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Always appreciative Bil. Thanks.

I wouldn't recommend anyone to give Shitty Connection their money. But IF you find it impossible to resist the game, plz report your findings for the thread.

I already own the Taito Legends 2 port, which from all accounts isn't amazing either. So I'm not about to double-up on a purchase to throw money at a company I hate, and which regularly keeps ruining classic games with their lazy ports. Dragon Blaze on Switch is fucking unplayable. 7+ frames of lag, no options, no special features and no practice modes.

Today I learned S-tribute means Saturn-tribute

Can't help but feel this would've been a great idea 10-15 year ago.

I haven't had much time with it yet but it seems fine, so far. Haven't noticed any egregious lag, and it feels a lot less like a bloated port-of-a-port-in-an-awkward-wrapper than I was expecting. The display options are alright and everything that was unique to the Saturn version seems to be present and correct.

(Setting up an arcade stick for it on Steam was miserable, though - make sure you rummage through the Big Picture controller options, or it'll keep defaulting to a keyboard and mouse setup.)

lol yeah, you can make yourself completely invincible in Layer Section at the very beginning of stage 1, like literally as soon as the game starts.

Thanks for the recon bud, that does sound more promising than the Success fiasco... I wonder if, with VING's Saturn ports being so innately responsive (at least they've always felt properly cutting-edge to me), they might dodge the brunt of any added lag from CC.

Whereas IIRC, the Success trio have a degree of input lag even on their native STV/Saturn (I only ever noticed it in Guardian Force... and in that game's case, I honestly thought it was deliberate, being a ground-based tank STG with noticeable accel/decel, and all - wishful thinking perhaps, but I have 1CCd it pretty comfily). Maybe it was case of the straw breaking the proverbial zebra's back?

On a tangent, Metal Black was always one of those odd titles that responded "instantly" via the old MAME frame-advance testing method. The ACA one was measured by playtester and all-round arcade badman TZW_Guile as very sharp indeed, and I've found my derusting credits absolutely reinvigorating. Finessed as all hell with the signature wing-to-wing graze brawling! But meanwhile, I definitely sense a small bit of lag in ACA Dangerous Seed, a contemporary of late 80s/early 90s Namco PCBs like Galaga 88 that've always had significant MAME lag, and reported board lag too. Nothing ruinous, just a slight sense of drag.

STGs bring out lag like no other genre, imo, with their innately pinpoint-precise 8way movement. Capcom Arcade Stadium (PS4)'s noticeably burdened 1941 and Carrier Airwing depress me, but I can get along quite well with its Daimakaimura and Magic Sword, despite them presumably performing similarly. (unless, again, the games themselves have variable input latencies...) Not that I won't notice in other genres, but there's typically a little more wriggle room.

All this to say, I'm sure with warts-and-all emulations (as opposed to M2, and occasionally Hamster's approach of optional lag reduction), the base game's performance is a big factor. Maybe they picked a spectacularly unfortunate (if obviously marquee-ready) debut trio with the Cottons.

Eh, as said, CC agnostic here. I quite like their PS4 DB, though that particular game is so technically demanding, I'm in no hurry to tackle it. Will have to revise after putting decent time on it reclaiming my shite Ian 1ALL.



Oof... now that's what I call PENETRATION ♫ - of the asswallet! Particularly with Ray'z comin' up.

lol red power to pierce through indeed~

Here is how you do it: https://twitter.com/JaimersSTG/status/1 ... 2451837964

Oh wow.

Maybe it can have its own WR table >___> Think of the MAD CHAINZ

I wonder if they'll patch it. That's become the real yardstick for me. Asked SNK40th's producer @ Digital Eclipse if there were plans to fix its gross bugs (not quite game-ruining... but mostly because SAR is the topdown rotary shooting kamige, easily worth scraping off the burnt bits for). Was told that the collection, then >2yrs old, was now unfathomably ancient, and would never ever be patched. Meanwhile, M2 and Hamster casually update stuff years down the line, often not even to bugfix but simply to add new features (damn near a decade on, in ACA Moon Cresta's case).

I just tried it on the Switch demo and I couldn't get it to work for some reason, so maybe it only works on PC or in the full version(s). Maybe someone who already bought it can test it, but there really isn't much of a point in buying this Layer Section with M2's glorious Ray'z collection releasing in only a few months.

