Cotton Reboot, COTTON ROCK N' ROLL 2 ANNOUNCED!

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16
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Total votes: 101

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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by Jonpachi »

Special World wrote:Well thats annoying. Is there any way to delete patches on switch?
You can go into save data and delete the game off your console, which will remove the patch. However, I just tried doing this, and it turns out the patch is mandatory. Once I put the game card back in, it forced me to redownload the patch. Seems to be no way around it. Maaybe if you start the game with wifi turned off, it will boot without prompting you to download it, but I'm not terribly interested in reading the storyline so I'm not gonna bother.
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by EmperorIng »

Damn, I thought there was a way around it.
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by MachineAres 1CC »

My JP collector's edition has arrived, and it's a really awesome set. Includes an original arcade pop and replicas of the arcade instruction cards, plus a guide book, soundtrack CD, and stickers. I just put some other random stuff from the series I have in the picture
Image

Also came with a new tea cup to add to the collection, yippee
Image

Also can confirm the PS4 version patch also removes the English option for the story sequences, but the menus and options are all still in English even after the patch. I'm guessing it may be added back in at some point, but it's also easy enough to just not update the game, though the online leaderboards won't work, so it's a tradeoff, I guess.
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by EmperorIng »

Damn, that set's looking pretty good there Ares. A+ on the teacup collection. Look forward to hearing any more impressions you have. :mrgreen:
I'm guessing it may be added back in at some point
This is my intuition as well; we'll see if it bares out.
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by riccyjay »

I'm really enjoying this - especially the arrange mode - but there are a couple of surprising oversights for a release at this price and of such high overall quality:

- No save states, no level select and not even a quick restart
- Scores get uploaded even if you use continues

That English patch thing is weird too. I also suspect it may have been at the behest of the limited release company.

By the way, anyone know how you unlock the Trouble Witches character that's supposedly in the game?
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by Mortificator »

EmperorIng wrote:Apparently the translation is pretty rough and you can bet your bottom dollar SLG did not do anything to fix it up
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by Jonpachi »

I'm definitely down with the evils.
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by Marler »

It seems there is a way to still play in English after the patch.

This works on my Japanese fat PS4, if you go to the main menu and choose default settings English appears in the text option. Before it was all Japanese, Korean etc. After the reset to default, English (And only English!( is the option.

You have to do this each time you boot the game as well, it'll revert back to Japanese if you play something else.
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by MachineAres 1CC »

EmperorIng wrote:Damn, that set's looking pretty good there Ares. A+ on the teacup collection. Look forward to hearing any more impressions you have. :mrgreen:
Thanks!

Now that I've played a lot more, I can say there's a lot to like about Reboot (Arrange mode) but there's a few gripes as well. The new art is absoutely gorgeous, but it causes a lot of flashing, bright colors, and extra visual effects going on, which can often obscure bullets and other things you need to see. Also in Arrange mode, the crystals float in place instead of dropping to the ground, which makes for a HUGE pain in the ass, since they block your shots after turning black (from a few seconds of shooting them). It makes you generally have to constantly be taking trips to the right side of the screen to pick up crystals or trying to shoot around them. You can't just stop shooting for a few seconds and let them drop to the ground anymore, you have to actually go collect them or wait for them to slowly drift to you.

The new "crystal fever" mechanic is a weird bag that adds some more cool and ultra-busy visual effects and new weapon/scoring elements. It activates a limited-time fever mode that activates a cumulative score multiplier that continually goes up the more kills you get. This level gets knocked down one level every time you die and is charged up by collecting crystals. It also cancels bullets on screen and turns them into crystals when the enemy who shot them is killed, which can also get overwhelming, but I think mastering this ability will lead to eventual mastery of Arrange mode as a whole, but I'm not quite there yet. This mechanic is oddly not even explained at all in the in-game manual or the little manual sheet that comes with the game. The guidebook that came with the collector's edition did have a decent explanation of it, which was the only way I ended up fully understanding what it actually does.

