shmups.system11.org

zako/雑魚 is basically a term for underling-type villain characters. It's not necessarily a videogame-exclusive term though. It can be applied to movies, manga and such like the stormtroopers from the Star Wars movies for example or the mohawked punks from Hokuto no Ken.



Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance has a few VR missions titled "Zako Survival" and the first CPU team that challenges you in Super Dodge Ball for the Neo-Geo is called the "Zako Team". I might had seen the term thrown around in some sound test for a videogame too.

Ah yes - can vaguely recall seeing "zako out" in sound tests, possibly accompanied by "boss out." Gonna see if I can find any, haha.

EDIT: from a quick google it seems Super Shinobi II may have been one.

I've seen some prototype screenshots of Final Fight where the small fry enemies are all called ZAKO XX, with XX being a hex identifier.

It occurred to me that Insomniac must have been inspired by Invader Zim in significant ways when making Ratchet & Clank (it's such a popular series - is this somewhat common knowledge? at least I've found nothing having an official blessing that would point to it, but apparently, many comparisons were drawn of otherwise noteworthy origin)

Aside from many ideational/(art-)design-wise similarities, Richard Horvitz, who voiced Zim, also voiced the Zoni, which first appeared in later R&C iterations, however.

Nintendont GameCube disks/ROMs loader for the Wii(U) supports Classic Controller Pro without any arcane fiddling with the stuff, just "out of the box". Oh, I READ that CCP was supported back when installing all the homebrew on my Wii, but - for some reason - I got the impression it takes extra steps to get it running. Nope, stuff's trivial.
Long story short, two games pretty precious to me - F-Zero GX and Burnout 2: Point of Impact - are suddenly vying for my attention more than ever before, since both take a lot of index finger action, which sucks dick if abundant on the original GameCube controller. Now, the first Super Monkey Ball, as well as the FIRST Burnout (both just a precious GameCube titles in my book), will favour the GameCube stock controller still, as not nearly as much of an index finger cramp/twitch is required in either.

In other news, my current day job (takes a lot of a forklift driving) turned out pretty good for my (arcade-style) videogaming skills. I'd always hoped so, for much profound reasons too, but now it can be considered empirically proven.

I just realized there's an ST-V Sega Saturn game called Guardian Force.

I always got this title confused with some other game for the Saturn that I can't remember the title of off the top of my head.

This is probably the reason why I just discovered this game. Watched some replays of this and it really appeals to me. I've always love that graphical uniqueness that Saturn hardware produced.

Trying to figure out what would be the best way to play this.

- On real ST-V hardware? [Find myself a Motherboard plus multicart or real cart]
- Grab a Sega Saturn Copy? [Ebay prices are pretty darn high at the moment]
- Emulation on shmup mame? [I haven't kept up with any current MAME builds unfortunately]

Thoughts?

According to trap15, the STV cart has significant, inherent input lag. I can't tell offhand if the Saturn port (a true port, naturally) shares this issue... it's the only version I've ever played, and it's an innately heavier-handling STG than the norm. Kino scored 13m on it, close to the 14m WR, so it's certainly not unplayable either way. Might be worth investigating first - I'd burn a Saturn ISO in these situations, yarr!

Kino's opinions on lag:



It's a really cool game either way, especially if you like your ground-based and/or multidirectional shooters.

(off-topic, I wish cool people wouldn't delete their posts. )

This is some great info here. Really appreciate the reply
I was really debating on which option to take.

I tried the game out on MAME and oh yhaa you can feel the lag for sure. It to me was pretty rough as it felt like I was playing on a Sanwa JLF

I was wondering how accurate the emulation of Guardian Force is on MAME as well. If it's close enough to the PCB I could probably use it to gauge whether or not I want to own the original Saturn version.

I'm not too big on playing burnt Disc... plus I don't have the tools to do so either.

But so far I can't believe I missed a game like this
Everything about it so far really suits my taste perfectly.

I had no idea mame even supported Saturn/STV

Yeah, you can easily play GC games with the CC thanks to Nintendon't. It's very convenient and a good way to alleviate for the terrible GC D-pad when playing 2D GC games without having to shell out for the Hori controller. Playing the very few GC shmups with a proper D-pad is so much better.

On a side-note, the Wii CC Pro doesn't have the analog sensitivity on its bumpers so if you are on WiiU, that console's CC Pro may have some advantage over it depending on the game. I know I don't like analog triggers/bumpers since I tend to assign bomb to them when playing shmups so the delay may get in the way. But for something like F-Zero I am sure it's essential.

English version of DLsite has English versions of some things, while viewing the same product on the jp site offers no hints about this. But you need a separate account for each site!? The number of sales displayed for a product are obviously separate as well.