M2 Toaplan collection

[BrianC]

Fire Shark only got a MD port didn't it? Really hope they'll at least pad it out with Flying Shark!

Saw PlayAsia had the Tiger bundle in stock so ordered the hell out of that (and chucked No More Heroes 1&2 in to make the quick post option worthwhile)

The title of the collection translates to Flying Shark! Shark! Shark!. It's definitely included and the twitter and linked webpage has screens.

[DMC]

Same Same Same and Flying Shark getting M2 treatment is pretty damn sweet.

I'd like it if Wardner was the extra action game but maybe it already got a good port? I really liked the arcade game, but just tried a handful of credits and it seemed pretty hard.

Toaplan had a lot fun, quirky non-STG titles so any extra game works for me. Me and dragoforce had a Toaplan non-STG gaming session playing them in chronological order and rating each of them. Pretty fun theme.

[BrianC]

I hope they get around to doing V-V and Slap Fight/ALCON. Both of those have killer MD versions, Slap Fight especially.

[Sengoku Strider]

I hope they get around to doing V-V and Slap Fight/ALCON. Both of those have killer MD versions, Slap Fight especially.

Slap Fight I'd have to think would be a shoo-in at some point, simply because of how influential it seems to have been to that generation of designers. V-V I'm absolutely all for...just as long as they tone down the screechy noise your shots make. Eep.

[UD2]

I hope they get around to doing V-V and Slap Fight/ALCON. Both of those have killer MD versions, Slap Fight especially.

Totally with you for most of it, but I disagree on the MD port of V-V being "killer." IMO it's probably the weakest Toaplan MD port and therefore particularly deserving of a better home release (especially with how much fun the original is, though I'm not sure that's a popular opinion from the threads I've seen on here). In particular, the reduced vertical resolution of the MD version really hurts the feel of the game. It's well done given the hardware limitations, but the game really needs better hardware. Sign me up as a day 1 buyer for that one!

[ZPScissors]

Seems you can't set the autofire rate to anything slower than 10hz which is a bit annoying but whatever, not a super big deal but I do hope they change that. That's my only complaint about this port though. Also I have to say, this is probably the best official practice mode in a shmup.

[bigbadboaz]

So have they included one of the arranged soundtracks for K. Tiger?

[evil_ash_xero]

I wish they would just hurry up and get to Batsugun, Dogyuun, and the Truxtons (particularly II). I know this is preservation and all, but they're bringing out some really old titles, here.
And at the rate they release these, it makes it more painful.

[XtraSmiley]

I wish they would just hurry up and get to Batsugun, Dogyuun, and the Truxtons (particularly II). I know this is preservation and all, but they're bringing out some really old titles, here.
And at the rate they release these, it makes it more painful.

I'm OK waiting, but I do agree with you a bit! By the time the really hot stuff arrives, we'll have stories about the PS6...

Real question though, do you think they will start doing PS5 branding eventually on these titles, as I'm not sure how long PS4 will be around. At least a year or two, but at their rate of 1 or 2 games a year, we'll blow through 2024 by the time some of these titles appear...

[BIL]

Teki Paki more like Teki Cracky Moreish AF What a lovely free gift. Haven't gotten to Get Star yet, but I'm loving this setup so far.

[heli]

Does tiger heli have automatic fire in all versions ?

[Rastan78]

Loving playing KT so far in this set. Think I'm gonna be motivated to go for the clear. The gadgets are really useful, for example the one that shows the item color rotation. Nothing worse in these old school Toaplan/Seibu style games than having an item change colors just as you pick it up. It can more or less end a run in KT.

Also the classic way of dying in these is having sniper tanks that roll out from the screen edge. When you don't have good routes yet they'll end up low on the screen as you're panning back to the side you get sniped. So M2 added a little caution sign that flashes on the screen edge where enemies like that are spawning. That will take a bit of the sting out of learning and creating routes in the beginning.

Just make sure not to spam the default 30hz shot. Either turn it way down or time your shots, especially when you aren't powered up yet. Otherwise the strict shot limit will definitely get you killed.

[Jonpachi]

I'm kind of annoyed to hear about the autofire timing not feeling quite right. That's actually the biggest reason I bought this set. I have Toaplan Shooting Battle on the Playstation, and it has no autofire at all. I've spent quite a lot of time trying to find a controller solution with a turbo function that was suitable, but haven't ever had a truly comfortable experience.

[OmegaFlareX]

Can someone confirm that there's no arranged BGM at all? Saw a stream last night and streamer couldn't find any options for that.

