M2 Toaplan collection

[Steven]

Still getting random stuttering, but it's not as bad as it was. This is really annoying. I think I may start playing on Switch until this gets fixed. I could play on PCB and I'd love to get a Same! 1P PCB 1-ALL, but PCB has no practice tools and my cabinet does not enough buttons for a good autofire setup for Same!, so I'd rather not...

My only issue with all digital everything is the fact there is no printing, no media, no distribution and no retail and yet none of these savings has been passed onto the consumer.

One of the big things that makes physical games great that no one can argue against are the changes in pricing over time and depending on the game's performance (aka unsold stock). Buying used goes in the same box. Digital only users are SOL on that if a publisher decides to not be as aggressive as others in an online download marketplace.

I got physical Death Stranding 2 for like 18% off from Amazon Japan before it even released, and then I added like 700 points or whatever they're called to bring it down slightly further. That was pretty nice, and obviously not happening with digital. It's still weird to me that digital games even exist on consoles; I don't recognize their existence, usually, so when people say they buy digital console games I'm always like WTF you can do that? Why the hell would you? I don't like relying on Amazon too much and I think Amazon does screw over someone (shipping companies, probably) with this discount before launch thing, but it does ultimately save me money, so I'm not going to complain too much.

Still, best reason to buy physical is so that your friends can cover their their old games with so many signatures that you can barely even see the box art anymore

Spoiler

Can't do this with digital!

[Angry Hina]

I'd suspect Tatsujin's willingness to license the catalogue to anyone has undermined the Arcade Garage project somewhat. I doubt we'll see any more.

I'm starting to think the same. M2 (and really anyone else out there) is finding it hard to complete with bottom dollar bare-bones packages. I'm already seeing a lot of complaining about the price of Gradius Origins, and that price is about as reasonable as you can get. If you divide things out, it's like $20 for Salamander 3, then roughly $2.80 per game for the other six. That's apparently too much money for "old games," so I can't help but think M2's high-quality approach is going to fail in the medium to long term because people don't really care about the emulation quality or the additions/toggles, etc.

I hope that we ultimately still get a Tatsujin/Truxton ShotTriggers double pack at some point because Tatsujin and (especially) Tatsujin Oh would really benefit from some rebalancing in their difficulty with some of M2’s nicely done Easy/easier modes. Tatsujin Oh has such amazing sprite work and music and would be so much more enjoyable if it wasn’t so brutal difficulty wise.

I always thought the easy modes are kinda useless. I think it would be always useful to tone down the difficulties on a level compared to easier STGs (like Batsugun Special and Thunder Force 3), even some regular players can clear (if they really try). But the extremely toned down level is only useful if you want them to be playable for really unskilled or unmotivated people. Like some Cave Novice modes (Futari).

[Lord British]

For some reason you can buy the Clear River Toaplan Arcade Collection Vol. 2 on PS4 right now, but not Vol. 1 yet. I guess Vol 1. will come out when it was originally intended on 8/14, but if you want to buy Vol. 2 right now, then go ahead.

I don't think you can use this loophole if you have only a PS5.

FWIW I'm pretty happy with it. There's a lot more settings here than on the Steam version, especially in the assists department.

[Lord British]

For some reason you can buy the Clear River Toaplan Arcade Collection Vol. 2 on PS4 right now, but not Vol. 1 yet. I guess Vol 1. will come out when it was originally intended on 8/14, but if you want to buy Vol. 2 right now, then go ahead.

I don't think you can use this loophole if you have only a PS5.

FWIW I'm pretty happy with it. There's a lot more settings here than on the Steam version, especially in the assists department.

Did anyone else buy this? I want some reviews!

[jehu]

News to me! Missed your first post; glad you followed up.

First impressions bad.

One autofire button. The menus don’t rotate with the games into TATE, which has been standard for a long time in other titles. Default scanline filters looks atrocious.

And, worst of all, V-V is crashing the game entirely every time I try to switch the filter away from the scanline option. Literally every time, without fail. And damn they’re ugly. There are some options to mess around with to tune them up, but don’t expect something that’s acceptable out of the box like you might be used to. I haven’t even gotten to the games, and there’s already a whole fistful of red flags.

Update: Even when I “Restore Filter Defaults,” the scanlines stay. Checkmate, Bitwave - you got me.

Additionally, there doesn’t seem to be a credit button, just a start button that will put one credit in, then in a second press will ‘start’ that credit. A misguided attempt to streamline the process, I gather.

In its favor, I think, the game is extremely space efficient. Less than 50megs for the whole download. Let’s hope these issues are addressed before the real, real launch in mid-August.

When I can actually begin to play, I’ll pop in with some other comments.

[AGermanArtist]

I'll stick with MAME in the absence of more Shot Triggers. I know they're mostly filler, but I really like the gadgets filling the screen.

[Steven]

This isn't supposed to be released yet, so it may be okay to give Bitwave a temporary pass until then, but there are still questions that remain. Did they label the difficulty DIP switches properly this time? Tiger-Heli's are still mislabelled on PC. Does V-V still you start with more than 3 lives if you don't go to the DIP switch menu before you start playing the game even though it's supposed to save your settings? That still happens on PC too. Does the bass track in Tatsujin's boss music remain absent? Do the leaderboards work, and if they do, do they register scores even with non-default DIP switch settings?

