shmuplations.com - 12/1 Zanac

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BPzeBanshee
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Re: shmuplations.com - 2/17 Triangle Service

Post by BPzeBanshee »

blackoak wrote:@BPzeBanshee, I'm glad that part made sense and is reflected in the actual code. I've done a lot of sound production and knew what he was talking about, manual fades being a pretty standard part of working with audio. But the "loop point" terminology (his words) was a little confusing. I guess there isn't really a more eloquent or simple way to describe that.
Yeah I've always had a little bit of trouble explaining it to folks. It's much easier explained visually.

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For those who aren't so savvy, some of G-Stream's tracks that had an intro piece was actually made into two tracks. Since apparently defining an automatic loop point for a single sound was not going to happen Fujino prebaked it instead with a fadein to stop it, presumably to stop it sounding clippy when going from the first track to the second. It just comes off as even weirder though because of that volume drop. If memory serves only Stage 2, 5A, and the not-Stage-1 boss themes had to make use of this.
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Re: shmuplations.com - 2/17 Triangle Service

Post by trap15 »

Yeah, the sound hardware used doesn't allow playing from the middle of a track, so it was basically the only solution, though I don't really know why it'd need to fade out and back in since it switches tracks instantly. Maybe the dev hardware had delay between tracks, it certainly sounds like the dev hardware changed a lot during development.
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Re: shmuplations.com - 2/17 Triangle Service

Post by RHE »

So, the loop point was used in a special tricky way or only to compensate a hardware problem?
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Re: shmuplations.com - 2/17 Triangle Service

Post by Pretas »

Glad to see the T-S interview translated sooner than I expected. Much appreciation to blackoak.

It's too bad Fujino wasn't willing to go into detail about his dealings with the shady "Oriental Soft", and how he got shafted by the G-Stream PCBs being manufactured to extremely poor quality standards. (There is also the mysterious unemulated G-Stream revision with an alternate title screen.) Presumably Oriental were the ones who bailed on XII Stag, before Fujino was able to partner with Taito to get it released. Also interesting to learn that Naoto cut his teeth on Konami's M2 games.

Looking forward to Shooting Love Trilogy, which I hope does not become vaporware.
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blackoak
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Re: shmuplations.com - 2/17 Triangle Service

Post by blackoak »

No problem. I would have translated it eventually, but it got voted on by a couple people last month, so that moved it to the top of the queue, hehe.

Not really worthy of updating the OT, but the Wolf Team thing I just translated has a very short interview on Granada.
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Re: shmuplations.com - 2/17 Triangle Service

Post by BIL »

Love Granada and topdown tank shooting in general, thanks!
Toyota: Granada’s sales point? I would say it’s all fronts: graphics, sound, and the extensive enemy algorithms. You can take any big character sprite from any stage—we revised them over and over, only using the ones that finally satisfied us.
Inoue: Toyota is by nature a huge fan of arcade games, so there may be parts in Granada that unconsciously reflect that influence. Granada itself is (Assault + Grobda) ÷ 2, right? (laughs)
Akishino: Up till now, the way we’ve preceded with our game production is to first create a story, and after that match a game structure to it. Thanks to that, our games have always had sections with very poor balance. This time, with Granada, we created the gameplay first and made up the story afterwards. Maybe this means that Granada will have a weaker story than our previous games, but by the same extent, the action has had much more importance placed on it.
Toshio Toyota was already a cool cat in my book, not only for Granada but later one of my favourite mecha action games, Ex-Ranza. I always picked up a vintage arcade influence from the former, though it was more Robotron I thought of. Dead simple topdown shooting, concealing a trove of content in the quirks of its player and enemy "characters." Ranza's action is more console in nature, but that same craftsmanship is apparent all over the game.

Lovely to see Grobda mentioned, there's the impetus I needed to fire up Namco Museum Vol 2 and give it a proper look instead of going straight for Mappy.
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Re: shmuplations.com - 2/17 Triangle Service

Post by Lordgalvar-II »

I just wanted to drop by and say thanks for all the interviews. The Triangle Service and Gun Frontier ones were great. Thanks.
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Re: shmuplations.com - 3/19 Gokujou Parodius, Mushi Futari

Post by blackoak »

@Lordgalvar-II, thanks!

bump with a couple new shmup interviews: a long Gokujou Parodius developer interview from 1994, and a shorter Mushihimesama Futari interview from 2006. I also translated the in-game dialogue between Reco and Palm... will probably do the other story/character text, unless it's been posted somewhere already? I found some dead links in old forum posts, so I'm not sure.