[BIL]

I had a quick look, didn't seem to be any. I'm totally JP-illiterate though, so grain of salt etc.

[heli]

I spare my joystick-buttons on this game then if they not included without updating.
I use autofire if it is in the game, emulator menus suck, and not adjustable speed, and if what speed you choose.
Basicly its cheating so if it is in the game i accept it as normal.

*I like the airwolf themed music very much, makes me buy faster if it has autofire.

[heli]

I already found a movie :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkH25_kRAJo

How do i show the movie in the post ?

[Jonpachi]

I spare my joystick-buttons on this game then if they not included without updating.
I use autofire if it is in the game, emulator menus suck, and not adjustable speed, and if what speed you choose.
Basicly its cheating so if it is in the game i accept it as normal.

*I like the airwolf themed music very much, makes me buy faster if it has autofire.

It's not cheating to save your hands from all that trauma. It's a very outdated practice to have a shmup that requires you to hammer the fire button for hours on end. Saying that potential repetitive-strain-injuries are the "right/real way to play" is silly. I don't wanna be 60 years old with crippled hands because I got a 1CC on a few old arcade games.

[Ghegs]

I'm kind of annoyed to hear about the autofire timing not feeling quite right. That's actually the biggest reason I bought this set. I have Toaplan Shooting Battle on the Playstation, and it has no autofire at all. I've spent quite a lot of time trying to find a controller solution with a turbo function that was suitable, but haven't ever had a truly comfortable experience.

There's a PS1/PS2 controller pass-through thing from Mayflash that plugs between the console and your controller and it can be used to give macros and autofire. So you can use whatever controller you want and enable autofire to whatever button you want. I have one and it worked well enough with the one game I did end up using it on, for the exact same reason that it lacked native autofire.

Found one on eBay, mine's an older model and has a different shape (it's square) and it specifies it works with PS1 while this lists newer consoles, but the innards are probably more or less the same.

[Rastan78]

I'm kind of annoyed to hear about the autofire timing not feeling quite right.

The autofire works perfectly. Same as it would on a PCB. You have a lot of options to set it to the speed you like. From 10 up to 30hz.

Someone stated it might be nice to go all the way down to 5hz. At least 10 is slow enough to where you don't get significant gaps in your shot pattern even with the starting pea shooter on KT.

30hz autofire is a double edged sword in many classic shmups since there is usually an on screen shot limit it can give you large gaps in your shot pattern.

Ways to deal with this and get a more even spacing are:
1. Use a lower rapid setting. For example if you watch Raiden superplays a lot of pros will use 15hz for regular play and 30hz for point blank only.

2. Manually tap the shot at a slower pace to get a few spaced out shots on screen then hold auto.

3. In a some games, more often horis, you can fire off the screen edge point blank then pull back from there.

A lot of classic games, Gradius, Raiden etc. have such a restrictive shot limit on the starting weapon that you're almost better off timing your shots to hit each enemy in the very beginning. Then once you're a bit powered up you can mindlessly mash or hold auto.

[scrilla4rella]

Real question though, do you think they will start doing PS5 branding eventually on these titles, as I'm not sure how long PS4 will be around. At least a year or two, but at their rate of 1 or 2 games a year, we'll blow through 2024 by the time some of these titles appear...

You might be surprised by the extended to which gamers in Japan are late adopters. When I lived there it seemed that last-gen games held their value for much longer than in the US. This combined with supply issues makes me think the PS4 still has a good 2-3 years left

[Atariboy]

With there being substantial numbers of PS4 gamers worldwide for the next several years combined with excellent PS4 backwards compatibility on the PS5, I think it would be a bit silly for a company like M2 or Hamster to shift to PS5 specific releases.

Right now they're reaching all gamers on modern Playstation hardware with a single release on a base platform that while old still offers ample power for these types of releases.

So I'm hoping to not see a shift here any time soon. Some day we'll see PS4 numbers be weak enough to not bother pursuing in favor of PS5 exclusive releases for retro style content like emulated classic arcade games, but I suspect it will occur only when the PS5 itself is about ready to be superseded by a successor. PS4 commercially has quite a bit of life left in it, although I imagine we'll start seeing many of the more demanding big AAA multiplatform releases fading away by 2023.

[Rastan78]

So are the yellow and green weapons in KT meant to be viable at all, or are they just complete fuckery? Land mines placed in between the red and blue weapons in the cycle meant to punish you for a mistimed pickup.

[BIL]

I know some capable dudes use Green to speedkill certain bosses. Those twin square gatling tanks in Stage 4 come to mind. Yellow is a legendary troll pickup. I seem to recall either Yuge or Uemura insisting it wasn't meant that way, haha.

