shmups.system11.org

I'm sure someone understands it better than I do, but even if it looks like it's all over you, you seem to be safe unless you move.

Okay, having played this more and experimented with it, it's basically an attack where the lasers themselves telegraph the attack. You have to not be touching a laser when the beams are shut off, but you can move through them safely until then.

What are the gameplay differences between the Special versions of Darius and Darius Gaiden vs the original ones?

The extra Version of Darius rebalances the difficulty once more compared with the "New Version", while the first half of the game is easier, the second half will be harder as the game will assume you'll bring the Silver Hawk on a higher power level.

Darius Gaiden Extra Version is an arrangement of the original game, the stages are changed (Example: Zone A is a Crusty Hammer stage) and starting the game as Tiat will send you throug a special mode where you'll be playing all the stages.


I have a shmup related question: ¿What does the off-voices of the Stage Result screens of Ginga Force say (Both stage clear in all ranks and Mission Failed)?, I ask this since the PS4 and PC ports didn't added subtitles for those or the intro/ending lyrics.

So...I have an Xbox One S as my most current system. My friend is dangling a PS4 Pro in front of me for $200 (also I can pay him in $50 installments). Sure it would be great to play the handfuls of PS4 exclusives, but all I really want to use it for is for the M2ST games like ESP.Rade and Sorcer Striker. I already have Battle Garegga and Dangun Feveron on the Xbox One. So it feels like I'm spending too much for too little, and for $300 more i can get a PS5.

I'm just a bit torn. Do I get a PS4 used and then get a Xbox One Series X? Do I miss out once again on the the greater amount of exclusives for PS? Also I'm partial to the Forza series for racing. UGH

What are your thoughts? Normally I'd be patient but I'm in a particularly rare situation where my money situation is temporarily favorable.

PS5 users, are all the M2ST games available to buy on the PSN store? Is my Japanese PSN account for PS3 the same account I use for PS5? Sorry for stupid questions.

If you care mostly about shmups and/or retro arcade gaming then I'd say its tough to predict at the beginning of a generation which console will be good. For example I never would've predicted that the 360 would become such a beast for shmups over the PS3.

Companies like M2 and Hanster might change focus to next gen eventually, but when and to what degree remains to be seen. PS5 has back compat going for it, but we also dont know how well every release will work going forward.

Switch and PS4 are on fire right now for retro releases so it's hard to imagine M2 leaving those behind any time soon. Especially if a Switch "pro" model comes out I could see that being the destination for shmups for some time in the future. I see it as a bird in hand vs two in the bush kind of thing. Go with the console that has what you want now. Upgrade to PS5 later if it does get good games down the road.

I would say take up that good deal on PS4 and if you've got money to burn pick up a Switch too. You've got M2 Sega Ages and other exclusives on there as well. Also keep an open mind to other good shmups like the ones on Hamster Arcade Archives and the upcoming Capcom Arcade Stadium.

One fairly sure bet is Switch getting more and more Japan-centric games, including shmups. Nintendo is doing ridiculous numbers over there right now.

I hear PS5 is off to a really bad start in Japan. Sony seems to be focusing more and more on the Western market. If Nintendo does release a more powerful version of the Switch equivalent to PS4 or better they could put the Japanese console market on total lockdown. Actually they already have that market on lockdown.

I'm sure the PS5 will catch on over there at some point. Maybe once there are some big DQ and FF titles. Or a new Monster Hunter. But you can see that Capcom's big new Monster Hunter game that will probably be like a license to print money in Japan is going to be Switch exclusive.

I agree that Switch will have a long life for shmups. Even as the PS4 may start to dwindle. Notice how Crimzon Clover and the upcoming Raiden IV Mikado Remix didn't bother with a PS4 release.

Honestly if you already have an Xbox the Switch makes way more sense as a second console because it's much more differentiated from the X than the PS4 is. Though it was a bit late to the ShotTriggers party, so it doesn't have Sorcer Striker.

But if pricewise that doesn't make sense, there are a lot of great reasons to own a PS4 beyond STGs. That God of War game really is as good as everyone says it is, and I never cared about that series at all. Bloodborne kicks ass and can be had cheaply. JRPGs aplenty if you're into that. Fighting games Xbox doesn't have - like Street Fighter V - and larger online communities even for the ones the Xb does have. And for multiplats that Pro will be more powerful than your S.



I really, really hope they do, and that the horsepower is used for something other than 4k. If there's an achilles heel to the Switch, it's a little more latency in titles that aren't by M2. I'm hoping a hardware revision can take care of that and turn the Switch into the STG god console.

I am once again asking...what is this kind of music called?
https://youtu.be/ALL-FeMlf0w

Not so much the instrumentation. I feel like the melody is derivative of a type of genre. I get that vibe from a few tracks in this game. I love the soundtrack for this one.

1) What are the specific game play differences between the Japan and World versions of Konami's Thunder Cross?

2) Are there any specific game play differences between the Japan and World versions of Konami's Thunder Cross 2?

