TATE Astro mini with Batrider, Batsugun, Outzone and more!

[Steven]

I wish I had bought the arcade stick last year, as it's now 20000 yen+ from resellers. Hopefully Sega will make some more of them.

I regret it as well, but I opted to go for a pair of the control pads they made and they are really nice. Pretty damn close to a Japanese Saturn pad, though the d-pad itself is made out of a slick, hard plastic that feels a little weird at first.

Yeah, I have one of those. It's pretty good. The d-pad on that controller is definitely kind of weird, though, especially since it's slightly rotated. The Japanese MD Mini controller works on the Astro City Mini as well, and I really like that controller.

[Martinov]

I just bought a Brook and don't intend on buying another controller if I do decide to buy the Astro City Mini V. I'm under the impression that the Brook Universal works with the original Astro City Mini when in booted up as a Genesis Mini controller, so hopefully this will also be the case with the Astro V.

Edit: I just put it in the checkout and the price leapt from 19,580Y to 21,360Y excluding postage. Is that the additional customs/import taxes they've added on there or something else?

[Jonpachi]

Check your shipping cost. Amazon Japan has a weird habit of putting in placeholder shipping fees that are outrageously high and then later changing them to be something more reasonable when the thing actually comes out. I've had one instance where I was charged about $200 US for shipping, but was thankfully refunded when I contacted them. Can be stressful to be sure.

[FRO]

Has anyone confirmed yet whether LRG or SLG will be handling Western distribution of this unit? I'd love to get my hands on one, but would rather not pay the international shipping, if I can help it. That's all gone through the roof the last 2 years.

[Jonpachi]

Has anyone confirmed yet whether LRG or SLG will be handling Western distribution of this unit? I'd love to get my hands on one, but would rather not pay the international shipping, if I can help it. That's all gone through the roof the last 2 years.

It was $30 for express DHL from Play-Asia. Not sure that's gonna be any cheaper even with a US release.

[Fudoh]

Amazon JP had and still has it available for international orders today with DHL Express shipping just at around $25.

They allocate these in smaller batches. And with the release so far away (September next year), there will be many chances to get one.

[hamfighterx]

Amazon JP had and still has it available for international orders today with DHL Express shipping just at around $25.

Yeah, I ordered mine today from Amazon.jp and shipping to the US was ¥2471, which is about $21.50 USD. That's a pretty good shipping price!

Had been showing OOS for me for the past several days at the placeholder link posted earlier in this thread. Today it was available - thanks for the heads-up, Fudoh. If you're having issues finding it, maybe check https://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B09NRJCPW3/

[Wittischism]

Ordered mine. Thanks for the heads up. The game selection on this one is just too good to pass up.

[reckon luck]

I've preordered from Amazon as well. Considering M2 hasn't been doing Toaplan arrange modes, there's less to miss out on if you decide to buy this instead of their ports.

[JJHLH]

Thanks for the information. I ordered one from Amazon Japan also. They said it will arrive Oct 6-8, 2022. That will definitely give me something to look forward to.

[cawley1]

I love the original Astro City Mini, I guess I can look past some emulation imperfections and think it's a really cool little device.

I have just ordered one of these from Amazon.jp - they haven't let me down recently. I wonder if there will be a re-issue of the stand/bottom half of the cabinet, as the one they have in stock curently is crazy expensive for a bit of plastic, could really do with a re-issue when this new Astro City is released...

[Buffi]

I love the original Astro City Mini, I guess I can look past some emulation imperfections and think it's a really cool little device.

I have just ordered one of these from Amazon.jp - they haven't let me down recently. I wonder if there will be a re-issue of the stand/bottom half of the cabinet, as the one they have in stock curently is crazy expensive for a bit of plastic, could really do with a re-issue when this new Astro City is released...

The amazon jp one has new marquees for the veryical games, so looks like they will. It doesnt ship here yet though, unlike the base unit. Hope that changes

[lovecraft]

Nice game selection, but I'd rather stick to the Egret II Mini personally.

[MintyTheCat]

This looks amazing: nice build, excellent line-up.

I was away for a few weeks and hadn't heard about this until a couple of days ago. I hope that I can order one in good time, and then I hope that Germany doesn't exploit me on the import tax.

[Fudoh]

JPY 23,248 shipped to Germany with DHL Express and already including tax (and any other charges). That's not too bad. If WWD gets the European distribution (which I assume) you're maybe saving 10 EUR over pre-ordering at Amazon JP.

[SavagePencil]

Fingers crossed that they’ve fixed the shimmer from the first one.

[banjoted]

If you pre-order from Amazon Japan, money's not taken until dispatch, right?

[Jonpachi]

If you pre-order from Amazon Japan, money's not taken until dispatch, right?

