Sakura Flamingo Archives -- Milestone 360 Collection!

[Kiken]

NCSX just sent me my shipping confirmation... which means I'll have it Friday instead of having to wait until next week. They have given the game absolutely no coverage on their main front page, which is really odd for them as they usually feature shmups front and center when new ones are announced and subsequently released.

[Xyga]

Now that Cave are gone there's gonna be much less interest for the genre and the very few retail shmups releases to come.
It's lower than niche now, shmups have officially entered the relic/antique category (so why would a shop put that in front page?)

[Kollision]

Well, everything about this release has been very low profile, it's not exclusive to NCSX or other online shops.
It's like Milestone was already under when the first news for it came out, so we should all consider ourselves very lucky to have it.

[Cata]

I was actually surprised how big of an advert play-asia had for this on the 360 homepage

[iconoclast]

Has there been any word on training modes, leaderboards, or downloadable (or even savable) replays? I never played Radirgy Noah, so I'm not sure if that game had a decent feature set or if it was totally bare-bones.

[Kiken]

Got my copy moments ago. There is no tate option for the 3 vertical-screen games. No replay saving either. There are leaderboards and they're broken down by independent shot/ship type for the respective games.

There are some odd hiccups in the games... For instance, whenever a text message is sent in Radirgy, the game freaks out and the frame rate dips like crazy. Other parts of the game run really fast ( there's no slowdown during boss battles). Sound balancing is also all over the place.

I'll report on more later when I've had more time with it.

[Pretas]

Sounds awful, and there's little to no chance of this being patched now that Sakura Flamingo has left Klon. True Milestone quality, folks.

[Oniros]

No tate in a 2014 release? Wtf is this shit?

[pestro87]

Uh oh, I'm not liking the sound of this :/ Was it the same on the Wii port of Radirgy on the Milestone Shooting Collection in terms of slowdown and sound balancing issues?

[Kiken]

The collection does have proper 4:3 screen support (which makes the omission of tate even weirder), so at least for those that don't want to deal with input lag on modern displays, you can use a CRT TV or monitor.

Uh oh, I'm not liking the sound of this :/ Was it the same on the Wii port of Radirgy on the Milestone Shooting Collection in terms of slowdown and sound balancing issues?

Didn't the Wii collection (well, at least the first one) require a code to unlock tate mode for Radirgy and Karous? Or was that only the western release?

[RaidenViper]

No TATE option for these games? That sucks...

[drunkninja24]

The collection does have proper 4:3 screen support (which makes the omission of tate even weirder), so at least for those that don't want to deal with input lag on modern displays, you can use a CRT TV or monitor.

Uh oh, I'm not liking the sound of this :/ Was it the same on the Wii port of Radirgy on the Milestone Shooting Collection in terms of slowdown and sound balancing issues?

Didn't the Wii collection (well, at least the first one) require a code to unlock tate mode for Radirgy and Karous? Or was that only the western release?

I don't recall having to enter a code to get tate on my US copy of Ultimate Shooting Collection

Seems so bizarre they would omit it entirely for this game...

[Kiken]

A quick run down of the two additional modes:

Death Mode:
Defend Tadayo's workshop. Pure survival, exactly like the version in Radirgy Noa Massive (except that all the enemies are from IllVelo). The lifebar is no longer visible. As enemies are able to attack the workshop, text messages from Tadayo pop up showing her getting her shit rocked. When her head turns into a skull, the workshop explodes. You can select any ship from any game in this mode. Supports 2 player simultaneous.

Mixture Mode:
Play through the five levels from IllVelo without any of the bonus levels or any kind of appreciable scoring system (no multipliers to speak of, just destroy as much as possible). Unlike the NAOMI arcade conversions on the collection, free play is unlocked from the start. You can select any ship from any game in this mode. Supports 2 player simultaneous.

Special note, there is no Chaos Field in either of the above modes. The Mixed Blue, Flawed Red and Fake Yellow just built meter on their 10 slots by attacking and destroying enemies (no meta cubes to collect).

Dat Radirgy leaderboard!

[HydrogLox]

I don't recall having to enter a code to get tate on my US copy of Ultimate Shooting Collection

From the options you could only rotate the screen for horizontal play. To rotate the controls for tate operation you needed to enter a code (Main Menu-Wii Remote: Left, Right, Left, Right, Up, Up, 1, 2).

[BulletMagnet]

Got my copy in today, here are a few additional bits and pieces:

- Installing the game to the HD is somewhat hefty, over 3GB.

- I found the default sound effect volume irritatingly high, and ended up lowering it several notches in the options menu...the only other options, as it happens, are to remap the controller buttons.

- It's particularly unfortunate that tate mode indeed appears to be lacking here, for while the Wii compilations allowed it the screen would only rotate counter-clockwise, while most LCD monitors only go clockwise...too bad, I would have liked to play the tate games on something more easily rotate-able than a CRT.

- None of the alternate/extra modes for any of the games seem to be here outside of the separate "remix" and "death" modes Kiken detailed, it's just straight-up arcade mode otherwise.

- Being able to select all the different ships in the "special" modes does allow for a good deal of variation, though as Kiken said there's no obvious scoring system happening...one thing I did notice is that every formation of small-fry enemies contains one enemy with a little "tag" on it. Refresh my memory, was that in the original Illvelo, or is my mind playing tricks on me?

All in all it's a fairly serviceable way to play all the "main" Milestone stuff, but unfortunately it appears that hope for a "definitive" collection is more or less gone at this point.

[Kiken]

- I found the default sound effect volume irritatingly high, and ended up lowering it several notches in the options menu...the only other options, as it happens, are to remap the controller buttons.

