pulling you' back towards the center of the screen, difficulties tracking bullets in 3D environments, and the fact that the game came at the expense of another potential 2D masterpiece, R-Gear.

Raycrisis is really the story here for me; it did not have a good time of it in the court of public opinion. Complaints abound: it's too short, it's structured in an opaque and confusing way, the music isn't as good as the two previous Ray incarnations, the 'drifting' was not fixed, the PS1 port doesn't hold as well as Raystorm's, the graphical busy-ness makes it difficult to keep your eyes oriented on the bullets, the game's suffering from an identity crisis etc. etc.

But, all that said, I'm not sure I see remnants of these conversations still circumscribing how these games are talked about today. Raycrisis, it seems, actually has a rather faithful following. I even get the sense that it might have aged better than Storm.

What do you all think about all this? Do you still think Raycrisis is a fundamentally flawed game, or has it really grown on the community? Is Raystorm the superior game? Where does it stand with you?

[heli]

RayStorm is just more realistic.
RayCrisis have that mental brain computer layout thingie i dont like.
The warning sound is not agressive sounding alarm, more a weak sound.
I rather have no warning sound.

The soundtrack of RayStorm is very good, i also like the RayCrisis music, it is good.
It feels like there have been put less effort in the whole game production for RayCrisis.

[Steven]

Preorder's up on Amazon. I was able to get the thing with the R-Gear code on my main account even though my free trial of Prime has expired. Interesting. Got Famitsu 3D crystal pack PS4 version + regular Switch version. Now watch them cancel my thing after I never pay for Prime lol

[EmperorIng]

the PS1 port doesn't hold as well as Raystorm's

Really? If this is what farmers were actually talking about here 15-20 years ago they really were as clueless as all the jokes suggest.
Being able to easily select your map/route in RayCrisis vastly outweighs the "inconvenience" of a 1 second loading screen before the boss appears.

If anything RayStorm got ruined in its localization due to shitty difficulty sliders courtesy of Working Designs.

RayCrisis does a lot of really interesting things and, while not without problems, is way more frantic and interesting to play from a scoring perspective. The Encroachment meter and the caravan wave style enemy spawns keeps pushing you to kill everything as quickly and efficiently as possible, and you are rewarded with new stage variations and enemy waves. It's very addicting. The short length better compliments the "no extend" style of these two games as well.

What you need a demo for ?, another subject please.

Looks like FFXIV and Psikyo collections are BACK on the menu boys!

[Rastan78]

the PS1 port doesn't hold as well as Raystorm's

Really? If this is what farmers were actually talking about here 15-20 years ago they really were as clueless as all the jokes suggest.

Yeah you have to remember that RayStorm ran on FX-1B hardware like G Darius did. It's pretty close to the PS. Crisis ran on Taito G Net like Psyvariar and Shikigami 1. This was a bit bigger jump in hardware so the PS port couldn't nail the visuals quite as closely.

[EmperorIng]

Maybe, but when I play the two ps1 ports side by side (and I have done this many times) RayCrisis looks far smoother and the polygons far better rendered than Storm, which (while good) look grainer and choppier. Crisis was released by the end of the PS1 life cycle and it looks gorgeous, very little wobbling or distorted textures/polygons like what you see in other earlier 3D games.

If anything, watching the footage of the arcade RayStorm from some of the new promo videos is making me see details I have never noticed before from all my experience playing the ps1 port - just because I presume the console couldn't get all the background layers and bells and whistles going.

[Rastan78]

Sorry for the janky pics, but you can even make out in these how the texture on the cliff for example looks different. On RayCrisis G Net PCB the striations along the cliff side look more coherent. On PSX they're much more pixellated and broken up. The port makes a good showing though. The mechanical looking textures on the tunnel area look identical to me. Probably a case where they had to prioritize memory usage on textures that would be more noticable and cut back heavily on others?

It's interesting to see how many console ports also had to move hud elements away from the overscan ares to avoid having them be invisible on consumer TVs. A lot of times that's the quickest way to determine if you're looking at the arcade or console version of a game. In this case they modified the HUD quite a bit.

Would be kinda cool if M2 patches in the PSX versions down the road just for comparison ala G Darius cozmic.

PS:

Spoiler

G NET:

Spoiler

[Some-Mist]

why is shipping for it on amazon.jp to the USA like $200? am I doing something wrong?
(the standard switch edition with r-gear)

[Jonpachi]

why is shipping for it on amazon.jp to the USA like $200? am I doing something wrong?
(the standard switch edition with r-gear)

They do this a lot. It'll change to a more reasonable amount once it ships.

