Batsugun S-Tribute

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DenimDemon
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by DenimDemon »

Happy Toaplan Friday. M2STG Toaplan Garage stream announcement and now this.
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by Steven »

Can't wait for Bitwave to release the arcade version for $7.99 with better emulation than what City Connection is capable of. Hopefully City Connection will also want $7.99 this because there will otherwise be no point in buying City Connection's version when Bitwave and M2 get around to it and both of theirs will be better. I think, for the first time since the Egret II Mini, I'm going to pass on a Toaplan game, especially since the only Toaplan game I like playing less than Batsugun is Tatsujin. I will get M2's and Bitwave's without hesitation, but Shitty Connection + Saturn emulation = do not want.

This Saturn version was illegally produced and released since Gazelle never actually got the rights to do so but did it anyway, and now if it's getting rereleased, that means that it's been promoted from illegal bootleg to legit release, which is extremely weird in itself. Never thought this would ever get rereleased, but here it is. The Saturn version is apparently mostly running on emulation, so you get to experience whatever system you buy this for emulating the Saturn which is emulating the V2. Yay, two simultaneous layers of emulation~
Last edited by Steven on Fri Feb 03, 2023 9:40 am, edited 1 time in total.
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DenimDemon
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Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by DenimDemon »

Steven wrote:Can't wait for Bitwave to release the arcade version for $7.99 with better emulation than what City Connection is capable of. Hopefully City Connection will also want $7.99 this because there will otherwise be no point in buying City Connection's version when Bitwave and M2 get around to it and both of theirs will be better.

This Saturn version was illegally produced and released since Gazelle never actually got the rights to do so but did it anyway, and now if it's getting rereleased, that means that it's been promoted from illegal bootleg to legit release, which is extremely weird in itself. Never thought this would ever get rereleased, but here it is. The Saturn version is apparently mostly running on emulation, so you get to experience whatever system you buy this for emulating the Saturn which is emulating the V2. Yay, two simultaneous layers of emulation~
Their Layer Section is perfectly playable. Like really solid. Jumping between my Saturn disc and their Switch release and I think it’s fine.
Now Cotton is another story..
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Marc
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by Marc »

Obviously I'd prefer an M2 conversion, but they seem determined to go about things in the most difficult and time-consuming way possible, so I'm not expecting to see that for 18 months - 2 years at least.

Depending on price point, I'll pick this up.
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m.sniffles.esq
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by m.sniffles.esq »

Whoops, didn't see the other thread

my bad
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by Sumez »

Stribute
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charlie chong
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by charlie chong »

shitribute more like
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by Steven »

DenimDemon wrote:Their Layer Section is perfectly playable. Like really solid. Jumping between my Saturn disc and their Switch release and I think it’s fine.
Now Cotton is another story..
It's also the one where you can become permanently invulnerable at the very beginning of stage 1, though...
charlie chong wrote:shitribute more like
I am totally stealing this and so should everyone else.
Bassa-Bassa
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by Bassa-Bassa »

Steven wrote:This Saturn version was illegally produced and released since Gazelle never actually got the rights to do so but did it anyway, and now if it's getting rereleased, that means that it's been promoted from illegal bootleg to legit release, which is extremely weird in itself. Never thought this would ever get rereleased, but here it is. The Saturn version is apparently mostly running on emulation, so you get to experience whatever system you buy this for emulating the Saturn which is emulating the V2. Yay, two simultaneous layers of emulation~
I don't believe that if the SAT version were illegal it would get the green light, not just from Tatsujin, but from Bandai today. And well, partial emulations were relatively common on the 32bit machines. If only every port would have had Batsugun's level of accuracy!

So the freaking Zero Wing by M2 whereas Batsugun it's by City Connection or Exa. What's wrong with the world.
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by Steven »

Bassa-Bassa wrote:
Steven wrote:This Saturn version was illegally produced and released since Gazelle never actually got the rights to do so but did it anyway, and now if it's getting rereleased, that means that it's been promoted from illegal bootleg to legit release, which is extremely weird in itself. Never thought this would ever get rereleased, but here it is. The Saturn version is apparently mostly running on emulation, so you get to experience whatever system you buy this for emulating the Saturn which is emulating the V2. Yay, two simultaneous layers of emulation~
I don't believe that if the SAT version were illegal it would get the green light, not just from Tatsujin, but from Bandai today. And well, partial emulations were relatively common on the 32bit machines. If only every port would have had Batsugun's level of accuracy!
Well, it's legal now since Tatsujin has the rights to the Toaplan IPs. I hope lol
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pablumatic
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by pablumatic »

Guess they're finally realizing that other publishers will eat their lunch if they don't shove this out soon.
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by BydoR9 »

Made me laugh with 3 x posts about this - actually went on here to create topic for it myself (glad I didn't).