Yeah, I had to do the same. Default is 8 (out of 10) for both Sound and Music. I cranked Music to 10 and dropped Sound back to 6... even then, some sound effects are still ridiculously loud. Kojiro's 123 Laser has an absurdly loud click/pop sound when it fires that drowns out everything. In both Death Mode and Mixture Mode, the ABS meter jingle for Kojiro and Kanemaki has been replaced by this grating cats-on-a-chalkboard clanging noise that is obnoxiously loud.

[BrianC]

I hate it when games have their volume really high. Chronoblast also does this though that one is with both sound effects and music. I like the keep my volume at a certain level, and it's frustrating to change it for one or two games. I didn't notice a volume control for Chronoblast either.

[system11]

Region locked? Seriously? It's like they want this to fail.

[Kiken]

It should be noted that uploading highscores to the leaderboards is extremely glitchy. Sometimes your scores simply won't update despite having gained a higher score and choosing not to continue.

And holy fuck at the slowdown in Chaos Field when nailing a max lock! I don't remember the DC rev ever quite turning into this much of a slide show. I'm going to pull out the Dreamcast just to make sure.

*EDIT*

Just played some of DC Chaos Field. The slowdown is very even and you never lose control of the craft (movement is still precise). In the 360 rev, the slowdown is so egregious that the game drops frames... when this occurs, inputs are also ignored/dropped. None of the other games in the collection seem to suffer from this.

[Mero]

So basically, Radirgy has some problems with slowdown during the texts and/or running too fast, Chaos Field is completely fucked and the other games are OK?

[BIL]

Haha, every time I think it might be safe to let go of my DC Milestone stuff... (not that I would. got a monster STV->SS / Naomi->DC port boner)

[Kiken]

So basically, Radirgy has some problems with slowdown during the texts and/or running too fast, Chaos Field is completely fucked and the other games are OK?

Radirgy Noa seems to run pretty much exactly like the prior 360 release (most likely they just reused the code). I've outlined the issues with Radirgy and Chaos Field above (the odd hiccuping in Radirgy even effects the ending). I haven't spent much time at all with Karous, but what I did briefly play felt pretty much on par with the DC original (need to get back into playing this game again). IllVelo I can't really comment on as this is my first time playing the game.

[Mero]

. I haven't spent much time at all with Karous, but what I did briefly play felt pretty much on par with the DC original (need to get back into playing this game again). IllVelo I can't really comment on as this is my first time playing the game.

Right, thanks, well at least that's something positive.

I was unable to get this on release day but I'll still grab it now purely for Karous and Illvelo. I already have the standalone Radirgy Noa, I wasn't bothered about Chaos Field and if I wanted a bad port of Radirgy I would have bought Radirgy Precious.

[Oniros]

If you want to contact Klon about the state of this collection, even their Contact Us Website is in construction. Lovely.

EDIT: Here's their Twitter though. Doubt that they'll respond about the state of this release. Scumbags.

[Kiken]

So tonight I sat down with both this collection's version of Radirgy Noa and Radirgy Noa Massive's Arcade Mode to compare versions of RN.

And they're different.

Since I haven't played the NAOMI version, I can't say which is more accurate... but here's what I noticed:
In SFA RN, the Absonet circle during use is opaque. In RNM, the circle is translucent.
The "midboss" who shows up in stages 1, 3, 5 and 7 takes a lot more punishment in SFA RN than it does in RNM.
The "midboss" has a red hit-flash on all destructible parts in RNM which is absent in SFA RN.
The ground installations are larger in SFA RN than in RNM (which is really weird... also, it means there are fewer of them in certain locations).

There are probably some other differences, but those were the ones I immediately noticed.

Oh, and this collection is available on J-XBL as a GoD.

[Mero]

The "midboss" who shows up in stages 1, 3, 5 and 7 takes a lot more punishment in SFA RN than it does in RNM.

That's a pretty massive difference given the amount of time it takes to kill him anyway, I could only kill him on stage 7 in Radirgy Noa Massive.

[Phellan Wolf]

So is the compilation worth owning?

[Oniros]

So is the compilation worth owning?

Unless patched, absolutely not. It was my first time playing any of these games and they all have some weird loading times at the beginning of every stage. Chaos Field in particular, the one I wanted to check out the most, performs terribly all around. The better-performing game IMO is Radirgy Noa which you can get in a standalone package. The cherry for this turd cake is that they don't support any graphic modes like tate, filters, or scaling. If you don't believe me you can check the lovely reviews it's gotten on Amazon JP. I wish so bad I had spent this money on something else.

[BulletMagnet]

The "play as any ship" bits are kind of interesting, but overall I'd only recommend this one if it's your only option to play these games; as I said earlier, it's serviceable but not much more. To get all five base games in one place Milestone Collection 2 on the Wii is still probably your best bet, though if you want to play all the extra modes and such you'll need to assemble a patchwork quilt across a couple of systems, which probably won't be worth it for most people.

[Kiken]

The "play as any ship" bits are kind of interesting...

While I agree, I think Mixture Mode just scratched the surface of what could have been done. I think a mode where you play through a stage from each game would have been more inclusive (like stage 1 from IllVelo, then stage 2 from Chaos Field, then stage 3 from Radirgy... etc). Even though there's a mixture of 4:3 and 3:4 games in the collection, the lack of tate means you're restricted to playing with the screen in yoko anyway. Also, I think more enemy variety in Death Mode (not just enemies from IllVelo) would have made things far more interested.

Since I don't have a NAOMI GD-ROM unit or a Japanese Wii, for me, this collection was worth snagging so that I could play IllVelo. If you already have these games in some other fashion, you're not missing much by skipping this collection.