[Fudoh]

It'll change to a more reasonable amount once it ships.

but not necessarily on existing pre-orders. At least gotta have an eye on it and possibly ask for a partial refund after shipping.

[jehu]

Preorder's up on Amazon. I was able to get the thing with the R-Gear code on my main account even though my free trial of Prime has expired. Interesting. Got Famitsu 3D crystal pack PS4 version + regular Switch version. Now watch them cancel my thing after I never pay for Prime lol

I'm a little confused. I preordered the Collector's bundle without the vinyl and crystal, and my order details mention R-Gear, but I also don't have an active Amazon Prime JP account.

Do you actually have to have an active Prime account, or do you just need to order it 'today,' on Prime Day, to get R-Gear? As far as I can tell, it seems like the latter.

And here's a link to the store page for those interested:
https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/gp/produc ... UTF8&psc=1

[Fudoh]

Do you actually have to have an active Prime account

doesn't seem like it. Two years ago you actually REALLY had to have a prime account to order a PCE Mini, but here I don't see a difference between ordering with or without an active prime subscription.

[pablumatic]

why is shipping for it on amazon.jp to the USA like $200? am I doing something wrong?
(the standard switch edition with r-gear)

I went with the tenso.com packaging service to order this and avoid amazon.co.jp's recent-ish overseas shipping charge spikes. This dirty trick of amazon's works. I rarely order from them anymore unless its some exclusive like this R-Gear DLC.

[BIL]

What do you all think about all this?

Rayforce is a classic through and through, and personally would justify this purchase entirely on its own mighty back. Jaimers paid it a better plaudit than I ever could, noting its bridging of early 90s foot/floor killathons to the labyrinthine scoring depths and high-wire execution of Ketsui and other fin de siecle benchmarks. Whether for brash survival or punishingly technical scoring, all will be pushed to their limits by an inimitably fine-tuned barrage of Fast Aimed Shots and Bendy Taito Lasers!

It'd be like a Ray'z Scorsese Best Box: Jigoku no Late 1990s featuring crystal-clear, floorboard-rumbling remasters of Cape Fear (good attept MAWTY!), Bringing Out The Dead (I've not seen it! good rep!) and mahfuckin towering mafia inferno Casino. I got yer head in a GUNLOCK! Imma squoosh it, like a muddafuckin GRAPEFRUIT! Don't make me be a bad guy!

The others are most welcome - but regardless, I'm well guaranteed the toasty blast of hell's furnace upon my balls! (｀w´メ)

As for RS, I'll never not wish they'd just bolted it down to true topdown. Unlike its spiritual successor Under Defeat, which I think marshals and balances the angled overhead to worthwhile effect, and never provokes such thoughts, RS is a balls-out killer whose slightly ambiguous POV always takes me an evening's re-adjusting to. I like my Hard Gaming screwed down TIGHEEEEEET BOYEEEE

Make it tight you motherfuckers I swear to Christ (■｀w´■)

Spoiler

That said, I unfailingly have a good time with the RG02's SMOKESTACK LIGHTNIN' weapon, whose ability to snake along highways and hangars tearing all to shit, before vaulting hundreds of feet skyward to nom unmercifully on aircraft engines making them asplode in showers of 200x BOUNS and flying shrap, all guided by your imperious GUNLOCK is SHIT HOT MOTHERFUCKER

As for RC, never really sat down with it, though I did dig the Gekirindan desk drawers setpiece and thought the player-selected map was pretty rad. Cute solution to the decades-spanning Xeviousesque "Naw! My GUNLOCK's too high up!" bugbear, too! Vaguely recall warm fuzzies at its late US release ("shumps nawt dead!"), but I was distracted by the Solomon's vault of JP-only balls-hard STG/etc arcade stuff I suddenly realised I didn't have to longingly gaze at like a jagoff anymore. Needless to say its enduring repute among Serious People always made the prospect of an AC-perfect port most welcome.

TLDR: An immortal pillar of the genre and its somewhat wayward yet unmistakably compelling followups given reference-standard super-deluxe M2 treatment? That's a veritable Mozambique Drill of STG goodness pardner! This 2023, put the competition in the ground to curiously amiable smooth space jazz / house!

[Steven]

Do you actually have to have an active Prime account

doesn't seem like it. Two years ago you actually REALLY had to have a prime account to order a PCE Mini, but here I don't see a difference between ordering with or without an active prime subscription.

Yeah, you definitely needed an active Prime account or even just the free trial for the PC Engine mini, but not this time, which is interesting.

