Aleste is coming back?!

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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Sengoku Strider »

KAI wrote:Space Megabore

Musha and Aleste 1-2 (on msx) are the best imo.
The key with Space Mega Force is to play it on wild difficulty, with the suicide bullets. It essentially becomes a bullet hell:

Image

I'm not aware of anything else quite like this on a 16-bit console. MUSHA would have benefited greatly from a bit more on screen intensity imo.

EDIT: Sorry it seems choppy & the bullet colours came out weird, am bad at gifs.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by TransatlanticFoe »

Herr Schatten wrote:
BrianC wrote:Hopefully, Power Strike II SMS can be played in the correct speed in the collection. I played a bit of it on Mega SG and I'm under the impression, that unlike some other JP made EU SMS games, it plays better in 50Hz. I noticed that, like Super Aleste, it gets sneaky with the difficulty mode and has the suicide bullet mode before easy mode in the options.
Apparently, main programmer Takayuki ”Jemini” Hirono has confirmed that the game was indeed supposed to be played at 50 Hz.
The trailer features some of the music and it's not sped up - promising start
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Austin »

Sengoku Strider wrote:The key with Space Mega Force is to play it on wild difficulty, with the suicide bullets. It essentially becomes a bullet hell:
Is Wild the hardest difficulty? I remember cranking it up all the way years back, got to Stage 2 and it felt like everything took so long to destroy that it felt pointless.

Those suicide bullets look fun though. I should try it again.
KAI wrote:Dennin kinda sux cause it's an unbalanced mess, and the localization tried to fix that and ruined it even more.
Is there a significant different in balance between the different regions? First time I'm hearing of that. I might have to try the Japanese version just to see. I'm only familiar with the US one.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by KAI »

Robo is harder but your options are stronger and behave differently, and some bosses can be killed literally in a few secs.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by BulletMagnet »

Austin wrote:Is Wild the hardest difficulty?
The difficulty levels in Space Megaforce are a bit weird; "Normal" is the easiest, "Hard" and "Hyper" are the more "traditional" higher difficulties, while "Crazy" and "Wild" focus on adding enemy death bullets.
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Austin
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Austin »

BulletMagnet wrote:
Austin wrote:Is Wild the hardest difficulty?
The difficulty levels in Space Megaforce are a bit weird; "Normal" is the easiest, "Hard" and "Hyper" are the more "traditional" higher difficulties, while "Crazy" and "Wild" focus on adding enemy death bullets.
Cool, thanks for the clarification. Will come in handy when I fire it up again.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by EmperorIng »

According to M2's Horii, they apparently made this collection because Aleste Branch was taking too long, so they whipped up something else Aleste related that was supposed to be quick n' easy... but then they went ahead and made a new Aleste game anyway! Guys definitely bite off a lot when they work on something.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by versionfiv »

m2 are great people, total support
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BIL
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by BIL »

Sengoku Strider wrote:The key with Space Mega Force is to play it on wild difficulty, with the suicide bullets. It essentially becomes a bullet hell:

I'm not aware of anything else quite like this on a 16-bit console. MUSHA would have benefited greatly from a bit more on screen intensity imo.

EDIT: Sorry it seems choppy & the bullet colours came out weird, am bad at gifs.
Instagiffer is really useful for game GIFs. It's free too! Image

Agreed on SMF/Super Aleste's upper difficulties, they're pretty great. SFC Phalanx's "Funny" difficulty has remarkable onscreen bullet counts, too, but unfortunately their visibility is god-awful; tiny red dots as opposed to SA's nice flashing orbs. Still worth a go.
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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Sengoku Strider »

BIL wrote:
Sengoku Strider wrote:The key with Space Mega Force is to play it on wild difficulty, with the suicide bullets. It essentially becomes a bullet hell:

I'm not aware of anything else quite like this on a 16-bit console. MUSHA would have benefited greatly from a bit more on screen intensity imo.

EDIT: Sorry it seems choppy & the bullet colours came out weird, am bad at gifs.
Instagiffer is really useful for game GIFs. It's free too!
Thanks, that's much better:

Image
Last edited by Sengoku Strider on Sun Oct 04, 2020 4:18 am, edited 11 times in total.
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BIL
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by BIL »

These are the ones you want, should be in the "get share links" box:

Image

"Linked BBCode" is great with big images, since you can append the image URL with "s" "m" "l" or "h" for small, medium, large and huge thumbnails, respectively, with the full res accessed by clicking the image. Here's the above image in "small" thumbnail, for example:

Image
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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Sengoku Strider »

EDIT: Nvrmind.

