Haddock wrote:
As far as Ketsui is concerned I realize there is a PS4 port that is quite well received, but I would like to own the games as much on 1 platform if possible so I would prefer the 360 version if that port is just as good (again, the main game, I realize the PS4 port has new modes but I don’t care about those so much).
You should care! The PS4 port is part of the ShotTriggers series by M2, who are the best there is at porting older 2d games. Their attention to detail is obsessive, and ShotTriggers is pretty much the gold standard of shmup porting. The new modes are also not trivial, they're largely tailored toward training and facilitating genuine mastery of the game. Ie., having you play a small slice of a stage with certain relevant challenges set, which is much less daunting than going through the whole game over & over. If you can master each challenge for a stage, when you go back to play the whole thing through you'll know exactly what to do.
Though as others have noted, many of the reasons a port will be considered 'bad' are relatively small - ie., the arcade board ran at 57.4 fps for some dumb reason, while the home port is at 60 fps. Or the console uses a different resolution so things are scaled a couple of pixels differently. These elements will throw off someone who already has the game memorized backwards & forwards, but mean literally nothing to anyone who doesn't.
The one proviso is that sometimes those small issues will make a difference in scoring at the highest levels, so certain versions aren't used for 'official' high score lists. There's no reason they can't have their own, however.
The one thing you
should pay heed to is input lag. I thought it was no big deal - and it can definitely be overblown by some - until I learned to detect it. It will matter in a lot of ways, and change the whole feel of controlling the game. In a game with high latency your ship will feel "heavy" and sluggish, almost like you're dragging it. But at the same time, it will keep moving on screen after you've stopped inputting a direction because it's still catching up to your inputs. It will also mean that last second bomb you used to save yourself from an inescapable situation often doesn't come out in time. (Though that can actually be a good training tool in itself, forcing you to learn to recognize inescapable situations sooner).
The latency of the monitor/TV you use tends to be much larger than the games though. I highly recommend a rotatable monitor with 1 frame of lag, or a really good CRT for consoles with analog outputs. They're not expensive at all in the shmup scheme of things, and will be the single most impactful purchase you can make.
Help a noob out!
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