[Sengoku Strider]

Layer Section is a good game, I just spent an hour playing it this evening. But I've never quite understood the pedestal it's placed on. Functionally, it's kinda just Xevious but with After Burner's lock-on bolted to the secondary fire. And it's rigid. People will complain about the bees in DDP restricting your routing & preventing improvisation, but Layer Section is that times a billion. And with a ship that moves like a snail. I can dig that the game is designed around mastery of routing, but it's odd that it never faces criticism. I always hear praise for the soundtrack, but try as I might I don't quite get that either. Especially the first stage, which has a melody that brings to my mind a cross between elevator muzak and an early 90s game show. I guess stage 3 is cool.

Don't get me wrong, like I said I do enjoy it, it never leaves my Saturn binder. I definitely I dig the spritework & visual effects, it might even have the best use of transparencies on the Saturn. The boss fights are pretty well designed. It's just that it never jumps out at me as all-time top 10 material. I've always kind of privately wondered how much it and Darius Gaiden's profiles were boosted by being two of the only three shmups (alongside a slowdown-riddled port of In the Hunt) on the North American Saturn, the system with the reputation of being 'the shmup console' once you add a region override cart. They've both always been cheap & easily available in all regions too.

Layer Section II on the other hand...I only have the Saturn version, and it's just yuck. Like all too many 3D games, it suffers badly in the transition from the PS1. Which is a shame, because a game like this has the potential to look better than the PlayStation's jittery polys, with the proper care given (though there might be no helping the dithered transparencies on this one). But even aside from the visuals, the base game never draws me in. The viewpoint shift was worth a try, but like others have pointed out, it didn't stick the landing. I'm actually thinking of selling my copy.

Raycrisis I've never played. I skipped over it back in the PS1 days, and don't own one anymore.

[BIL]

I've always kind of privately wondered how much it and Darius Gaiden's profiles were boosted by being two of the only three shmups (alongside a slowdown-riddled port of In the Hunt) on the North American Saturn, the system with the reputation of being 'the shmup console' once you add a region override cart. They've both always been cheap & easily available in all regions too.

DG and Rayforce were always highly-regarded amongst Japanese STG fans. I could swear I remember someone else from the US mentioning this theory forever ago, and yeah... it's not the US STG fanbase of Bumfuck Burgerland, or their equally ardent pals across the pond in Crumpetfuck Teabagfordshire, or even the continental powers of Wienerschnitzelburg, Baguette Handler Town or Cannoli Lover's Island behind any of these games' statures. We're good for regrettably sexual Ikaruga box quotes, that's about it. Conversely, many of the most widely Western-available STGs are roundly detested around here and other hubs. Someone whose familiarity goes beyond a small stack of GameSTs and doujin superplays and witnessing a couple decades' worth of Euroshmup pogroms could probably confirm on both of these counts.

I get not getting along with Rayforce/DDP/Ikaruga etc's particularly harsh lines of movement and timing. I'm more partial to Dragon Blaze and Ketsui and Psyvariar Revision's slightly leavened approaches - the lines aren't as evident and the screws don't really tighten until going for decent scores, which is fine for random survivalists like me - and I think Siter Skain's Kamui outperforms its Taito and Raizing inspirations alike (that's not a knock on RF or Soukyugurentai, I just think Kamui is even better). I don't think anyone who likes RF does so because its weapons and scoring systems broadly resembles Xevious's, though. Then again, my opinion of RF's Gunlock is that it's Xevious Ground Bombing Except Not Lame.

[Steven]

I thought I was the only person in the world who doesn't think the RayForce soundtrack is all that special...

I also think the vaguely similar Soukyuugurentai is a better game than Layer Section in almost every way, especially the soundtrack. Soukyuugurentai's first stage is admittedly pretty boring, though.

[BIL]

Real story, my right retina is falling off - AGEEN - and I can still read that. ROCKIN.

For my 2c on Great Lockon STGs Of The 90s, I like Kamui's effective hybridising of RF and Souky. It borrows the latter's Web to free up movement, so you can go for that extra zako formation or scoot around an unlucky shot without wrecking a chain. But shooting is also critical, since just like RF, you can't simply lockon everything. This is completed with its own mechanic, the Fuckoff Massive Godlazor™, which is critical for both defense (bullet cancelling) and offense (speedkiling/scoring), and sees constant rotation with the main shot and lockon attacks.

These are all first-rate STGs in my book, I'd be without none of them. There's just a distinct sliding scale from technical pressure to a more improv-friendly ethos here, and I'm more of the latter sort.

Speaking of eyestrain, all score highly on the Warnings Label: Best STG Stuff utility belt! Which I'm glad I kept around all these years!