Lets hope (in the same way as Rayforce) M2 are secretly working on their release of Batsugun!

.....Oh wait..... Zero Wing and Hellfire! :|
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TransatlanticFoe
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by TransatlanticFoe »

Steven wrote:
DenimDemon wrote:Their Layer Section is perfectly playable. Like really solid. Jumping between my Saturn disc and their Switch release and I think it’s fine.
Now Cotton is another story..
It's also the one where you can become permanently invulnerable at the very beginning of stage 1, though...
charlie chong wrote:shitribute more like
I am totally stealing this and so should everyone else.
It seems convoluted to recreate that bug. Yes it's a failure of software testing (or of management's handling of software testing), but it's not something a player is just going to stumble on.

The emulation wasn't ready for the Guardian Force/Cotton title, but I don't think there's anything wrong with the S-tribute stuff since so the constant pisstaking doesn't really seem warranted. Yeah it'd be nice if this line was being used to release stuff that someone else isn't already sizing up, and at the price points they really ought to be considering physical releases - no-one is casually going to drop £25 on this stuff so pop it on a budget physical release to target the retro crowd.

Batsugun news is usually good news, however the Saturn port is only any cop if you can rotate your display (I'd say this is a boon for Switch but fuck trying to play anything on d-padless joycons. Your thumb will not forgive you). Yoko mode here simply cuts off a bit of the screen... in display terms only! So you'll kill a lot of stuff without seeing it - can't remember if it seals enemy shots or not. Basically it was solid when Batsugun wasn't fully emulated but there's no real reason to want this now. Especially with PC, Evercade and (eventually... maybe) M2 Switch/PS4 on the horizon.
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by hamfighterx »

TransatlanticFoe wrote:The emulation wasn't ready for the Guardian Force/Cotton title, but I don't think there's anything wrong with the S-tribute stuff since so the constant pisstaking doesn't really seem warranted.
I also think the complaints are largely exaggerated, aside from the very poor start with Cotton 2/Guardian Force.

Has anyone tried out Metal Black on Xbox or PC yet? Curious about how that one turned out. I saw it on Xbox store and was a little tempted to drop the $7.99 on it just out of curiosity's sake.
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by EmperorIng »

why bother with the metal black from shitty connection? There's a reason they canceled the switch release, they knew that there was no point in releasing when Hamster beat them to the punch.

Just think about it for a second. You are either emulating the raw arcade rom in question (Hamster and the Arcade Archives), or emulating an arcade rom emulated on a console emulator, supposedly through a fucking unity wrapper (Shitribute, I'm using that one as well 8) ). Which one of these two has more moving parts that can go wrong? There is nothing that emulator wrapper offers that is significantly better than what Hamster already has (stable emulator, robust leaderboards, good option control) - and they knew it which is why they quietly canned half of the releases.

Now, to M2's embarassment, LittyConnection is rushing out a game that people actually like (batsugun) while they are twiddling their thumbs with the c-grade toaplan tripe.
TransatlanticFoe wrote: It seems convoluted to recreate that bug. Yes it's a failure of software testing (or of management's handling of software testing), but it's not something a player is just going to stumble on.
The "no one is going to discover this game-breaking bug!" argument is amusing, admittedly. M2 recognized the game-breaking invul glitch in the arcade release of Darius Gaiden, which is way harder to pull off, and actually put some coding into their port to prevent it from actually invalidating the whole package!

This is to say nothing about how Layer Section is a bastardized and compromised version of rayforce to begin with (soon to be made utterly obsolete by the Ray'z Box set)... It's like if the Toaplan Garage series ONLY had the console ports of the games in question. We'd be asking "Why?"

Everyone in the retro shmup niche is just hilariously eating, cannibalizing, and fucking over each other.

Taito is gleefully scamming licensing fees from M2, Hamster, and Shitty Connection... Yuge/Tatsujin co. is more than happy to license out his games to anyone who follows him on fiverr, regardless of competing release plans... City Connection and Hamster release their rom dumps at roughly the same price to confuse people (not Hamster's fault admittedly)... Strictly Limited, Limited Run, and BEEP all offer slightly different collector's sets to empty the wallets of clueless dad-grabbers (who gotta have all three, just to see the differences!).