Off the top of my head, Thunder Cross's World version deletes the game's distinctive Option spacing mechanic. Now they just hover in place. It also trades the diverse special weapons (flamethrower, laser, grenades) for a generic limited-use bomb, which is called "LIL BABY" in what I hope was a bizarrely nuke-a-riffic nod to the ship's name, "Blue Thunder 45." Thunder Cross USA: Fat Man and Lil Baby.

It also swaps the order of stages 1 (outskirts) and 2 (city).

World, Japan (Old) and Japan (New) are included in the Arcade Archives release. AFAIK Japan New made the loops tougher after players cleaned Old's clock with ease.

EDIT: all this IIRC was bugging me, so I fired up ACA Thunder Cross. It has four versions: Japan (Old), Japan (New), USA, and Europe. It's USA that makes the changes described above. Europe retains the Japanese system and first stage, but I'm not sure if anything else was altered.

Interesting, because in the current version of Fightcade, there is only one Japan edition of Thunder Cross 1.

Yeah, Hamster sometimes dig up some pretty niche stuff. ACA Gradius III has Old and New Japan versions too, plus Asia. ACA Zero Team was the first home release (official or unofficial) of the game's Old and New variants. There was also the odd dev board version of Omega Fighter included with the original and Special versions - IIRC, it's basically Special with debug commands enabled, but it's still neat they included it.

Questions about this period and general style of music can be tough to pin down with a very precise answer. The reason for this is that it's when raves, acid house & techno were all happening at clubs & warehouses in the UK & elsewhere. There was generally a 'chill out' room at the side for people who'd taken a little too much of something to lounge in, listening to ambient tracks. This quite naturally led to a dance/ambient fusion, which then surfaced in mainstream music under the general rubric of electronic pop.

Electronic, a band which was a collaboration between Bernard Sumner of New Order and Johnny Marr of The Smiths (with the Pet Shop Boys showing up on some songs) had an album track that somewhat mirrors the style in the Super R-Type link above, as an example of this:

https://youtu.be/tynrmbUN3nU

While you mention you're not looking toward the instrumentation, I think it is important here. Because in terms of style, it's not so much a structural label as it is one linked to particular sounds. Somebody would come up with a bass, sequence style or lead using a certain synth in a song, which took off. Then everyone went out & bought that synth & did the same thing with it (or just used it in a studio that had it), so certain elements characterized by the architecture & limitations of that instrument were what transitioned.

Like, the Korg M1 was the first synth that had a chord memory which let anyone trigger piano chords by pressing a single key, even if they had no idea how to play. If I then pointed you in the direction of two of its built-in piano and organ sounds (and one synth lead), you'd suddenly understand how certain very specific musical elements showed up in 82 billion songs across various dance, electronic or pop subgenres from 89-91. Not to mention the Streets of Rage soundtracks:

https://youtu.be/iHKB1abCI_U

https://youtu.be/PfvGMLkxR1o


In the Super R-Type track you linked, I'm pretty sure it's trying to imitate a Yamaha DX7 pluck bass with a Roland D-50 type pad and a Roland TR-909 percussion style. Those three instruments were absolutely everywhere at the time, which is why it sounds so familiar. The 909 was the drum machine that goes UNCE UNCE UNCE (and sometimes TAKKA TAKKA TAK) in every 90s dance track and its sequencer timing & swing characterizes all of this stuff. The DX7's bass was what Detroit Techno was built off.

The Super R-Type soundtrack goes all over the map though, from stuff that I'd characterize as funk jazz fusion, mid 80s hip hop and electro riffs to whatever you'd call what the Art of Noise was doing.

^^^ killer post

Do you know how I can full power up the Bomb and Laser in Sagaia Version 1 in Darius Cozmic Collection Arcade?
I've tried to finish it on Easy and simply there's not enough power ups to fill the bars. ¿Are those two trophies "Impossible on purpose"?

Thanks for the push to get the Pro, I'm gonna do it. For $200 I figure it will hold its resale value for quite a while.

I'll ask again though, will my Japanese PS3 PSN account be the same one I use on PS4? I assume it is but I dont know. Making a new one seems daunting.

I don't know for sure, but I had an NA account and it was good across generations. From PS3 to PS4 and even on PSP. So I would think a Japan account should work the same way.

Great post Sengoku Strider. It's more than I can wrap my mind around lol.

That R Type track is great. It's funny that this came up bc I've been favoring this kind of 80s synth type track in shmups lately. Been going so far as to listen to these kind of tracks on the headphones over the past few months which is something I haven't done in a really long time with game music.

A couple of stand out tracks to me came from Image Fight which I think is a really underrated OST. I actually like the sort of harsh and metallic sound of the whole cacophony of the the music combined with the sounds effects in this game. Some might find it too grating though.

Image Fight - "Final Mission" https://youtu.be/2g8-UPCT_aI

Image Fight - "Skill" https://youtu.be/QlgTnG8n780

And from Darius II, this track is about as 80s as it gets IMO. This is getting more into like Kraftwerk territory or something along those lines.

