Shmup Related Questions That Don't Deserve a Thread

[BurlyHeart]

As someone unfamiliar with the Cotton games, all the newly released versions have me somewhat confused.

Assuming I can only afford to buy one at a time, what order would you recommend to play/buy them?

[jehu]

As someone unfamiliar with the Cotton games, all the newly released versions have me somewhat confused.

Assuming I can only afford to buy one at a time, what order would you recommend to play/buy them?

If you're really into the idea of 'classic' Cotton - I'd go with Cotton Reboot. It has the superb X68k version of Cotton included to scratch the true retro itch, but also includes the Reboot-exclusive version which plays like a more modernized arrange of Cotton (with absolutely gorgeous updated graphics.)

If you want something that feels more modern - Cotton Fantasy is the ticket. (The alt. title is Cotton Rock n' Roll. The game's name was changed to 'Fantasy' in the West, but it's the same game - don't let that confuse you.) Here, everything is rendered in a very competent 3D, and the stages are fun, brisk, and well-designed. Almost feels like running through an STG theme park. A variety of characters that have meaningful impact on gameplay give Fantasy a lot of replay value.

You can't go wrong with either choice. Both run extremely well, even on Switch.

You get much less return for your money if you want the reissue of SNES Cotton 100% (a pitifully easy, but still marginally fun ride), or the Mega Drive 'Panorama Cotton' - a revelation in 3D rail-shooting in the 16-bit era, but significantly less impressive now. Both of these are worth a play if you find yourself a fan of the series after playing Reboot and Fantasy, but don't start here.

[BurlyHeart]

Fantastic information. Thank you very much.

[BulletMagnet]

There are also the digital re-releases of Cotton 2 and Boomerang (as well as the unrelated Guardian Force); both look nice and feature some neat gimmicks (particularly the ability to grab and toss enemies into each other, which certain characters in Fantasy/Rock n Roll have inherited), but unfortunately suffer from significant input lag; there was a patch which improved things somewhat, but as much as I'd like to recommend them (particularly Boomerang, a personal favorite), especially since the Saturn ports are stupid expensive, I'd definitely gauge your overall interest in the series elsewhere before taking a chance on them.

[BurlyHeart]

There are also the digital re-releases of Cotton 2 and Boomerang (as well as the unrelated Guardian Force); both look nice and feature some neat gimmicks (particularly the ability to grab and toss enemies into each other, which certain characters in Fantasy/Rock n Roll have inherited), but unfortunately suffer from significant input lag; there was a patch which improved things somewhat, but as much as I'd like to recommend them (particularly Boomerang, a personal favorite), especially since the Saturn ports are stupid expensive, I'd definitely gauge your overall interest in the series elsewhere before taking a chance on them.

Good advice too, thank you. There were suddenly so many Cotton games, it was hard to keep track of what is what.

I'll definitely try out Cotton Reboot and Cotton Fantasy / Rock n Roll at some stage, and then move to the others, depending on how I like the first two.

[BIL]

Is the player vehicle in Space Invaders (1978) a tank / some other artillery? I know in Space Invaders '90 (MD) you're often in a tank, with visible treads (sometimes in a spacefighter). I see "laser cannon" mentioned here and there, just wondering if there's any primary lore.

Just occurred to me that I've always thought of tank and other ground-based STGs as outliers/underdogs, when some of the genre's earliest landmarks were just that (Sasuke VS Commander's titular ninja, King & Balloon's ballista, Wild Western's cowboy on horseback). And there's Tomohiro Nishikado's earlier Gun Fight (1975), too.

I wish Drum didn't go and kamikaze himself on Master BLOODF's unflinching godhead, he loved questions like this.

[Starfighter]

If I wanted to play with an arcade stick on my Switch, what is currently the best option if I want to avoid as many added frames of delay as possible?

[Haddock]

On Ketsui (PS4) I'm trying to play Tate of the first time ever and I notice it only takes up a small part of my screen. I don't see any option to stretch the screen or anything like, am I missing something obvious in the screen options? I see some option about percentages but it won't let me click that, it does nothing.

[Rastan78]

If I wanted to play with an arcade stick on my Switch, what is currently the best option if I want to avoid as many added frames of delay as possible?

I've been thinking this over myself. I think the best way to go is a Brook UFB or the Hori RAP for Switch. Are you OK with modding or custom sticks or looking for something out of the box? Want to have compat with ps4 etc or Switch only? Is budget a big concern?

