Aleste is coming back?!

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Shatterhand
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Shatterhand »

Bassa-Bassa wrote:
As with any revival, can Aleste really be coming back without Compile (or Eighting, for that matter)?
One funny thing about that is that after Compile went bankrupt, Moo Niitani founded Compile Heart. Then he retired and Compile Heart is still going strong. Then he decided to found another company and name it Compile Maru.

Neither ever did one single shmup. Tsc :)

Of course, I know all the guys who used to make shmups at Compile were long gone, but I still find that curious.
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ADM
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by ADM »

Bassa-Bassa wrote:As with any revival, can Aleste really be coming back without Compile (or Eighting, for that matter)?
I thought it came back pretty well with GG 3.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by BrianC »

Shatterhand wrote:
Bassa-Bassa wrote:
As with any revival, can Aleste really be coming back without Compile (or Eighting, for that matter)?
One funny thing about that is that after Compile went bankrupt, Moo Niitani founded Compile Heart. Then he retired and Compile Heart is still going strong. Then he decided to found another company and name it Compile Maru.

Neither ever did one single shmup. Tsc :)

Of course, I know all the guys who used to make shmups at Compile were long gone, but I still find that curious.
Does Neptunia Shooter count? I found the Compile Heart/Maru thing puzzling too.

At least GG Aleste 3 was made with some bitd shmup developers and turned out extremely well.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Ms. Tea »

BrianC wrote:Does Neptunia Shooter count? I found the Compile Heart/Maru thing puzzling too.
IIRC Neptunia Shooter is entirely LukPlus and Preapp Partners, Compile Heart didn't really do anything.

Pretty sure the shmup staff that were left at Compile when they shut down all moved over to Milestone. Doesn't seem like anyone who actually wanted to make those kinds of games landed at Compile Heart or CompileO.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Shatterhand »

Ms. Tea wrote:
BrianC wrote:Does Neptunia Shooter count? I found the Compile Heart/Maru thing puzzling too.
IIRC Neptunia Shooter is entirely LukPlus and Preapp Partners, Compile Heart didn't really do anything.

Pretty sure the shmup staff that were left at Compile when they shut down all moved over to Milestone. Doesn't seem like anyone who actually wanted to make those kinds of games landed at Compile Heart or CompileO.
Jemini Hirono went to Milestone? I always saw him as the main "shmup guy" at Compile and he was the director of their last game, Zanac Neo.
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Re: GG Aleste 2 Stage 3 Glitched

Post by fakeXsound »

Herr Schatten wrote:
darklavos wrote:I encountered a graphical glitch while playing GG Aleste 2 on the Aleste collection on the switch (I assume this can happen on the original too?)
I had the very same thing happening a couple of times, although it was always stage 4 that glitched out on me. You can actually watch it in my online replay on the leaderboard, too (player: Kagesan).

I have heard reports from people who experienced similar on real hardware, so it's safe to assume it's some kind of bug in the original release. There seems to be some pointer pointing to the wrong address when loading in new graphics data at the start of the stage. Or maybe it points to the right address, but doesn't switch to the correct ROM bank. The result is that it loads garbage data in the places where the sprite and bg tiles for the stage are supposed to go.
Overall, GGA2 gives a strong impression that it may have been rushed out the door, so this fits right in.
Thanks for the info. This happened to me last night on the first form of the final boss of the Power Strike II version. Great timing. You can check out my run on the Switch version leaderboards (215 I think, username is Mook).

Edit: I think the replay is gone now - got the clear without the glitch, but I definitely noticed a few weird blips right after finishing off a few bosses.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Ms. Tea »

Shatterhand wrote:Jemini Hirono went to Milestone? I always saw him as the main "shmup guy" at Compile and he was the director of their last game, Zanac Neo.
Yeah, that's fair. I was thinking of other Zanac Neo staffers - Yuki Matsuoka, Jiro Hamaya, Ko Hayashi, Daisuke Nagata. But like you say Jemini Hirono was definitely the major figure there.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Yoshinoya »

Not sure if it was already posted, full playthrough of Senjin Aleste 【戦刃アレスタ】

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvRyPYwNAKA
- I'll buy that for a Dollar! -
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by xxx1993 »