Darius II - "Planet Blue" https://youtu.be/jEjWf5cTtTY

What do you guys think of these tracks?

Image Fight's OST is brilliant, in the literal sense - shiny, metallic, HEAVY! Got a massive pair of chromium-plated balls. After his debut Mr. Heli, composer Masahiko Ishida also did X-Multiply, R-Type II and Saigo no Nindou's OSTs, which tended progressively darker. Image Fight has more of a bravado to it, pretty fitting with the top-gunning "ace flight school, then blast off and stomp those aliens" premise. Even the grimmer/weirder tracks have a cocky aspect to them. Factory BGM clangs exuberantly, and the Alt boss theme exudes a goading "blow up this big metal motherfucker" intensity.

"Final Mission" reminds me massively of New Order's iconic Blue Monday, which was directly covered by Super Aleste's bonus stage along with The Perfect Kiss. Incidentally, Musha used the classic "Ahhh" / "Freshhh" samples as its boss death screams... and there's Garegga nicking off Detroit Techno. The intersection between classic VGM and its contemporary electronic music is a good way to find lots of great music.

Yeah Image Fight's music has an edge, but there are still those triumphant good guy on a mission melodies riding on top. At times they remind me of Raiden II/DX which I also happen to love.

I should say as to Raiden DX it's gotta be the original PCB tunes. And it's more about how the music serves the game and gels together with it than how it stands on its own.

That metallic sound is characteristic of FM synthesis. FM is what the Mega Drive/Genesis used to generate sound. More importantly, it's what Japanese PCs of the 1980s like the Sharp X series or NEC PC 88/98 used. Because they were the most powerful tools available to Japanese programmers at the time, the X68000 and the like became the devkits for arcade development almost by default. As a consequence, you'll hear pretty much every Japanese arcade game from the second half of the 1980s using FM synthesis because of this, from Outrun to Final Fight to yes, Image Fight (and anything else on Irem's M72 board).

FM, or frequency modulation synthesis, only uses sine waves. Because the sine is a pure waveshape with no irregularities or angles, it's referred to as the fundamental wave. With sufficient changes to its frequency, it can theoretically create any other sound.

In FM, you change - or 'modulate' - the frequency of a sine using another sine. Say a sound wave is at a certain medium pitch, you can move that pitch using the shape of another sine (not its sound) as a guide, so the pitch goes up and down, following the curve of the sine being used as a modulator. This is basically mimicking in a simple sense what happens in a guitar string vibrating or a violin's vibrato.

In practice, it looks like this:



1. You take the top sine.

2. Apply it as a guide to the middle wave, our "carrier." This is the one people can actually hear.

3. The resulting sound is the new waveform at the bottom. See how in the bottom wave the wiggles get further apart at the same spots the first wave at the top dips low? That means it's now oscillating more slowly in those parts, producing a lower pitch, thanks to the modulation.

The most basic sound you'll get using two sines is a bell tone. That's why the Genesis did those so well. Add in a little more modulation to that bell, and you can get a metallic clang. Add in some more modulation to make it oscillate faster, and you can turn that clang into a buzz. With a bit of tweaking, you can make that buzz sound like an electric guitar. Those basic building blocks form the basis of a huge amount of Genesis music. The Genesis only had 4 sines, or 'operators' per voice, so there were limits in how far it could go. But professional synths have used 7 or 8, in software versions theoretically the only limit is processing power.

This wonderful madman built a whole physical synthesizer around a Mega Drive to control each parameter using individual knobs, if you want to see how programming it plays out in practice:

https://youtu.be/V0kq0yCTpNE

It's the feedback loop in YM chips that creates the harsher FM tones. Pure FM of two or more waves is always quite consistent in harmonics but the feedback loop makes it generate more unpredictable outcome - if the feedback is high enough the fm becomes almost noise.¨
Also there can be more waves than just sine - the classic DX line is 6 sines but the YM chips have rectified sine, half sine and pseudo saw using the first quarter of a sine. Some later chips also include pure square wave.

I think it also comes down to the resolution on the waveforms. An 8-bit sample rate can sound 'artifacty,' it's essentially what bit crushers try to achieve. Stuff like the YM2612 also has a not insignificant noise floor. That being said, I think these are often factors in its favour in terms of character.



I actually didn't know they could do that, though I'd often wondered given a lot of more traditional PCM-y sounds come out of it.

The feedback algorithm generates noise because fed-back frequencies eventually become so high that they hit the nyquist limit of the sampling rate of 49khz provided by the OPL chip.
There is noticeable digital aliasing in the OPL but it is caused by the waveforms that are stored in 1024-entry wavetable that has no interpolation.

OPL chips actually operate with half-precision floating point signal - not discrete PCM. They require specific yamaha DAC that can convert half floats to an analog signal.
The output quality of the sampled signal is roughly equal to 16-bit pcm.