[Starfighter]

If I wanted to play with an arcade stick on my Switch, what is currently the best option if I want to avoid as many added frames of delay as possible?

I've been thinking this over myself. I think the best way to go is a Brook UFB or the Hori RAP for Switch. Are you OK with modding or custom sticks or looking for something out of the box? Want to have compat with ps4 etc or Switch only? Is budget a big concern?

I want something out of the box (for example I'm very happy with the stock versions of RAP4 Kai for PS4/PC and the Fighting Stick VX for 360!) since budget is a big concern. I have sticks for everything else so I don't mind a Switch only solution.

[Rastan78]

Sounds like you should pick up one of the Hori RAPs for Switch. They're recently getting sold out and harder to find cheap. They are about as low lag as you can get on Switch. If you wanted to be totally OCD about it you could pad hack a wireless controller to shave off a few ms. In that case it would just be better to play on PS4 anyway IMO.

Think I'm gonna build something with a Brook in it since the only stick I still have around is for 360.

[Immryr]

if you already have other sticks you might just want to get a mayflash 'magic-ns' adapter or something similar.

[Starfighter]

Sounds like you should pick up one of the Hori RAPs for Switch. They're recently getting sold out and harder to find cheap. They are about as low lag as you can get on Switch. If you wanted to be totally OCD about it you could pad hack a wireless controller to shave off a few ms. In that case it would just be better to play on PS4 anyway IMO.

Think I'm gonna build something with a Brook in it since the only stick I still have around is for 360.

I'll add the RAP for Switch to my list (I'm doing "homework", reading up on everything at the moment), thank you!

if you already have other sticks you might just want to get a mayflash 'magic-ns' adapter or something similar.

What does the Mayflash magic-ns add if my other sticks are USB? My girlfriend has one of those in her Switch dock to be able to play wireless with her WiiU Pro Controller and I've noticed the USB port on it, but I just figured bypassing it entirely (when going wired) would be faster. And then I've heard going through the dock at all is adding input delay. I don't know what to believe really.

Edit: Wait, the USB on the magic-ns isn't just a extension of the USB socket, it's doing it's thing that way as well? I didn't realize, I thought it was strictly a wireless adapter.

Edit 2: So I have now been testing the magic-ns with my RAP4 Kai, it is unfortunately adding quite a bit of input delay. Not an insane amount, but enough to make later stages really really frustrating. I'm thinking more and more about saving up for a Switch-RAP!

[Rastan78]

It's easy to go down the rabbit hole with this stuff and get pulled away from actually playing games isn't it?

I'm close to ordering all the stuff I need for a custom stick and I'm like Sanwa or Seimitsu buttons? Silent stick might be nice, but maybe it won't feel as good as the classic clicky microswitches. So which room will I play in most? Do I really need silent? And so on.

So yeah I need to just pick something build it and move on. Then I can forget about it and get back to games.

If I were in your shoes and not wanting to worry about added lag from an adapter, I would put a Brook universal into one of your other sticks. If you don't want to mess with that just go for the Hori (which will be a bit more expensive but not much since the Brook board is like 90 bucks plus wiring harness).

[Immryr]

if the input lag is coming from using a wired controller via the switch dock, won't the issue be the same if you use the magic-ns or a switch hori stick?

i'm not sure if the adapter itself adds input lag.

[Rastan78]

The best I can tell is it probably adds a tiny amount like 1/4 frame to use an adapter. Kinda hard to find really good data. Yeah the 1/2 frame added by going USB thru the dock is going to be more significant.

I guess it depends on usage like for somebody playing almost exclusive on Switch and spending 100s of hours the dedicated stick might pay off. To me an adapter or universal board makes more sense as far as having more options and value out of one stick.

I'm kinda curious if Hori will release another switch stick now that the stock of RAPs seems to be dwindling. Can't imagine it was a huge seller compared to sticks on systems that are a focus for fighting games.

[Rastan78]

Does it make a difference to play M2 shottriggers games on PS4 pro vs the standard PS4? Particularly with regards to screen scaling to a 4K screen. Found this post which seems to suggest Esprade outputs differently on the pro? For example actual 4K output could allow you to do pixel perfect scaling of a 240p game that fills the screen vertically.

https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.p ... &start=270

That being said, IMO Switch version looks better than the PS4 version, more crisp with exact same settings. I think probably might be because my PS4 pro is now up scaling to that 3840x2160 resolution and the result just looks less sharp (even in esprade screen settings, the scaling now defaults 0673% / 0673% on PS4 and on Switch that same setting, scaling is up to 0337% / 0337%)

[BrianC]

I don't have a pro, but the Shottriggers games do seem to support higher resolutions on the PS5 compared to the standard PS4. In the Aleste and Toaplan collections, the maximum screen size is higher on PS5 than on standard/slim PS4 and docked Switch, IIRC. Since neither are native PS5 games, the behavior should be the same on a PS4 Pro.

