Aleste is coming back?!

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ATTRACTS
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by ATTRACTS »

Special World wrote:Surprised by how fresh these games feel. Is there an option to remove sprite flicker? Sorry if I missed it.

ED: also, what is that little “press Y to check this box” message at the beginning of GGAleste3?
all the games have it, it's to disable that instruction pop up from happening the next time you play.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by steveovig »

I got my copy last week and I've been really enjoying these games. I managed to beat the first Gamegear game earlier today and it was great. I nearly beat it on Special mode on my first try, so I figured I could tackle Normal mode pretty easily. But, it took a few tries to get a groove going and beat it. The Challenge mode serves as a bit of a good practice mode, and helped with some of the bosses. I just hate how the leaderboards don't track high scores of people who have completed it, and only times. I also hate, and I'm sure this has been mentioned, how Challenge mode really screws you on points for doing anything other than no-missing any challenge. At least, give me 1000 points or something for only dying once.

I also have Esp Ra De coming tomorrow, so I'll be juggling Aleste with that.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by xxx1993 »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46vMsYGQLNc

Guys, Senjin, that M2 shmup... It's an Aleste game!
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by BrianC »

It looks like there may be yet another Aleste related game coming, aside from the two already announced. Power Strike III was mentioned in the PS4 update notes along with Mark III. When I tried looking it up, all I could find was a singe twitter post that mentions that it's a brand new game with FM sound.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by prophetic »

xxx1993 wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46vMsYGQLNc

Guys, Senjin, that M2 shmup... It's an Aleste game!
I'm on my cellphone, but timestamp that man. It's toward the end, 2:31:09.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by xxx1993 »

BrianC wrote:It looks like there may be yet another Aleste related game coming, aside from the two already announced. Power Strike III was mentioned in the PS4 update notes along with Mark III. When I tried looking it up, all I could find was a singe twitter post that mentions that it's a brand new game with FM sound.
Is M2 really going all out with Aleste?
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by mojilove »

BrianC wrote:It looks like there may be yet another Aleste related game coming, aside from the two already announced. Power Strike III was mentioned in the PS4 update notes along with Mark III. When I tried looking it up, all I could find was a singe twitter post that mentions that it's a brand new game with FM sound.
Gonna paste my reply from the Toaplan thread because they didn't announce it afaik:

afaik the update was to put the "Sega Mark III" (in a nutshell, the equivalent to the SMS in Japan) logo at the start of Aleste, because it wasn't there before (but should have been).
The tweet that you mentioned is someone simply asking for M2 to make Aleste III as a new game for Master System - not a response to news.

The update also mentions Power Strike II in relation to fixing a bug where people got on the ranking if they used continues, but the name of the game has the character "に" after it. Did you see the last part of "Power Strike IIに" as "III" perhaps?
I'm looking at the patch notes on m2's website (https://m2stg.com/aleste-collection/news.php) but maybe it was mistakenly written as "Power Strike III" and not "II" in the update notes on PS4?
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by BrianC »

Thanks for the info on what was actually updated. Too bad they didn't "fix" Power Strike II's aspect ratio. The other games cut the borders off, but Power Strike keeps them, despite apparently having an aspect ratio that wasn't optimized for PAL like the rest of the game.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

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I'm having such a good time with GG Aleste II (Switch's handheld mode was made for this, the analog stick's perfectly up to the task) that I'm seriously considering whether I should add it to my top 25. I really hope Sega looks at this and SNK's Neo Geo Pocket Color ports and sees the potential for a Switch Game Gear collection like their Genesis one. I was looking at the system's library and it actually has far more games I'd want to play at this point than the Master System does.

One thing I'm unsure of though - In GG Aleste II what is the gadget titled 'Auto Level Control' tracking?
steveovig wrote: I just hate how the leaderboards don't track high scores of people who have completed it, and only times.
In the instructions they explain that because the games have endless patterns you can milk (shooting boss bullets, etc.), focusing on score would be pretty pointless. You'd just have a top 200 of counter stops, and they wouldn't be any fun to get. They do say they built GG Aleste not to have this, so it's the one game on the collection ranked by score.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

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Sengoku Strider wrote:I'm having such a good time with GG Aleste II (Switch's handheld mode was made for this, the analog stick's perfectly up to the task) that I'm seriously considering whether I should add it to my top 25.
It is damn good. I finished it just the other night and was amazed at how well it holds up. I like that it's very mindfully made for portable play. It's not a total cakewalk, but it is something you'll 1CC across a half-dozen sessions or so and walk away satisfied with the small-bites experience.