However, the new arrange mode is also far easier than any other version of the original game, so the visual business and other downsides are balanced out to some degree, so it does have a level of balance to it overall. Magic is far more abundant and has many more uses and variations.

Using Silk instead of Cotton also changes things quite a bit, since she has a powerful spread shot instead of Cotton's more focused and straight shots and a lot faster movement speed. Also she's a lot smaller visually and sometimes it's hard to keep track of where you are, though since her and Cotton also have a very visible hitbox in arrange mode, it can be helpful in those situations.

Like other people already said, the controls are wonderfully responsive on PS4, feels like a perfect scenario on that front, very M2 level for sure. Can't speak for the Switch, but I expect it to be around 2 frames higher than PS4, which is usual for the platform.
riccyjay wrote:By the way, anyone know how you unlock the Trouble Witches character that's supposedly in the game?
Unfortunately, it seems Pril is not in the game yet. All the talk about her being there was either just scrapped or it'll be added later with DLC or an update. If you look through the leaderboards, there are no scores with her as the character yet. Even if there was some kind of crazy unlock requirement, Japanese players would have found it by now.
Last edited by MachineAres 1CC on Mon Mar 08, 2021 6:06 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by SuperDeadite »

TW girl was included in the actual x68000 version beep sold almost a year ago. She's a bit lame though as story scenes are disabled when playing her, also she has no in game voice samples either, just standard sound effects only.
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by BrianC »

MachineAres 1CC wrote:My JP collector's edition has arrived, and it's a really awesome set. Includes an original arcade pop and replicas of the arcade instruction cards, plus a guide book, soundtrack CD, and stickers. I just put some other random stuff from the series I have in the picture
Image

Also came with a new tea cup to add to the collection, yippee
Image

Also can confirm the PS4 version patch also removes the English option for the story sequences, but the menus and options are all still in English even after the patch. I'm guessing it may be added back in at some point, but it's also easy enough to just not update the game, though the online leaderboards won't work, so it's a tradeoff, I guess.
Is that an actual SFC port of the original cotton or Cotton 100% with a custom label? Very impressive collection. I only have Cotton 2 on Saturn and the AC version on the Astro City mini. I'm still waiting for the PS4 version, which will hopefully arrive tomorrow.
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by MachineAres 1CC »

BrianC wrote:Is that an actual SFC port of the original cotton or Cotton 100% with a custom label? Very impressive collection. I only have Cotton 2 on Saturn and the AC version on the Astro City mini. I'm still waiting for the PS4 version, which will hopefully arrive tomorrow.
It's not an actual SFC port. It's a cart I bought from Korea long ago that claimed to be a "Korea version" but it's just Cotton 100% with a different label. Seems it's some kind of bootleg or something since the game never came out in Korea as far as I can tell, and the text is in Japanese, but the label looks a lot nicer than the real Cotton 100% label, which I also have :D
Marler wrote:It seems there is a way to still play in English after the patch.
This is some great info, thanks for sharing.
SuperDeadite wrote:TW girl was included in the actual x68000 version beep sold almost a year ago. She's a bit lame though as story scenes are disabled when playing her, also she has no in game voice samples either, just standard sound effects only.
That's pretty strange, since she is just randomly missing from the console versions. Either that, or uploading scores with her is just disabled for some reason, which would also be weird. I noticed in the x68000 version from last year, the option to select Pril was just there in the options menu, but on Reboot, that option is missing.
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by SuperDeadite »

As far as I know, there is no PC version. Last year's release was only for real X68000 machines. It's basically the same as the original, but with the new girl and a new super easy (beep) difficulty setting. The screens you have seen are from real X68000s or emulation.
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by BulletMagnet »

MachineAres 1CC wrote:Image
I seriously can't compute those gams on a stumpy little moppet like Cotton. It feels mildly heretical. :P
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by Jonpachi »

Two questions:

How do you play as Silk?

