bcass wrote:How is the Hamster release compared to the Anniversary Collection version?
The PS4 one is absolutely perfect, imo. I believe you've cleared ACA Gradius II and Darius on PS4? Same standard. ACA Thunder Cross and Darius were both developed by Gotch Technologies, association with whom seems to have profoundly improved Hamster (ACA Gradius II is apparently theirs). Gotch are staffed by founders of Rutubo Games (developers of the beautiful 32X/SS Space Harrier/After Burner II & SS OutRun), and for quality remain on par with M2. Sometimes better - their
Arcade Archives: Contra was that game's first home release, licensed or not, to correctly emulate the 3D stages, something MAME just recently fixed (though MAME's "Continue?" graphic remains bugged).
(of course, nobody approaches M2 for combined quality
and extras
)
ACA: Thunder Cross includes Old Japan, New Japan (said to be subtly harder... I think it may be the loop? Japanese arcade ops complained about the old ver, BITD), Europe (seems very much like Old Japan) and US (the notorious one - removes the Option spacing mechanic, and most of the special weapons, instituting a traditional Tiger Heli bomb... as SCC says, it's an interesting oddity for completists). Apparently, it has all the DIP switch settings missing from the Anniversary Collection, too. Even lets you reverse the player sides, if you feel like using the red ship without hooking up a second controller.
TC being a 60hz-adjacent board, it runs smooth as hell. I spent all Saturday eyeballing my PS4's monitor and never saw a gatdamn thing. Then I played VS. Gradius & VS. Castlevania (dat Famicom refresh
) and ACA: Rygar (another good display benchmark - long, contiguous scrolling vistas without a hint of slowdown), to identically good times. I hope someday we get M2/Gotch/Hamster-quality emulation with VRR support. That's the one thing I'm left wanting at this stage.
I've never tried ACA: Thunder Cross on Switch, but it seems to get similarly good reviews there, too.
TLDR: Good stuff.