These latter days of late-shmupdom are absurd.
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by hamfighterx »

Uh… I was just curious about how S-Tribute Metal Black turned out quality wise. More interested in that in the context of whether the City Connection releases are consistently improving, as an indicator of whether future releases of more interesting (and less duplicated) games could be good. Aside from the bad first try with Cotton 2/Guardian Force, the rest of the S-Tribute series that I have tried have generally been OK on a technical level.

But yeah, pretty obvious that there’s no real need for another somewhat worse Metal Black release on platforms they already have the Hamster version.
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by Super Joe »

Elevator Returns is damn fine to me.
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by xxx1993 »

Now if only we got Soukyugurentai S-Tribute...
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by Steven »

I wonder what people would do if they announced S-Tribute DoDonPachi.
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BrianC
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by BrianC »

or S-Tribute Planet Joker :D
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To Far Away Times
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by To Far Away Times »

One of the finest shmups ever made.

Imagine if instead of M2 dinking around on the early Toaplan catalog at a snail's pace they went straight to the good stuff.

Shitty Connection better not fuck this up.
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by Steven »

The first release was Kyuukyoku Tiger, which is like the 4th best game Toaplan ever made after Out Zone, Hishouzame, and Slap Fight, so yes, M2 did go straight to the good stuff.
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by hamfighterx »

Super Joe wrote:Elevator Returns is damn fine to me.
Yup, Elevator Action Returns, the just released Puzzle Bobble 2&3, and Cleopatra Fortuna are all perfectly fine. And Layer Section/Galactic Attack isn't egregiously bad either on a technical level, although the soon to be released M2 Ray'z collection is clearly a superior overall package (but to be fair, also costs substantially more). It's really just the Cotton 2 & Guardian Force release that was notably bad.

I suspect Metal Black S-Tribute on Xbox/PC is probably OK too, but curious to hear how it turned out. I'm less interested to know about that because I need another Metal Black port (I don't), but more due to properly setting expectations for future S-Tribute releases. There are some that would be pretty interesting and not as likely to get an M2 deluxe version or Hamster AA release any time soon: F3 System games like Gekrindan or Bubble Symphony, a package of Chase HQ + SCI (heck, throw Night Striker in there), Twin Cobra II, etc.
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by Steven »

I don't know who even has the rights to Kyuukyoku Tiger II now. I know it's not Tatsujin. I wouldn't count on ever seeing that game again. Same with Akuu Gallet. I'd love to see both of those get rereleased, especially since Akuu Gallet PCBs cost like 600000 yen now, but I don't think those are going to happen.

Okay, I checked and the last 2 Akuu Gallet PCBs went on Yahoo Auctions for 350,000 yen about a week ago and 668,800 yen in October. That game is totally not worth either of those prices.
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by hamfighterx »

Steven wrote:I don't know who even has the rights to Kyuukyoku Tiger II now. I know it's not Tatsujin. I wouldn't count on ever seeing that game again.
I really don’t know either, but my thought was that maybe it could still be Taito. In which case, doesn’t seem that unreasonable that it could show up as a S-Tribute release.

Certainly not counting on that though, I’ll hang onto my Saturn copy.
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by Steven »

Yeah, I'd love to see it get a rerelease, but I wouldn't count on it. I do need to try the Saturn version, as I've only ever tried the arcade version on MAME and I think the Saturn version has some extra stuff or something like that.

I thought about getting the actual F3 version, but then I played it on MAME and saw the prices for both the F3 and the game and I kind of don't want to buy it anymore. I don't really like that game very much lol. I've played way, WAY worse, like some of the things on Action 52 (Star Evil is hilariously terrible with the thing you run into less than 1 second into the game that kills you), but...

At least I could get some cool F3 games once I get an F3, though. Maybe I should do that.
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by BulletMagnet »

hamfighterx wrote:It's really just the Cotton 2 & Guardian Force release that was notably bad.
This was such a deflating monkey's paw release for me; I'd been wishing for years that the Saturn Cotton games could reach newer platforms and a wider audience...and it's so poorly executed that even after a patch people justifiably won't touch it. It really feels like those games served as sacrificial lambs so they could get their heads on straight for the other S-Tribute games, and Boomerang in particular deserves so much better.

Sorry for invading the thread, just had to get that off my chest. :oops:
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by Steven »

I bought that thing mostly for Boomerang. The sadness is immense.
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Re: Batsugun S-Tribute

Post by Bassa-Bassa »

While I could understand Bubble Symphony, I don't see how S-Tribute Gekirindan, Night Striker or Chase HQ + SCI would be actual tributes to either, the games or the Saturn, as the ports sucked. And it's sure that the few options currently of ever seeing a proper port of F3 Gekirindan by competent people would totally vanish. The Layer Section/Ray Force situation is happening because it's a cult series.
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