Spoiler
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In other news, today's the day the legendary shmup heroine and warrior Ellinor Waizen is born. I wonder if M2 has anything to say about that?
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by bigbadboaz »

Action looks intense. I just wish they hadn't gone for such a "vintage" tone in the sound driver..? The look and activity level is everything I'd want from a modern 2D title but the sound is somewhere between 8- and 16-bit.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by xxx1993 »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U95zEz0cKqo

There's also a full playthrough of Senjin with the true final boss. That's right, there is one.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by heli »

That last endboss really sucks, a sun-head ?
Really cheap, i,m not buying.
I dont like the style.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by xxx1993 »

Too bad, you’re still gonna have to fight it…
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Yoshinoya »

bigbadboaz wrote:Action looks intense. I just wish they hadn't gone for such a "vintage" tone in the sound driver..? The look and activity level is everything I'd want from a modern 2D title but the sound is somewhere between 8- and 16-bit.
Maybe the M2STG home release will have a remix version option?
- I'll buy that for a Dollar! -
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by bigbadboaz »

Would be awesome, and I'm definitely in for the home release!
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by MachineAres 1CC »

Does anyone know why I've seen multiple people on social media lately playing the arcade build of Senjin Aleste on their home PC setups? Is there something I've missed here about a home release or a leak of the arcade rip? Can't find much info otherwise, but it's pretty weird.
Last edited by MachineAres 1CC on Wed Sep 01, 2021 8:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Fudoh »

yeah, it's an arcade rip that's running on Teknoparrot.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by MachineAres 1CC »

Fudoh wrote:yeah, it's an arcade rip that's running on Teknoparrot.
I do see that now, and I've got it up and running now. Excellent.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by MachineAres 1CC »

Some comments on the game itself after doing a few playthroughs:

-Visuals, patterns, and enemy layouts are pretty fun and a lot closer to something like the DoDonPachi series, but still has a little bit of the Aleste feel, especially with the power-ups.

-The "blow" system is a nice last-resort move that just temporarily changes the trajectory of bullets around the character so they re-approach you in a different way, but doesn't cancel them, so there's a nice balance and it's not over-powered.

-The power-up system is a little confusing, as the tutorial doesn't explain it terribly well.

-There's the "leader" system where you choose a designated "leader" for your team, and there's an overall perk that affects all 4 team members that's different for each character if you pick them as the leader. It's a pretty cool idea but feels like a little more could've been done with it.

-The music isn't too great. While it has it's moments, most of the tracks also have a section that's ultra repetitive and grating, and often escalating in pitch and they can be distracting when trying to dodge patterns and stuff, so this could've been a lot better.

-The system of having 4 characters that are actively switched between is not great either. The nice part about it is it can make it feel a bit more like many old Compile games where you can build up a lot of lives to get through the game, but it's also very annoying that when the pickups to change characters appears, you almost have to pick them up, as they're huge and stay on the screen a looong time and will get in your way of dodging if you don't pick it up. Almost forcing you to change characters whenever the devs felt like throwing the item at you is a weird choice.

-The way that bomb items are often strategically placed during sections where the patterns get pretty complex is a nice mechanic that gives a satisfying feeling when you pick one up. The fact that you can't save bombs for later and that they explode upon pickup is also a pretty cool mechanic that makes you have to force your way over to it, often through dense patterns.

-It's kinda weird that the game has the ShotTriggers branding, which has always previously been for console releases only. Also, with a slight editing of a config file in the arcade version, a whole main menu appears that looks pretty close to what the console menu for most shmups looks like, with several different modes and options, so it makes it feel like a console or real home PC release might not be too far off if it's already kinda been coded for it in some ways.

Overall the game is pretty fun, but would be a hard sell for $60 if they try to release it that way on its own. There's just not that much content here, even though the different endings are pretty nice. Would be much better to include this on a new Aleste collection that has the MegaDrive/PCE/older OS games from the series that weren't in the first collection instead, kinda like they did with GG Aleste 3.

Would like to hear other people's thoughts on the game now that it's pretty readily available to play. What do you guys think?
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by KAI »

-The music isn't too great
WTF

Hoping to see alestegaluda ported soon, this game is awesome.