I: Bendy Taito Lasers (all three have em for days!)
II: Sniper Tank Decap n Recap Service (pretty good here too, although Souky arguably improves with its ground vehicles careening and flipping away tragically!)
III: Raizing Takeoff Sequence (Taito drops the ball, what the fuck )
IV: Destruction Of Priceless Religious Artifacts (Rayforce's ending surely covers this, default win)
V: Passive-Aggressive Asshole POWerup Carriers (a curious triple no-show IIRC, always more of a Toaplan/Seibu thing)
VI: Fuckoff Massive Godlazor (Siter Skain won't be pushed aside by their larger corporate rivals!)
VII: Dick Stock (all three are notably low on dick 3;)

[Steven]

Fuckoff Massive Godlazor™

I am officially going to play Kamui now.

Oh cool, 798 yen on Steam? Insta-bought.

[BIL]

You won't be disappointed, I promise! I think its official name might translate to "Lightning Katana," but at any rate, it's a monster! Siter Skain were hugely influenced by Raizing-style burning shrapnel carnivals, and this thing shears through metal motherfuckers but good. And bullets! Not lasers, though! Toss in an inimitably technothereal atmosphere of electric driven sorrow - less Rayforce's bitterly resolved 11th-hour suicide run, or Souky's ice-cold mercenary hits, more a karmic godhammer falling onto its doomed venal target at terminal velocity - for a love letter to Rayforce and Souky that, much like M2 and their Gauntlet X68k port, is easily on the level of the pros themselves.

These Dudes Came To BLOW SHIT UP MOTHERFUCKER (ta again Jaimers for premium-grade demo footage!)

[Steven]

I think literally everything you've ever told me to play has been absolutely incredible without exception, and the idea of RayForce + massive death laser continues that trend. I bought it without looking at any footage or anything, and checking out a bit of Jaimers' run lets me know I won't be disappointed once I get some time to play it later tonight. Massive death laser + bendy lasers + sprite scaling everywhere + glorious parallax scrolling is one of my favourite combinations.

[BIL]

Nice, that's one of the few games I'd totally endorse a blind buy of. You can tell by the ship speed, the hitbox and player V enemy firepower balance, it's by enthusiasts for the same. I wish a few more 90s/00s classics had killer reduxes like this - I'd particularly love to see a Dragon Blaze in this slightly more freewheeling format. Arguably, it wouldn't be DB anymore, without that relentless thrill of death even as you headbutt large targets into oblivion while grabbing up cascades of gold coins, but then why make the same game twice? Better to have two rad games instead.

[Jonpachi]

The 3D Force games just make me want to go play Soukyugurentai instead. Souky does nabs this formula and does it so, so much better that I find it impossible to go back.

[Rastan78]

Layer Section is a good game, I just spent an hour playing it this evening. But I've never quite understood the pedestal it's placed on. Functionally, it's kinda just Xevious but with After Burner's lock-on bolted to the secondary fire. And it's rigid. People will complain about the bees in DDP restricting your routing & preventing improvisation, but Layer Section is that times a billion. And with a ship that moves like a snail. I can dig that the game is designed around mastery of routing, but it's odd that it never faces criticism.

They were trying to avoid creating the style of game where you can hang out in the lower third of the screen dodging and then panic bomb when you get into trouble. That's something that was inspired by Xevious' gameplay style aside from the ground based reticle.

I think they succeeded in that, as RF requires you to use the whole screen, but it can feel a bit like you are being led by the nose and required to get pretty finicky in your routing. A worthy trade off IMO assuming the player enjoys the style. It feels a lot less restrictive than something like RSG or Ikaruga at least.

I can see what you mean about how it's kind of surprising people don't bring that up. It's also surprising they don't talk about the brutal rank system. RF is one of those games where you will see top players insert credit press start and ram right into the first available enemy to suicide. I think what happens there is that sometimes it's one popular game that people will bitch about that sucks all the air out of the room. If you want to complain about overly rigid routing you can talk about ikaruga. Want to complain about draconian rank systems? Garegga is the classic whipping boy.

BIL, I agree with you that it was the Japanese community that pretty much deified RF. Everything I've seen from Japanese sources almost never talks about RF without calling it a masterpiece in the same breath. Not that it was probably a huge commercial success. I'd imagine any Japanese arcade game released in 94 that wasn't called SF2, KOF or Virtua Fighter was essentially niche from the start. By the time of G Darius and RayCrisis Taito was basically just picking up the last table scraps.

It's hard to gauge, but I think if anything it's G Darius that enjoys a higher reputation in the west thanks to the readily available PS port. Gaiden is definitely popular and highly praised in Japan (I mean relative to other long forgotten 25+ year old arcade games).

[Sima Tuna]

Some day I will play Rayforce and Shienryu side-by-side to prove, scientifically, that Shienryu is the better game! Maybe. I dunno.