Looking at the patreon votes for March, next month will probably feature Burning Star or After Burner II unless a bunch of people all vote for something else at the last minute.
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Re: shmuplations.com - 3/19 Gokujou Parodius, Mushi Futari

Post by BulletMagnet »

How much unflavored, plain ramen can you eat?
This totally should have been the game's tagline.

Thanks as always for digging up this stuff and making it readable to so many more of us! :)

(One small error I noticed in the Mushi article - in the area about Reco's design you use the correct spelling of "brooch" in one spot but "broach" in another nearby.)
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Re: shmuplations.com - 3/19 Gokujou Parodius, Mushi Futari

Post by KAI »

Liner notes translations <3
You are awesome blackoak.
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Re: shmuplations.com - 3/19 Gokujou Parodius, Mushi Futari

Post by ACSeraph »

Really fun read, thanks for all your hard work!
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Re: shmuplations.com - 3/19 Gokujou Parodius, Mushi Futari

Post by CStarFlare »

I didn't realize that Hirow was supposed to be pronounced "hairo" until I read those dialogue translations. Interesting.

Thanks as always!

EDIT: Were those dialogue translations part of the source, or did you provide them as additional material? Spiritual Larsa doesn't have much to say, but I'd be curious to see if her personality is less... nasty... in that fight.
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Re: shmuplations.com - 3/19 Gokujou Parodius, Mushi Futari

Post by S_Fang »

CStarFlare wrote:Spiritual Larsa doesn't have much to say, but I'd be curious to see if her personality is less... nasty... in that fight.
She's tranquil and composed, but still intended to kill the player (and Reco/Palm). On gamefaqs you can find another translation of the dialogue, but I'm not sure if that is reliable.
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To Far Away Times
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Re: shmuplations.com - 3/19 Gokujou Parodius, Mushi Futari

Post by To Far Away Times »

That was a good read. Thank you.

Interesting that it's sorta implied that Maniac is the "suggested" way to play Futari, and Original for Mushihimesama. Maybe that's trying to read too much into a translation though...
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Re: shmuplations.com - 3/19 Gokujou Parodius, Mushi Futari

Post by Muchi Muchi Spork »

So THAT's what happened with the Futari stage 2 music... Namiki didn't compose it.

Thanks for the translation.
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Re: shmuplations.com - 3/19 Gokujou Parodius, Mushi Futari

Post by emphatic »

Great work as usual, thanks a lot!
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blackoak
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Re: shmuplations.com - 3/19 Gokujou Parodius, Mushi Futari

Post by blackoak »

Thanks everyone! I'm hard at work on the Fantasy Zone interview for next month right now, since based on the votes already in, it's almost certain to be selected.

@CStarFlare, I was using a jpwiki (that didn't have the Spiritual Larsa text) which had written out the dialogue, but I realize Cave has it all on their site. I'll try to get to that later this week and append it. S_Fang is right that there is a translation of the dialogue in that gamefaqs FAQ (I guess the text was translated for the iOS release?), and it looked fine to me, so there's always that in the meantime.

@To Far Away Times, yeah, if you read some of the other interviews about Mushihimesama, they talk a lot about wanting to make Original Mode first, and adding Maniac because they were concerned a simpler, "stoic" STG would alienate Cave fans. I've never really read anything like that for Futari, except what Ikeda says here--that both Original and Maniac were being promoted equally this time.
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Re: shmuplations.com - 4/1 Fantasy Zone

Post by blackoak »

bump with a very long and cool Fantasy Zone interview with designer/director Yoji Ishii. It's pretty detailed and goes over a lot of early Sega history too.