MachineAres 1CC wrote:-There's the "leader" system where you choose a designated "leader" for your team, and there's an overall perk that affects all 4 team members that's different for each character if you pick them as the leader. It's a pretty cool idea but feels like a little more could've been done with it.
Love this mechanic. Leader skills are the following btw:

Type A: More energy when acquiring items. Gauge increase UP.

Type B: Appearance of alternate item carriers is shorter.

Type C: The offensive power of the entire team is UP.

Type D: Faster return to combat for out of combat members.


So just pick tanya and speedkill everything Image
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by minion »

MachineAres 1CC wrote: Would like to hear other people's thoughts on the game now that it's pretty readily available to play. What do you guys think?
Yeah, my take differed from yours in some places.
-The music isn't too great. While it has it's moments, most of the tracks also have a section that's ultra repetitive and grating, and often escalating in pitch and they can be distracting when trying to dodge patterns and stuff, so this could've been a lot better.
Interesting. Couldn't really hear it well where I was playing, so interested to give it another listen. Maybe home ports will get another soundtrack like some other M2 games? I only really noticed the music in the 2nd to last stage, it seemed pretty catchy to me.
-Visuals, patterns, and enemy layouts are pretty fun and a lot closer to something like the DoDonPachi series, but still has a little bit of the Aleste feel, especially with the power-ups.
Agree that the patterns are pretty Cave-ish. I did like the directional scrolling bits; seems like maybe M2 wants to make that a characteristic of the series (heavily used in GGA3 as well).
-The "blow" system is a nice last-resort move that just temporarily changes the trajectory of bullets around the character so they re-approach you in a different way, but doesn't cancel them, so there's a nice balance and it's not over-powered.
Yeah, this was probably my favorite of the 'new' systems. IME, 'Blow' knocks the nearby bullets out in a circular pattern, and immediately re-orients all their trajectories to face exactly where your ship is. I like how you can't use it as a get-out-of-jail-free card, you have to have a plan to get away even after using it. Very nice how this synergizes with the bullet-hell shot patterns and the dominate play pattern of tap-dodging - blow forces you to take a different approach since all those bullets are now headed straight for you.
-The power-up system is a little confusing, as the tutorial doesn't explain it terribly well.
Yeah, I agree. Especially with the p-chips charging it, and different metal sizes/values, and the marquee text saying there's some kind of trade-off between trigger the power-up bar drain and damage output. I'm not clear on how it all works. But I guess a lot of Cave games have similarly 'deep' systems that take a while to come to grips with. I'm sure it will be pretty good once familiar with it given the developer pedigree, at least.
-There's the "leader" system where you choose a designated "leader" for your team, and there's an overall perk that affects all 4 team members that's different for each character if you pick them as the leader. It's a pretty cool idea but feels like a little more could've been done with it.
I think there are a couple of 'systems' where the presentation they chose doesn't do a good job of selling the mechanic, and this is one of them. From a design perspective, it seems like they wanted some kind of up-front selectable mechanic and for the 'in-fiction' dressing, they made it choosing a leader character. Weird choice IMO since they are going with completely separate ships as the in-stage weapon switching, so picking one pilot as leader having some blanket effect, even when you're using different ships... feels like a stretch? Good mechanic, confusing in-fiction dressing. I think inexperienced players might think the leader effects only work when you're using that ship, or that they change when changing ships. I think they could have use a different 'in-game' dressing that would have been less confusing, or just not tied it to the game setting at all, just have it be another of the options you choose at the beginning like 'dramatic mode' and 'auto/manual', now they add a 'bonus effect' selection that has no in-fiction explanation.
-The system of having 4 characters that are actively switched between is not great either. The nice part about it is it can make it feel a bit more like many old Compile games where you can build up a lot of lives to get through the game, but it's also very annoying that when the pickups to change characters appears, you almost have to pick them up, as they're huge and stay on the screen a looong time and will get in your way of dodging if you don't pick it up. Almost forcing you to change characters whenever the devs felt like throwing the item at you is a weird choice.
I think this is another of those systems where the way they dressed it up isn't that elegant. It retains some of Aleste's 'rotating alphabet' powerup style, but feels like they wanted to 'beef up' powerups from a simple weapon change into entirely different loadouts with different styles of subweapons, and different speedup levels bundled in all together. In that way, I actually think that having them be different ships makes sense. It's just hard to wrap my brain around all the ramifications though, since it's a combination of what in most other games are two or more completely separate systems (powerups, sub powerups & speedups, invuln on pickup as a strategic element, lives/extends). This is where it feels like maybe the 'in-fiction' dressing of 4 ships instead of the usual 'one ship with lives and weapons' setup feels less elegant to me. Weirdly I felt like it all worked fine in practice once I got a feel for it, and it seemed to have some depth. Just a confusing way to present it, I think.