Can you manually tell your fairies to attack like in the arcade game? In the original game, you would hold shot to do magic, and hold bomb to send the fairies out. I can't figure out how to do it in the arrange mode.
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by MachineAres 1CC »

SuperDeadite wrote:As far as I know, there is no PC version. Last year's release was only for real X68000 machines. It's basically the same as the original, but with the new girl and a new super easy (beep) difficulty setting. The screens you have seen are from real X68000s or emulation.
Yes, that's what I meant. I just still consider the X68000 a PC, because it is just an old PC with specific specs.
BulletMagnet wrote: I seriously can't compute those gams on a stumpy little moppet like Cotton. It feels mildly heretical. :P
Kinda same, but I can't complain, either way :D The series has had some pretty awesome doujin art over the years that has her more grown up, and it's interesting to see how they adapt the costume design.
Jonpachi wrote:How do you play as Silk?
You have to finish all of arrange mode once, even if you credit feed, you just need to finish it. Then it's in the options menu after unlocked.
Can you manually tell your fairies to attack like in the arcade game? In the original game, you would hold shot to do magic, and hold bomb to send the fairies out. I can't figure out how to do it in the arrange mode.
This does work the same as the old one, by holding the bomb/magic button, and it'll make a charge-up sound. After holding for 2-3 seconds, just let go. The effect is different depending which magic type you use it in combination with, so it's a little hard to notice you did it sometimes. To get the one closest to the fairy attack in the original game, you use it with the fire dragon magic, and the fairy will catch fire and start rushing around the screen. There's a trophy in the PS4 version for killing a boss with it.
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by ATTRACTS »

Loving this Reboot but man, the constant white flashes every time your attack hits anything make it really difficult to discern wtf is happening at the other end of the screen. If they ever manage any patch/updates it would be cool to see this turned down a bit. Otherwise, really great little game. Amazed at how well it runs on the Switch.
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Re: Cotton Remake/Reboot/Port Announced [PS4/Switch/PC...X68

Post by zuntaito »

EmperorIng wrote:I agree it's ridiculous to release a floppy-game in 2019, but as long as SuperDeadite is happy with it! :lol: Makes me wonder that if this version is already out, how much more time is needed for the modern release?

No news about the re-release, though a headline just came out to announce guest composers for the game's arrange mode, including Shinji Hosoe, Hisayoshi Ogura, Wasi303 and Hiroyuki Kawada.
I wonder if OGR will compose something new or he'll use one of his older rearrangements
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by Special World »

I’m going to amend my previous complaint post about the scoring system and say I have no way to judge it because I have no understanding of literally anything that occurs in this game. There is so much going on and so much different stuff to collect that it all becomes opaque... it could be a Cave style scoring masterpiece or a visual flash in the pan. All I can say is that people who complain about Garegga bullets—watch out.

Having fun with it though. I don’t get it at all, but it’s very polished and well put together. Also the end boss looks like she came straight out of Bondage Fairies, so that’s a +1.
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by BrianC »

My game arrived (PS4 version) and I'm enjoying it so far. Not thrilled with DHL this time around, though. Item was delayed with no status updates after two days and contacting customer service was no help (I got a text message saying the item was in backlog, despite trying saying that it cleared the customs processing and that the trace was discontinued). It didn't move until I contacted Amazon Japan (though it may have moved anyway). When the package arrived, it looked like the package was opened and repackaged, some plastic was broken, and the disc was outside of the holder (still intact with no scratches, though). I ended up putting it in a new case and the game still works great.