I didn't see that not the 'share' button, not the 'link' or 'direct link' or 'linked bb code' were what I had to use. There's a little arrow that appears if I hover over the image on Imgur which gives a drop down menu, which lets me have the BB code link. That one is for some reason is the only one not shown on the main edit & link screen you click through profile to get to.

This url was ever so slightly different from all the rest so it wouldn't display. It used to be I could just slap the page url into an [img] tag & call it a day.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by dave_wellington »

Is there any word on gadgets or changes/enhancements to any of the games? the footage so far has just been straight up emulation, hoping for a little more considering they put it under the M2ShotTriggers branding.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Flashman »

Austin wrote:
BulletMagnet wrote:
Austin wrote:Is Wild the hardest difficulty?
The difficulty levels in Space Megaforce are a bit weird; "Normal" is the easiest, "Hard" and "Hyper" are the more "traditional" higher difficulties, while "Crazy" and "Wild" focus on adding enemy death bullets.
Cool, thanks for the clarification. Will come in handy when I fire it up again.
Yup, will have to give that a go myself - I 1CCed the game on Normal on a first play though (the only level that killed me a couple of times was the one where you have to make tunnels in the rocks 7-8ish?) I love SHMUPS but am far from good at them, and usually have to put hours of practice in to hold my own at all, so SMF must be very easy on normal settings.

I have to say I forced my way though the game, it feels several levels too long and I've not touched it since, I Will crank it up sometime and give it another shot.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by jp »

If any of you wanted the LE (or the LE DX from the Sega Store) and didn't want to pay scalping scumbags for it, it's up at nin-nin-game.com for pre-order (went up this morning).
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Sengoku Strider »

jp wrote:If any of you wanted the LE (or the LE DX from the Sega Store) and didn't want to pay scalping scumbags for it, it's up at nin-nin-game.com for pre-order (went up this morning).
The price they have listed seems like a 40% markup? It shows as $315 CAD for me, 335 for the DX. Original price is ¥14800, which is $184 CDN. I've also read bad things about Nin-nin in general, that they're really bad about refunding pre-orders they can't fulfill.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by jp »

Oh. Well, it's not the $360+ I saw people mentioning earlier, and I imagine they have to cover their shipping costs and stuff like that, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I've ordered from Nin-Nin a bit in the past and haven't had any problems with them (not saying that it's impossible that they'd rip someone off, but I haven't personally had that experience). Nin-nin is usually who I buy from if I want something that was exclusively on some Japanese game company's webstore (and thus wouldn't be shipped to the US).
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Sengoku Strider »

jp wrote:Oh. Well, it's not the $360+ I saw people mentioning earlier, and I imagine they have to cover their shipping costs and stuff like that, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I've ordered from Nin-Nin a bit in the past and haven't had any problems with them (not saying that it's impossible that they'd rip someone off, but I haven't personally had that experience). Nin-nin is usually who I buy from if I want something that was exclusively on some Japanese game company's webstore (and thus wouldn't be shipped to the US).
I have zero experience with them myself. But when their price for the normal collection came up a few bucks cheaper than Play-Asia's the other day, I searched their name because I wasn't familiar with them. Anecdotes of people encountering hostile customer service and unfulfilled orders came up.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by RawlingGunnar »

Sengoku Strider wrote:I have zero experience with them myself. But when their price for the normal collection came up a few bucks cheaper than Play-Asia's the other day, I searched their name because I wasn't familiar with them. A bunch of anecdotes of people encountering hostile customer service and unfulfilled orders came up.
Probably best to steer clear.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

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Sengoku Strider wrote:
jp wrote:Oh. Well, it's not the $360+ I saw people mentioning earlier, and I imagine they have to cover their shipping costs and stuff like that, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I've ordered from Nin-Nin a bit in the past and haven't had any problems with them (not saying that it's impossible that they'd rip someone off, but I haven't personally had that experience). Nin-nin is usually who I buy from if I want something that was exclusively on some Japanese game company's webstore (and thus wouldn't be shipped to the US).
I have zero experience with them myself. But when their price for the normal collection came up a few bucks cheaper than Play-Asia's the other day, I searched their name because I wasn't familiar with them. Anecdotes of people encountering hostile customer service and unfulfilled orders came up.
Well, I successfully purchased the Capcom e-store versions of Onimusha (Switch) and Okami (Switch), Space Invaders Invincible Edition DX (Switch), ESP.ra.de Limited Edition (Switch), and the Gorgeous Dream Edition of Dragon Quest XI (Switch) from them (maybe some other stuff too that I'm forgetting). I'll let you folks know if I wind up getting the Aleste Game Gear DX Edition from them. If I don't, I will undertake the simple task of filing a claim with PayPal. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Granted, if you're in the US and want the Aleste Game Gear edition for the Switch, I'm not sure what other option would even be available to you at this point. Even at a $360+ price point, Play-Asia sold out, I don't know that ncsx.com even gets new games anymore, and ShopTo.net doesn't seem to even be carrying this (though I think they're mostly for EU imports).
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Sengoku Strider »