Picked it up yesterday, it’s excellent. I can’t notice any difference between the Saturn port and the Switch.

I've spent a few minutes with the Steam version and I'm happy to report that, unlike the mess that were their previous Saturn ports (I'm not one to usually complain about lag, but Guardian Force was simply unplayable for me when it launched), this one appears to play quite well, and looks and sounds great too.

Really positive (early) impressions in (almost) all fronts.
Almost, because like Klatrymadon mentioned, they messed up the controller settings, and for some reason, with my Xbox One controller plugged, the game is configured to load a... keyboard + mouse profile on Steam! After a while I gave up and ended up using the keyboard for a quick play session.

I'm sure I'll be able to get the controller working by messing with Steam's input settings, but I really hope they fix this. It's quite something that they appeared to improve in all fronts compared to their other Saturn ports, but then introduced a problem that wasn't there for any of their previous releases.

I picked this up on Steam and I am pretty happy with it too. They did a pretty good job minimizing the lag and everything seems to run well.

There are two minor things that you have to work around currently from a controller perspective which hopefully will be patched soon. First, the game by default utilizes Steam's Controller Config tool which by itself isn't a big deal, but as Klatrymadon already mentioned it defaults to the wrong profile (the one that mimics WASD for FPS shooters). After going into the game's settings in Steam and changing it to use your actual controller's default layout it works fine.

However, the second minor issue is that when you get to the main title screen after the splash screens, no controller inputs will work and you have to press fire which is "Z" on the keyboard to proceed, after that point the controller works as intended. I fixed this by just editing the controller config in Steam to have a long press (hold) of the Start button binded to "Z" so now I don't have to bother with the keyboard at all anymore. I shared the config on Steam in case anyone wants to import it (Xbox controllers).

If you are using an X-Input device and prefer not to use Steam's Controller Config tool at all you can disable it for the game and it will still run fine, you just still need to press "Z" at the title screen.

Confirming that the Steam port feels pretty responsive. Worth the money.

Occasionally, this port will start up running much more slowly than it should. The issue is fixed by turning the game off and starting it again. This was no big deal for me, but I've just discovered that it can also slow down mid-game after a good start (and stay that way), which renders the port too unpredictable to play seriously in its current state, unfortunately.

Hmm, that ain't good. As always, proof will be in the patching (or not >_>) Thanks for the update!

Ouch. I do hope that slowdown thing gets fixed. Aside from the controller mishap, that thankfully has a work around, my first impressions of it are good (Audio does seem slightly off. Might be my memory playing tricks, but I remember EA1 having better sound compared to other versions when I played it on Saturn). Should go back and play it on Saturn disc since that system looks excellent via CRT (All of my CRTs and 15kHz. I was asked this long ago, not even realizing that the majority of non 480p TVs are 15 kHz), even with composite. Plays nicely on the Egret II mini too.

Are you sure you're not accidentally turning on City Connection's patented 'Slow Mode'? Might be a 'feature' not a 'bug' that's ruining the game for you. I'm not sure exactly how to trigger it (on Steam, presumably), but I think it's as simple as pressing the wrong button.

I can't say I've had a similar situation - everything running smoothly on my end. There's apparently the Old Elevator Action Sound Test bug, but I haven't tried to trigger it myself.

I've 1CC'd on Switch now. I'm sure there is lag, but I never felt it hindered my progress. Though I'd like to have it to blame a couple times for inopportune double-tap sprints into oblivion with Jad.

If anything it's a bug where the game might suddenly forget and press the wrong input (or hold the wrong input) in their ZebraEngine emulator, because this has happened to me (also on Switch) where my character will freeze in place, be unable to move a direction, or be firing into oblivion. I would not be surprised if the engine is buckling and pressing wrong inputs, including the one that triggers slow mode.

Shitty Connection never fails to disappoint.

Weird. I haven't experienced this one in the 10 or so hours I put in. Anyone else have this?

Nothing here as well (Steam version).
The game runs surprisingly well (considering some of their previous Saturn ports), looks good, and sounds good.
No complaints here.

Very happy with my purchase.

Haven't noticed slowdown myself, but there have been a few times I triggered a slow or fast mode in other games by accident (usually due to accidentally hitting a trigger button).

I haven't reached 10 hours yet, but no issues on my end so far (after setting up the controls initially).