Working on Blazing Star next...
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Re: shmuplations.com - 4/7 Fantasy Zone, Blazing Star

Post by blackoak »

and the Blazing Star interview is now up! I translated the story and character bios too, which I don't believe were available before. Should give some more insight into the stage design etc.

that's probably it for shmups this month, but I do have a cool After Burner interview coming up next week...
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Re: shmuplations.com - 4/7 Fantasy Zone, Blazing Star

Post by emphatic »

Thanks, Mr. Awesome, Sir.
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Re: shmuplations.com - 4/7 Fantasy Zone, Blazing Star

Post by BulletMagnet »

Seems you've rated a mention on Kotaku.
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Re: shmuplations.com - 4/7 Fantasy Zone, Blazing Star

Post by CloudyMusic »

Really great content lately. Thanks again, Blackoak!
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Re: shmuplations.com - 4/7 Fantasy Zone, Blazing Star

Post by blackoak »

yeah, the Kotaku thing was a nice surprise. I'd sent them a couple e-mails in the past about different articles, but had never gotten a response. I think the gamasutra Mega Man post really raised the site's profile enough for them to consider it.

As I say on the about page, the whole site started as an outgrowth of the translations I was doing on the forum here. When I was new to shmups I was really inspired by the helpfulness of the community here and resources available in strat guides etc, so I wanted to contribute back in my own way. Who knows, maybe a few visitors to shmuplations will actually become more interested in shmups after reading some of the general gaming content there, hehe.

It definitely feels great to have it be recognized. :mrgreen: Honestly, I would have been happy to continue doing the site totally for free and "under the radar", but the time it all took just started to become unreasonable, so I'm really hopeful this bump will lead to more patreon support.

No shmup interviews on the horizon atm, though I did discover a cool little Pulstar interview in Neo Geo Freak magazine that I'd like to do soon.
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Re: shmuplations.com - 5/19 Senko no Ronde, Battle Garegga O

Post by blackoak »

bit of a shmup hiatus, but back now with a Senko no Ronde developer interview and Battle Garegga composer commentaries! Next month there's a special Zanac/Compile interview in STG Gameside #12, too, that I'm super excited about, and will probably translate right away hehe.
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Re: shmuplations.com - 5/19 Senko no Ronde, Battle Garegga O

Post by Skykid »

Funny how the Kotaku article has 30 comments talking about the Starfox artwork, and one completely misinformed individual:

"Western Developers aren’t so candid, considering “trade secrets” and whatnot."

Yeah right, because Japanese developers are famously forthcoming about absolutely everything they ever worked on and don't display a hint of modesty. Western devs on the other hand are tight-lipped and closed-doored when it comes to self-promotion about anything they ever produced and shy away from the limelight continually.

Well done Blackoak, it's fair to say your site is about a million times more valuable than Kotaku.
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Re: shmuplations.com - 5/19 Senko no Ronde, Battle Garegga O

Post by blackoak »

hehe, thanks Skykid. The Gunpei Yokoi interview that Kotaku also posted turned out better in that regard, actually.

Bump to round up a few new interviews over the last month. First, there's a cool Galaga interview for some true old school shmup insights. Nice glimpse into early Namco arcade dev too.

There's also a Tsuneki Ikeda interview I did last week which goes over general STG design ideas. I really liked it as a Cave fan.

Finally, there's two superplay interviews, one with Dame KK and the other with KTL-NAL, for your daily dose of scoring inspiration/motivation.
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Re: shmuplations.com - 7/14 Galaga, Ikeda, Superplayers

Post by emphatic »

Man, what a treat! :D
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Re: shmuplations.com - 7/14 Galaga, Ikeda, Superplayers

Post by popnmusic »

Thank you so much for your job!!
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Re: shmuplations.com - 8/27 Stunfest 2014, Espgaluda

Post by blackoak »

Just a quick bump with a couple shmup related interviews I did this month, in case anyone here missed them. First, I finally got around to translating the Stunfest superplayer interview from 2014, which was featured in STG Gameside. It's similar to the previous one I did for Stunfest 2013, with a little more of the now-usual "musing on the fate of STG" thrown in.

I also did a shorter Espgaluda developer/composer interview. It has some comments from Ichiro Mihara of Arika on the PS2 port. Nothing too surprising there, but the interview with SOU1, the main music composer, will be of great interest to fans of the OST.

Still trying to find the time for that amazing Compile/Zanac interview from the recent STG Gameside volume... :shock:
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Re: shmuplations.com - 8/27 Stunfest 2014, Espgaluda

Post by emphatic »

Thanks a lot!
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