The PCE version's Yellow upgrades to homing when maxed out, I hear. I guess the port staff weren't keen on it either...

[Rastan78]

Speaking of port staff, anyone know which ports were actually done in house by Toaplan in the day? Since they were an arcade focused dev, so many of the console versions were outsourced. I know Tatsujin MD was the first one they did.

[BIL]

Off the top of my head, the following MD ports were theirs:

Daisenpu AKA Twin Hawk
Hellfire
Same! Same! Same! AKA Fire Shark
Snow Bros
Tatsujin AKA Truxton
Zero Wing

The rest were all by outside teams, IIRC. Slap Fight MD was by MNM/Mindware, a dream project with Toaplan's blessing (great story!). Wardner Special, I think was Visco... Kyuukyoku Tiger was published by Treco, but I can't recall the dev. And V-V aka Grind Stormer was by Tengen.

Super solid lineup of carts, I have to say.

[Sengoku Strider]

With there being substantial numbers of PS4 gamers worldwide for the next several years combined with excellent PS4 backwards compatibility on the PS5, I think it would be a bit silly for a company like M2 or Hamster to shift to PS5 specific releases.

Right now they're reaching all gamers on modern Playstation hardware with a single release on a base platform that while old still offers ample power for these types of releases.

So I'm hoping to not see a shift here any time soon. Some day we'll see PS4 numbers be weak enough to not bother pursuing in favor of PS5 exclusive releases for retro style content like emulated classic arcade games, but I suspect it will occur only when the PS5 itself is about ready to be superseded by a successor. PS4 commercially has quite a bit of life left in it, although I imagine we'll start seeing many of the more demanding big AAA multiplatform releases fading away by 2023.

The biggest thing is that people still simply can't get PS5s, and the chip shortage is going to impact them notably this Christmas. It takes a sizeable ecoystem to support a niche genre like this, and it's not free to just start developing for PS5. They'd need to invest in expensive (probably six figures) early gen devkits and spend the time to learn them.

I'd also wonder how Sony are about greenlighting this type of retail shelf release for the PS5 at this point in its lifespan, especially obscure low tech 1980s stuff with all the judder, slowdown & flickering lovingly preserved.

[BIL]

Speaking of port staff, anyone know which ports were actually done in house by Toaplan in the day? Since they were an arcade focused dev, so many of the console versions were outsourced. I know Tatsujin MD was the first one they did.

Good ol' GSK, I knew he'd covered the MD ports somewhere

Same!, Tatsujin, Daisenpu, Hellfire and Zero Wing (plus Snow Bros!) were all done by Toaplan.

Slap Fight MD was done by MNM/Mindware for Tengen.

Grind Stormer was done within Tengen by the same team that did the JP Marble Madness port.

Kyukyoku Tiger was done by Graphics Research for Treco.

Wardner Special was done by Dragnet for Visco.

I never really looked into their PCE stuff. I believe FM-Towns Hishouzame and Tatsujin Ou were both by VING... great efforts, as expected from them, but sadly hamstrung by screen crop (they'd later do brilliantly with TATE-equipped Rayforce on Saturn, in addition to all their other Taito work for the platform).

FC Tiger Heli and Kyuukyoku Tiger are by those shitbirds Micronics. As mentioned a page or so back, I think FC Kyuukyoku's not too bad. Heaves itself up over the line to acceptability, just, provided you love Toaplan and FC STGs (both, not either ).

[hamfighterx]

Can someone confirm that there's no arranged BGM at all? Saw a stream last night and streamer couldn't find any options for that.

I looked through the credits (in the "Materials Room" option from the in-game menu) late last night and was thrilled to notice there are a couple of Chibi-tech remixes. Unfortunately just two tracks: (1) the intro splash/menu music (not the direct menu - I can't even figure out how to go back to the initial menu from in-game without exiting the game entirely and re-opening, boo), and (2) the Arcade Challenge mode menu BGM for both Tiger Heli and Kyukyoku Tiger.

I wish she had done a full arranged soundtrack, she's great. Still adore her ShotTriggers Dangun Feveron arrange.

It's sad to see that the M2 Gadget with track listing looks like it has a little button next to "BGM Set" to switch from Arcade Original to something else. Just seeing that made me go hunt for soundtrack options, but nope. Maybe in a future DLC/patch?

[Marc]

Shitballs, Tiger Heli is mean as hell.
Never really put any time into it before, I want to get at least a decent way into it before I end up addicted to Kyuktoku, but goddamn it's a sniping nightmare! The direction indicator really is a godsend here.