I still can't believe that they are still only allowing one autofire button. Having multiple autofire buttons is standard in Japanese arcades. And M2 ShotTriggers. And ACA. And S-Tribute. And even shitty MAME, apparently, although I have no clue how to do it in MAME and don't care. Fortunately, I recently discovered a way around this on PC: Steam input has highly customizable separate autofire functionality. I've actually been playing Bitwave Daisenpuu with this using a Mega Drive Mini controller recently and it's pretty nice! This really should've been included in the emulator as the default and not something that you need external stuff to do.

Kind of surprising that the CRT filter is bad; on PC it's probably the best one I've ever seen, and good enough out of the box. Did they change it? The menus do rotate with the screen on PC, so it not doing so is a cool new exclusive feature for consoles only. Yay~

[jehu]

The CRT filter is, at some level I suppose, a matter of taste - and maybe it’s adjustable to a degree that’ll allow for a tighter image.

I’m not a technically minded person here, so I’m judging off of the comparative standard I’m used to. To me, it feels pretty washed out, smeared, low res. Might be a scaling issue, too. I would also be curious to hear from someone who could comment on the situation in more detail.

[AGermanArtist]

I don't quite grasp the reasoning for the MAME hate.

[Firehawke]

Don't try to understand it. The MAME-hate is almost always unreasonable to begin with; nobody claims MAME is perfect or the end-all. It's just one more way to try to preserve this material, and if MAME had never existed I can pretty much guarantee you that at least half of the rereleases we've seen in the last 20 years wouldn't exist.

[jehu]

MAME slander aside - finding some things to like about this package.

The games are all quite responsive, which is huge. And they have decent practice options with save states (and rewind). Fastforward is a nice little bonus, too. On Steam there was a Practice mode that let you pick specific stage sections for every game; looks like that was removed.

Some interesting sound options. High and lowpass filters. Too bad there isn’t more intuitive volume sliders for music vs sound effects - I’d like to turn the SFX in Vimana way, way down.

The aforementioned problems are still annoying, but I’ll give them their due grace period in pre-release (kinda). I’m glad to have these available on PS4, but they’re not going to replace M2’s efforts.

[Dylan1CC]

I'm starting to think the same. M2 (and really anyone else out there) is finding it hard to complete with bottom dollar bare-bones packages. I'm already seeing a lot of complaining about the price of Gradius Origins, and that price is about as reasonable as you can get. If you divide things out, it's like $20 for Salamander 3, then roughly $2.80 per game for the other six. That's apparently too much money for "old games," so I can't help but think M2's high-quality approach is going to fail in the medium to long term because people don't really care about the emulation quality or the additions/toggles, etc.

I hope that we ultimately still get a Tatsujin/Truxton ShotTriggers double pack at some point because Tatsujin and (especially) Tatsujin Oh would really benefit from some rebalancing in their difficulty with some of M2’s nicely done Easy/easier modes. Tatsujin Oh has such amazing sprite work and music and would be so much more enjoyable if it wasn’t so brutal difficulty wise.

I always thought the easy modes are kinda useless. I think it would be always useful to tone down the difficulties on a level compared to easier STGs (like Batsugun Special and Thunder Force 3), even some regular players can clear (if they really try). But the extremely toned down level is only useful if you want them to be playable for really unskilled or unmotivated people. Like some Cave Novice modes (Futari).

Agreed, this is definitely preferable and more in line with what I was trying to say as to what I’d like to see.

[RoboArmy]

I'll stick with MAME in the absence of more Shot Triggers. I know they're mostly filler, but I really like the gadgets filling the screen.

When we buy these kinds of packages there's always that lingering, pesky question that asks why on earth we're bothering when MAME is there? This question is especially bad when it's implied the package uses MAME's source code for emulation anyway.

M2 Shot Triggers features might be filler but they show there was a baseline level of care with the game, like you have bonafide fanatics of the genre, game developers and the games themselves working to give you the definitive experience (and not just saying you're for MAH PRESERVATION for virtual pats on the back, then releasing broken loop lever emulation, AHEM snk 40th anniversary). So it actually comes down to giving their work what it deserves, and maybe even supporting the original devs through them.
Even Arcade Archives comes off as cookie cutter emulation at first glance until you notice the emulation is good, there are different auto fire rates depending on the game, and there's even a mini community around Hamster releases, the devs working on them have faces, comment on what they're working on livestreams, etc. They even have better emulation than mame and new info like proper default dip switch settings that were previously unknown sometimes. So yeah I will buy a couple of their games if I'm interested in playing them.

Soulless cheap licensees for old games looking for a quick buck? I doubt anyone's going to be skipping mame because of Johnny Turbo's Arcade for Bad Dudes. They don't even get the bare minimum right, like you know, having the games work well enough to be enjoyable, because they don't really care about the games themselves. I'm kinda worried this new release is the latter and I'll wait for reviews to come, despite how much I itch for playing OutZone on the PS5.

[AGermanArtist]

I have a decent little set up at home with PS5/Series S/Switch and a fairly capable Mini PC hooked up to my TV and a PC/Switch arcade stick. I have a nicely curated selection of emulators/games inc MAME, but I also have 154 Arcade Archives and 30 ACA Neo Geo, both Capcom Arcade Stadiums and every Shot Triggers release so far. It's a value proposition, which comes down to the individual. In this case, I don't assign a higher value to these City Connection Toaplan comps over MAME, so no sale here. If M2 were to continue with Arcade Garage, I'd continue to buy them. I'm sure I'm not unique in this respect, and I'd hope this is conveyed to M2 somehow.