[pulsemod]

PS4 pro super resolution is an optional system wide option, I have no issues on mine at standard 1080p with the setting off

[dark]

I noticed the music in Mars Matrix is much harder to hear in the arcade rom versus the dreamcast version. I might be imaginging it, but it also sounds grainier and lower fi, making it harder to hear and understand the melodies all around.

I was wondering why this is - is it simply down to the DC version having the music turned up louder compared to the sfx? Or is the music actually a higher bitrate in the DC version? (IE did they have to turn down the fidelity of the samples used in the music in order to save memory for the arcade rom, whereas in the DC version they could just stream higher fidelity music files akin to CDDA since there would be tons of space on the disc).

[XoPachi]

......



Is it "Jay-mers" or "Yai-mers"? I've always pronounced his handle as the latter.

[Nahar]

......



Is it "Jay-mers" or "Yai-mers"? I've always pronounced his handle as the latter.

For me it's the second, but maybe that's because I'm spanish and don't speak english as a native language.


Also, how do you all feel about swapping shmups? I'm grinding down ZeroRanger (I got to the TLB today but got beaten in 6 credits), and although I'm really loving it, I feel like playing another game (CyberCore from the PC Engine got my eye lately). I don't know if I should be swapping games or I should just focus on ZeroRanger.

[Lander]

Swapping shmups is a double-edged sword; focused, disciplined practice is the most effective way to see continued improvement, so switching out too much can impede learning progress.

But on the flipside, introducing some variety can stop a fun pursuit from becoming a chore if you're reached a frustrating plateau, and even highlight transferable skills that you've built up.

It's a balance; too little and you might burn out, too much and you won't improve. And to some extent, also down to the individual - i.e. what kind of learner you are, capacity for repetition, etc.

In the end, you're probably fine so long as you keep a learning-focused mindset and consciously avoid falling into "I play loads of shmups but never improve" territory.

[Nahar]

Yeah, I can imagine. I've seen a lot of improvement lately on ZeroRanger just because I ONLY played that game. I feel curiosity about another games, but I'm not bored or burned out on ZR, so I think I'll keep playing it.

The thing is that, when I got Andro Dunos 2 1CC-all on hardest diff., I actually took a 3-day break from the game. Stopped playing it at all and then, bam, 1CC in one sitting. The brain is a strange creature, I guess.

[Steven]

Is there a game that predates Slap Fight that has bullet sealing?

[Steven]

Double post, but does anyone like Kyuukyoku Tiger II? I know trap15 thinks it's complete shit and I just tried it on MAME and I don't really like it that much either, but what about everyone else?

[cfx]

I haven't played it in far too many years to know my current opinion of it, but I liked the Saturn version a lot back at the time, and was surprised when I first learned everyone hated it.

But as someone who dislikes Cave outside of Deathsmiles and Ibara and non-fan of danmaku in general I'm used to being out of step with common tastes in this genre.

[TransatlanticFoe]

It's fine, but is not especially challenging and two of the three weapons require fast button mashing to increase their power to anything approaching worthwhile.

Stick with the green weapon, see how you get on. Should be an easy 1CC if nothing else.

[Starfighter]

This isn't a shmup related question per se, but the goal is to buy shmups and I don't know where else to ask this quick question: where can I buy gift cards/wallet fund codes for US PSN? I tried Amazon but they refused since I don't have a US credit card and the ones on ebay seem a bit shady (some charge a lot more, some have a lot of negative feedback etc).

[Martinov]

This isn't a shmup related question per se, but the goal is to buy shmups and I don't know where else to ask this quick question: where can I buy gift cards/wallet fund codes for US PSN? I tried Amazon but they refused since I don't have a US credit card and the ones on ebay seem a bit shady (some charge a lot more, some have a lot of negative feedback etc).

Play-asia.com would be worth a try. If you are prepared to wait just a little bit longer, it will be Lunar New Year in 3 weeks, they will likely be on sale.