I actually had originally purchased the Aleste collection on PS4, and was playing it with my HRAP on a full-size tv, but it started to dawn on me that I was doing it all wrong. I bit the bullet and bought the Switch version to play in handheld mode and it all just made so much more sense.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Sengoku Strider »

Jonpachi wrote:
Sengoku Strider wrote:I'm having such a good time with GG Aleste II (Switch's handheld mode was made for this, the analog stick's perfectly up to the task) that I'm seriously considering whether I should add it to my top 25.
It is damn good. I finished it just the other night and was amazed at how well it holds up. I like that it's very mindfully made for portable play. It's not a total cakewalk, but it is something you'll 1CC across a half-dozen sessions or so and walk away satisfied with the small-bites experience.

I actually had originally purchased the Aleste collection on PS4, and was playing it with my HRAP on a full-size tv, but it started to dawn on me that I was doing it all wrong. I bit the bullet and bought the Switch version to play in handheld mode and it all just made so much more sense.
I fully recognize that GGA3 is a more thoughtfully designed game which resolves a lot of the balance issues of 2, but I think I might actually be having more fun with 2 simply because it's a more chill game that's still got its moments of intensity. I 1CCed the first GG Aleste the first time I played it, but according to the battle history I've got a dozen runs in 2 and the best I've managed to accomplish is choking on the last boss.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by BrianC »

I personally feel that the GG Aleste games are among the best games for the system.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Herr Schatten »

I have difficulties making up my mind about GG Aleste II. While I generally enjoyed my time with it and I won't deny that it plays reasonably well, I feel that it's the least polished game in the collection by quite a margin. Not only because of the occasional heavy glitch it gives the impression of a product that's been rushed out the door. In fact, I'd go as far as calling it unfinished.

- Stage 3 seems to be missing a proper boss. Instead there's just a bigger enemy that's not really different from the midbosses in other stages.

- The final boss looks impressive, but it doesn't really do a whole lot. After the boss right before it it seems strangely anticlimactic, as if they already had done the graphics and didn't want them to go to waste even if they couldn't finish programming the boss's attack patterns in time.

- While the bosses at least give the impression that some thought went into them, the stages have you literally fighting the same 3-5 enemy formations throughout the game.

The game's a strange beast, really, and the strong caravan vibe it gives off is fun in its own way, but compared to GGA1, that one seems much more thoughtfully constructed (even if it's devoid of challenge).
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

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Herr Schatten wrote:The final boss looks impressive, but it doesn't really do a whole lot. After the boss right before it it seems strangely anticlimactic, as if they already had done the graphics and didn't want them to go to waste even if they couldn't finish programming the boss's attack patterns in time.
I took it as the same thing that Konami did in a lot of shmups, where the final boss is intentionally weak. As the player, you've broken through their defenses and cornered their cowardly and weak leader.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

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^^^ smoothly parlayed into Salamander 2's DOOM, who'll SCURR you like you've never been SCURRED BEFORE! :cool:
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by Sengoku Strider »

Herr Schatten wrote:I have difficulties making up my mind about GG Aleste II. While I generally enjoyed my time with it and I won't deny that it plays reasonably well, I feel that it's the least polished game in the collection by quite a margin. Not only because of the occasional heavy glitch it gives the impression of a product that's been rushed out the door. In fact, I'd go as far as calling it unfinished.

- Stage 3 seems to be missing a proper boss. Instead there's just a bigger enemy that's not really different from the midbosses in other stages.

- The final boss looks impressive, but it doesn't really do a whole lot. After the boss right before it it seems strangely anticlimactic, as if they already had done the graphics and didn't want them to go to waste even if they couldn't finish programming the boss's attack patterns in time.

- While the bosses at least give the impression that some thought went into them, the stages have you literally fighting the same 3-5 enemy formations throughout the game.

The game's a strange beast, really, and the strong caravan vibe it gives off is fun in its own way, but compared to GGA1, that one seems much more thoughtfully constructed (even if it's devoid of challenge).
This might well be true, I hadn't thought about it that way but the stage 3 "boss" certainly does stand out, and if you were short a boss when it was time to ship it would make sense to have that gap in the middle rather than compromise your opening or ending. Although Super Aleste also lacks a level 3 boss (or a level 6 boss, for that matter) so maybe it's just a Compile thing.