Yep

[banjoted]

If you pre-order from Amazon Japan, money's not taken until dispatch, right?

Yep

Cheers

[banjoted]

Some gameplay footage of the Astro City V here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qygZx1knWeg&t=1628s

[Steven]

Release date announced: July 28

[MintyTheCat]

Hello all,

I have been out of the loop for a while and just getting back to things.

I am quite excited to see this Astro Mini loaded with decent Shmup and wish to get my hands on one.
Can you advise: where best to buy? I'm based in Germany.

Cheers.

[Redfox]

So in the Fes coverage they mention Batrider is going to include additional, new music added from the game's original composer? That sounds incredible. Do we know who's behind these ports? Anyone have details????

[MintyTheCat]

JPY 23,248 shipped to Germany with DHL Express and already including tax (and any other charges). That's not too bad. If WWD gets the European distribution (which I assume) you're maybe saving 10 EUR over pre-ordering at Amazon JP.

Apologies: I hadn't seen your reply I am officially getting old Cheers.

EDIT: Managed to order one and I'm quite looking forward to being able to play many of these Shmups easily in one place Roll on the Summer now when I'll have a bit more time to play too.

[MintyTheCat]

Fingers crossed that it will be released soonish. I would love to spend time playing this over the summer.

Any one else waiting eagerly for its release?

[Martinov]

Fingers crossed that it will be released soonish. I would love to spend time playing this over the summer.

Any one else waiting eagerly for its release?

I'm waiting for confirmation the Brook Universal board works on it, then I'll buy.

[Martinov]

A livestream of Tatsujin and Tatsujin Ou gameplay on the mini: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtsvSMMK8XQ

[SeeNoWeevil]

I miss when this sort of thing got an actual release for consoles and not a weird standalone device.

Same here. They can't create the same fear of missing out that will drive scalpers and collectors to hoard these things with an easily available console release. Gotta drive up those preorders.

Yeah, this annoys me no end, locking retro releases to some piece of hardware.

[Nugs]

Does anyone know a place to pre order this apart from Amazon Japan which won't ship to Australia?
Alternatively can anyone recommend a good Japanese parcel forwarding service?

[Steven]

Tatsujin has 30Hz autofire on this thing, so it's possible that the other games that do not have autofire by default have this as well. I hope there is some kind of an option to use a more useful autofire rate, as 30Hz is way too fast for general use in games like Same! Same! Same!. I hope you guys like smashing that smashing button if you want something slower in that case. Can't wait to never play Same! on this thing if it only has 30Hz autofire... but I'd just play either my PS4 or Switch version anyway, so yeah. It is the 2P version on here, BTW, not the super broken 1P version.

Mikado is somehow involved in this thing, and 30Hz autofire is on most of their cabinets for games that do not otherwise have autofire (except their Darius, which is like 15Hz or something. Been a while since I played it, but it's slower than 30Hz from what I remember), so maybe that's why.

Anyway, I finally

1. got the arcade stick for this thing

2. played Batsugun (on PCB!)

Arcade stick is nice, but pretty useless since it only works on PC, MiSTer, and the Astro City Mini (which I ironically have yet to use it on after having it for like a month now lol), and it has weird mappings and some games just don't work with it at all (Darius Cozmic Collection = NG, but G-Darius HD works fine, which is odd, but whatever), but it's pretty nice, although I prefer the Hayabusa buttons on the Hori RAP N. It also of course lacks autofire, which the RAP N has along with way more buttons, but it's a nice stick for those few things that it does work with.

Batsugun... is one of my least favourite Toaplan games of all time. It might even be the one I like the least, as in even less than Tiger-Heli, but I have yet to play Vimana and FixEight. I'm pretty sure this is the Toaplan game that is liked by people that do not like Toaplan games, so maybe that's why I don't like it that much. It seems to lack the careful and deliberate enemy placement of the Uemura/Yuge games and stuff is just kind of there or whatever and the stage 4 boss is boring as fuck. I'll play it some more when I get this Astro City Mini V, but I don't know. Not a bad game, but I'd absolutely rather play awesome games like Slap Fight, V-V, Kyuukyoku Tiger, Out Zone, or pretty much anything else if I'm being honest.

Oh yeah, and I messed around with Tatsujin Ou's speed up thingy over at Taito Hey the other day. Pretty sure that this function is some sort of debug feature and that it doesn't work in MAME, but it works here. If you guys haven't tried it yet, it's almost completely useless, but it's kind of fun to use it to flood the screen with a shitload enemies if you get bored or whatever, I guess. Just don't go use it in a real arcade if you're paying 100 yen for each credit like I did because it's a great way to lose money when you game over ultra quickly due to the flood of enemies! Well, unless you are insane or hate money or something, in which case I give you my permission to do so.