I like how the hardest mode in the options settings for the X68000 port is named "you do?". There's also a "Beep ed." difficulty that seems to have remixed patterns. So far, I like the game better than the AC one on the Astro City Mini, though I like the freakiness of some of the original arcade enemies/bosses. Not sure what to make of the new arrange version just yet. It feels a bit too busy at times.
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by jefftherobot »

I feel stupid but i can't figure out how to trigger the stronger enemies
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by BIL »

This is a ridiculously good package. :o If Beep made X68000 ports a regular thing, I'd be buying them all day 1. (Phalanx, Last Battalion, Granada and Dracula, pls :mrgreen:). Only put a few minutes on the reboot but as others have said, it handles pinpoint-sharp.
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by SuperDeadite »

Beep Ed difficulty = super easy mode.
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by EmperorIng »

This may not yet 'affect' anyone in this topic, ho ho, but a bug was discovered that prevents arrange mode scores from being uploaded if they are over 2 billion points. This is the same across PS4 and Switch.

Needless to say, this is a big deal! I had wondered why all the scores on the top of the switch leaderboards were crowding around 1.9xx billion, and I thought to myself "I wonder who will crack 2+ first?" I can only wonder why the hell there is such a bug; trap suggested it might be a misguided anti-cheat measure but I am skeptical. Either way it's a big oversight; if someone is decent at contacting Studio Siesta's twitter (@studiosiesta) or BEEP maybe they can get on to fixing this.
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by BIL »

I think it's been patched? This is the note I saw on my PS4 this morning: "Version 1.03: fixed a bug where you cannot register more than 1,999,999,999 points in the score ranking"

EDIT: screencap
Spoiler
Image
Last edited by BIL on Tue Mar 30, 2021 5:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by EmperorIng »

Wow, great! I'll check my switch version tonight. I haven't played for a few days while obsessively working on my castle shikigami scores. That's good news! Time to really aim for the top dudes and dude-ettes. 8)
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by EmperorIng »

Switch Cotton is still at 1.01. Allegedly, BEEP/Studio Siesta is promising a switch update in the "near future," whatever that means. I seem to have some anecdotal memory of switch updates being harder to push out, but that might be projection.

This is what the scoreboard looks like right now; I managed to capture this weird graphical garbage flooding the screen before it flickered off:
Image

It's now missing a bunch of scores close to 2b, as I recall; I imagine they're all crowded into the number 1 spot (look at the multiple portraits crowding there). Interestingly, it seems as if this inadvertent glitch might be advertising multiple DLC characters on the way.

Coming back to Arrange I did a much better job at milking stage 1/2 bosses. Stage 3, Medusa, seems to die far too quickly! I must be doing something wrong. Would have been on pace for an easy PB but I died way too much on Medusa and only made it to the stage 4 boss.
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by MachineAres 1CC »

EmperorIng wrote:Switch Cotton is still at 1.01. Allegedly, BEEP/Studio Siesta is promising a switch update in the "near future," whatever that means. I seem to have some anecdotal memory of switch updates being harder to push out, but that might be projection.

This is what the scoreboard looks like right now; I managed to capture this weird graphical garbage flooding the screen before it flickered off:
Image

It's now missing a bunch of scores close to 2b, as I recall; I imagine they're all crowded into the number 1 spot (look at the multiple portraits crowding there). Interestingly, it seems as if this inadvertent glitch might be advertising multiple DLC characters on the way.

Coming back to Arrange I did a much better job at milking stage 1/2 bosses. Stage 3, Medusa, seems to die far too quickly! I must be doing something wrong. Would have been on pace for an easy PB but I died way too much on Medusa and only made it to the stage 4 boss.
Yuck, what a mess. We already know the Trouble Witches character is coming, but I guess this confirms that she will be DLC, and probably paid DLC, at that. Sucks it takes so much longer to get Switch updates out.
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by Rastan78 »

All console patches go through a certification process that takes a few days or a week. I'm sure that changes depending on platform from game to game due to a lot of variables. I've heard of some updates going through the cert at Nintendo in 1 or 2 days and others taking a while. In this case who knows if the patch is even finished and submitted? Maybe they're still working on it.
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Re: Cotton Remake/Port - AND A NEW COTTON GAME!? [PS4/PC/SW]

Post by Jonpachi »

I really wanted to get into this game, but the lack of save states just makes it a bit of a slog. G Darius HD has been stealing my shmup time instead.
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