The other thing that stands out is weapon balance. Napalm seems to outclass every other weapon in just about everything but firing speed.

On the other hand, they made an entire new engine for the bonus stages - and one which runs better than most every comparable Master System attempt at the same perspective.

There are unique mid-bosses for every level. Many level bosses are multi-stage.

Perhaps you were exaggerating for effect by saying 3-5 enemy formations? There's more than that in the first stage, and new enemies are introduced each level.

All in all, I look at it as having more to it than the majority of 8-bit STGs did. I'd have to go back & play the first GG again to compare, but my initial impression on finishing that then going straight to GGA2 was "yeah, this feels more polished."

That said, I spent another hour with GGA3 last night and now I'm leaning back that way again, lol.
Last edited by Sengoku Strider on Thu Feb 11, 2021 11:08 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

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Maybe this is my ignorance of older STGs, but i find it kind of crazy that a game as old as Aleste is so damn manic. It’s crazy!

Also Power Strike 2 feels euroshmuppy to me. It’s still pretty fun but it’s got this weird spongey “when am i actually gonna get hit” vibe to it.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

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Jonpachi wrote:I took it as the same thing that Konami did in a lot of shmups, where the final boss is intentionally weak. As the player, you've broken through their defenses and cornered their cowardly and weak leader.
I hadn't thought of that. That may very well be the case, but it would have been a first (and last?) for Compile, wouldn't it?


Sengoku Strider wrote:The other thing that stands out is weapon balance. Napalm seems to outclass every other weapon in just about everything but firing speed.
Balance is a bit off in the game in general. The N weapon is vastly overpowered, but the difficulty distribution of the stages is a bit uneven, too.
Sengoku Strider wrote:On the other hand, they made an entire new engine for the bonus stages - and one which runs better than most every comparable Master System attempt at the same perspective.
There's no denying the technical achievement, but I don't really care about those stages, and to me they feel a bit like padding out a game that's short on content.
Sengoku Strider wrote:Perhaps you were exaggerating for effect by saying 3-5 enemy formations? There's more than that in the first stage, and new enemies are introduced each level.
I was exaggerating, but not much. I did a quick count while watching a replay, and there are about 10 different types of regular enemies in the game in total. The multicoloured orbs that sweep down the screen in a sine wave pattern or come from behind alone make up about half (!) of the attack waves in the game. As only stage 5 has enemies that don't appear in any other stage, other recurring enemies make up the rest. Each individual type appears in at least half of the stages.
Sengoku Strider wrote:I'd have to go back & play the first GG again to compare, but my initial impression on finishing that then going straight to GGA2 was "yeah, this feels more polished."
I used to think similarly. After I had breezed through the game on my first try, it left little to no impression on me. Upon revisiting it I paid more attention, though, and now I appreciate the apparent work that went into stage design and enemy patterns.


Special World wrote:Power Strike 2 feels euroshmuppy to me. It’s still pretty fun but it’s got this weird spongey “when am i actually gonna get hit” vibe to it.
How far in it are you? I remember thinking similarly during the early stages of the game, but that changes quite drastically in the later ones.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

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I like how Power Strike II has nods to Puyo Puyo tunes in a few of the songs. The portraits before each stage remind me of Gun.Smoke.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

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Sengoku Strider wrote:Although Super Aleste also lacks a level 3 boss (or a level 6 boss, for that matter) so maybe it's just a Compile thing.
It's been a bit since I last fired up Space Megaforce, but IIRC those stages did have bosses, albeit fairly non-threatening ones; stages 3, 6 and 9 are pseudo-bonus levels and not terribly hard, but each one does have a unique "boss" enemy that harasses you at different points during the stage and can finally be blown up at the end. I guess you could call them "mini-bosses" if you want to, but I'll leave that to more persnickety types than myself to hash out.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

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BulletMagnet wrote:
Sengoku Strider wrote:Although Super Aleste also lacks a level 3 boss (or a level 6 boss, for that matter) so maybe it's just a Compile thing.
It's been a bit since I last fired up Space Megaforce, but IIRC those stages did have bosses, albeit fairly non-threatening ones; stages 3, 6 and 9 are pseudo-bonus levels and not terribly hard, but each one does have a unique "boss" enemy that harasses you at different points during the stage and can finally be blown up at the end. I guess you could call them "mini-bosses" if you want to, but I'll leave that to more persnickety types than myself to hash out.
Sure, and that applies here too. You fight a thing at the end of GGA2 stage 3, it just feels very mid-bossy.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by BIL »