jp wrote:Granted, if you're in the US and want the Aleste Game Gear edition for the Switch, I'm not sure what other option would even be available to you at this point. Even at a $360+ price point, Play-Asia sold out, I don't know that ncsx.com even gets new games anymore, and ShopTo.net doesn't seem to even be carrying this (though I think they're mostly for EU imports).
These are excellent points.

But then I look at paying $400 when it's all said & done for ports of 5 Master System ROMs, some stickers & a $50 toy Game Gear that's too small to use and I don't know if I can make my fingers do that click.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by evil_ash_xero »

Something I have been wondering about for a while... Has anyone measured the lag in the M2 ports? I know they're really well regarded on those kind of things, I was just wondering if anyone had
numbers.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Sengoku Strider »

evil_ash_xero wrote:Something I have been wondering about for a while... Has anyone measured the lag in the M2 ports? I know they're really well regarded on those kind of things, I was just wondering if anyone had
numbers.
Electric Underground keeps a database here:

https://electricunderground.io/shmup-in ... -database/

Shmup Junkie has a few lag testing videos on his Youtube channel as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3GKfvuMTpM&t=4s
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Majima_Kai »

Hello, if youre looking for the Aleste Collection Game Gear Micro Bundled DX Pack Switch/PS4, i bought mine from Hobby Genki, before i was fistin by nin nin game, but no more, HG is always less expensive for this kind of DX Pack, same for the new Darius.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Jonpachi »

Nin-Nin-Game has both the Switch and PS4 versions of the limited edition up for pre-order for the normal price if anyone is still looking.

https://www.nin-nin-game.com/en/ps4-new ... -ps4-.html
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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Sengoku Strider »

Majima_Kai wrote:Hello, if youre looking for the Aleste Collection Game Gear Micro Bundled DX Pack Switch/PS4, i bought mine from Hobby Genki, before i was fistin by nin nin game, but no more, HG is always less expensive for this kind of DX Pack, same for the new Darius.
Thanks, I didn't know about these guys.
Jonpachi wrote:Nin-Nin-Game has both the Switch and PS4 versions of the limited edition up for pre-order for the normal price if anyone is still looking.

https://www.nin-nin-game.com/en/ps4-new ... -ps4-.html
In the conversation a few posts up, you'll see Nin-nin's price, while less than scalpers or Play-Asia, is actually a pretty significant markup. This is the original price, about 40% less:

Image

Hobby Genki, as mentioned by Majima above, while still jacking up the price is a bit cheaper than Nin-nin:

https://hobby-genki.com/en/switch/513-a ... ition.html
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Jonpachi »

Ah ok, missed that. It's a hard pass for me regardless. If the Game Gear micro was made with quality I'd go for it, but it seems to be cheap junk from the reviews I've seen so far.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by BrianC »

Jonpachi wrote:Ah ok, missed that. It's a hard pass for me regardless. If the Game Gear micro was made with quality I'd go for it, but it seems to be cheap junk from the reviews I've seen so far.
Most of the complaints I heard so far are about the size and number of games. I heard the screen quality and controls are good (the former seems to be true since the screen seems to be clear even when blown up in a 1080p video). I found the Tiny Arcade series surprisingly playable for the size, though the conversions themselves are imperfect (though some of the arcade tricks actually work in Pac-Man).
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Fudoh »

Size aside (it's really no fun), the display is also scaling the content. While the GB Micro was razor-sharp due it's 1:1 pixel match with the actual content, the GG micro's display does have a higher resolution than its content has, which adds an unnecessary layer of blurriness.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by BrianC »

Fudoh wrote:Size aside (it's really no fun), the display is also scaling the content. While the GB Micro was razor-sharp due it's 1:1 pixel match with the actual content, the GG micro's display does have a higher resolution than its content has, which adds an unnecessary layer of blurriness.
I don't doubt it's upscaled, but it certainly didn't look blurry in 1080p videos. Not to mention that the original GG's display has issues with blurriness. Doesn't GG do something odd with the resolution?

Personally, I find the Mega SG the best way to play actual GG carts currently.
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