Having spent a lot of time with the Aleste collection recently, I feel that the 'almost forcing you to change' mechanic is in previous iteration's pickup items too - both in how the pickup items can be hard to dodge, and how they sometimes expect you to grab them just for the half second of invulnerability, and plan the enemy/bullet density to coincide with when the items are put on screen. So, I think an argument could be made that if they want to make it a large part of the game's identity, it's in the series DNA.
-The way that bomb items are often strategically placed during sections where the patterns get pretty complex is a nice mechanic that gives a satisfying feeling when you pick one up. The fact that you can't save bombs for later and that they explode upon pickup is also a pretty cool mechanic that makes you have to force your way over to it, often through dense patterns.
I need more time with this - it just seemed like they re-purposed bombs from the usual 'oh sh!t' button into a scoring mechanic, but I was playing on novice so maybe bombs have more utility for saving your ass on higher difficulties. In novice, they seemed to pretty much just exist for turning everything into metals once you have hit the powerup button - I hardly ever found myself without another way to get out of tough patterns, since the game has 3 other mechanics that all can serve this function (blow, powerup's temp shield, and ship change's temp shield).
-It's kinda weird that the game has the ShotTriggers branding, which has always previously been for console releases only. Also, with a slight editing of a config file in the arcade version, a whole main menu appears that looks pretty close to what the console menu for most shmups looks like, with several different modes and options, so it makes it feel like a console or real home PC release might not be too far off if it's already kinda been coded for it in some ways.
Yeah, there has to be a home release at some point! Hopefully this game is a good, low-risk way for M2 to see what kind of market they can command at arcades in Japan and I'm sure there are a number of other benefits/considerations, but there's no way IMO that it's not leading up to a big M2STG home release.
Overall the game is pretty fun, but would be a hard sell for $60 if they try to release it that way on its own. There's just not that much content here, even though the different endings are pretty nice. Would be much better to include this on a new Aleste collection that has the MegaDrive/PCE/older OS games from the series that weren't in the first collection instead, kinda like they did with GG Aleste 3.
I'm guessing they'll release it on it's own but at a lower price point of like 4800y or the like? We'll see, I guess. :D

Overall had a really fun time with it, and it seemed to have some depth. Looking forward to getting more time with it.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by minion »

-The music isn't too great. While it has it's moments, most of the tracks also have a section that's ultra repetitive and grating, and often escalating in pitch and they can be distracting when trying to dodge patterns and stuff, so this could've been a lot better.
Interesting. Couldn't really hear it well where I was playing, so interested to give it another listen. Maybe home ports will get another soundtrack like some other M2 games? I only really noticed the music in the 2nd to last stage, it seemed pretty catchy to me.
Actually used the headphones today while playing. I think most the compositions are pretty catchy, but I agree that some of the instrumentation is really treble-heavy and grating. Here's hoping they do a remix or at least offer the esp-rade style EQ so we can town down the top end and mellow out the mix a little.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by minion »

After my third session, I had the stage 3 music stuck in my head all day. Fun tune.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Redfox »

I noticed this yesterday but nobody mentioned it here yet. MUSHA is coming to switch courtesy of the switch online expansion genesis games. They showed it and even showed 2 whole seconds of gameplay in the direct. :P
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by xxx1993 »

https://youtu.be/4cAHDOUXC34

Finally! New trailer!
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Despatche »

GG Aleste 3 is really good.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by xxx1993 »

Yes, it is.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by pablumatic »

I guess I'm gonna grab the Aleste collection digitally from the JP Switch eshop.

Already have PS4 physical but gave M2 a year to announce a western release before I got anything digital for my Switch.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by xxx1993 »

Got it physically for Christmas.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by professor ganson »

Ordered from Play-Asia, motivated by the urge to play GG Aleste 3. Hopefully the other titles will be of interest as well.
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