Super Aleste's third boss is actually a flying DJ booth whose role is to spin New Order singles. :wink:
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by xxx1993 »

It's more like a mini-boss, though, and not a full boss battle. And yes, that music sounds a lot like New Order.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

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Specifically the chorus/outro from "The Perfect Kiss", preceded by a "Blue Monday" lick, the BGM missing from the SNES version. :lol: Can't be too careful I guess! Last I heard, Barney and Hooky were still suing the fuck outta each other over royalties. Image
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by xxx1993 »

I'm also hearing some of "Fine Time" in the music.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

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True! I guess the whole track is a mini covers medley of sorts. It's enough to make me treasure the SFC cart, being into Compile and Barney/co alike. Image
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

Post by xxx1993 »

And that's one of the many reasons why Super Aleste is vastly superior to Space Megaforce.
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

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Made it to Stage 6 boss on GG3 Special today. Feeling pretty good about that. Seems like All Range is the way to go for the easiest clear—clearing out suicide bullets is immensely helpful, and Firewall is a little too unreliable.

Tried to get a higher score on normal mode, and thought i’d try Rising Laser since I got the clear with Chaser. Figured that it was a damage weapon and so I could get more kills. Well, my score was way lower. So I guess chaser is the way to go? What are your guys’ feel on which weapons are easiest and which net you the highest score? I know it’s basically “kill lots of dudes” but I was kinda surprised how it worked out in the end.

At any rate, can’t believe I almost skipped this one. This is an all-time banger of a shmup imo. I don’t really know that I can say GG3 “looks” like an Aleste game, seeing as the style varies from game to game. But taken on its own merits, this is just one of the damned best straightforward shmups i’ve ever played. Just pure fire on all levels. And the classic Aleste games are pretty good too :wink:
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

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I'm glad got the SFC cart too, as well as a cart that can play both versions (non-Pro SD2SNES, though I mostly stick to the JP Super Aleste version).
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Re: Aleste is coming back?!

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Special World wrote:Made it to Stage 6 boss on GG3 Special today. Feeling pretty good about that. Seems like All Range is the way to go for the easiest clear—clearing out suicide bullets is immensely helpful, and Firewall is a little too unreliable.
I haven't played special extensively yet, but I think trying to tackle that mode without either of those weapons is very difficult. Out of the two, I'd also prefer A. I like how it is a nod to the very similar weapon 1 in the original Aleste, whose bullet-canceling powers are similarly your best bet if you want to clear the game. I think N is meant as a throwback to the same weapon in GG Aleste II, but thankfully it has been rebalanced. In fact, I feel that weapon balance is an area where GGA3 really excels.
Special World wrote:What are your guys’ feel on which weapons are easiest and which net you the highest score? I know it’s basically “kill lots of dudes” but I was kinda surprised how it worked out in the end.
For normal mode, C is definitely the way to go. It's universally useful and can be kept for the whole game, as long as you can keep it powered up. I'd only switch to R for the final boss. Theoretically, T should be good for scoring, because you can have both a wide spread and still point blank bigger enemies, but I found it too weak even at highest power. A is decent. D might have its uses, but all that rotating confuses the hell out of me, so I avoid that one like the plague.

C is good for scoring, because there's often a lot going on and you tend to miss smaller popcorn enemies with more focused weapons, often depriving you of the bonuses for destroying whole formations. To be perfectly honest, I don't really like playing the game for score, as getting highscores inevitably involves milking some of the bosses.
Special World wrote:At any rate, can’t believe I almost skipped this one. This is an all-time banger of a shmup imo. I don’t really know that I can say GG3 “looks” like an Aleste game, seeing as the style varies from game to game. But taken on its own merits, this is just one of the damned best straightforward shmups i’ve ever played. Just pure fire on all levels. And the classic Aleste games are pretty good too :wink:
GGA3 is just an impossibly accomplished game. I can't really think of anything that could be improved, except that I sometimes wish the Game Gear had better sound hardware. The music in GGA3 is fine as far as composition is concerned, but the PSG is just a piece of junk. Regarding the visuals, I think the game's bosses remind me a lot of the style in DP/DDP, with all these sharp angles. The third boss also seems to reference Garegga, doesn't it?
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