Raiden Fighters Remix Collection

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Yep it's just wishful thinking. Viper Phase 1 runs on the same arcade motherboard as the Raiden Fighters series, and the ship is playable in Raiden Fighters.

But yeah it'll never happen, that game is forever doomed to never see a home port.

Yes, that'd be the classic "Judge Spear" fightercraft indeed.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[davyK]

Fancy this release.

I've only tinkered with the series on MAME and it would be great to experience it via a console.

[Darkseed_5150]

Don't bother releasing if it ain't gonna have minimal lag and whatever Gulti did to fix the judder present in the MAME and other versions.

Just port the Gulti version!

[Tokyo-J]

Considering Xbox 360 still pushes 1080P graphics the need for this port is only good for those who missed out on that version.

[Steven]

Or to get it on PC, which lasts forever unlike the 360, which is discontinued 20-year-old hardware that supposedly has a 54% failure rate.

[prophetic]

Or to get it on PC, which lasts forever unlike the 360, which is discontinued 20-year-old hardware that supposedly has a 54% failure rate.

You shut your mouth. It's only 19 years old.

[Sumez]

Considering Xbox 360 still pushes 1080P graphics the need for this port is only good for those who missed out on that version.

So everyone in Europe

[dingsbums]

Let it be noted that I'm officially begging for Viper Phase 1 to be included this time.

This 100%.
As I have the JP X360 release including Viper Phase 1 would be THE main reason to buy the collection again .

[Necronom]

Considering Xbox 360 still pushes 1080P graphics the need for this port is only good for those who missed out on that version.

So everyone in Europe

Exactly. Still waiting for the EU release that was already rated and officially announced for April 2012...seems it happened in a parallel universe only. Big disappointment.

[Tokyo-J]

Considering Xbox 360 still pushes 1080P graphics the need for this port is only good for those who missed out on that version.

So everyone in Europe

Was not aware it was skipped over in Europe. Sorry to hear that for your guys. I had the USA version but sold that one as I rarely played anything other than my Japanese 360 at the time.

[Sumez]

"Skipped over" is missing half the story here

[Necronom]

"Skipped over" is missing half the story here

Yeah, it seems there is an interesting story behind this fuckup. Looks like The German publisher dtp entertainment responsible for the PAL release filed for insolvency one month before the release.
Somehow no other EU publisher stepped up to replace them, which is strange since they really needed the money and would probably have sold the rights. Another thing is that it is very likely that discs were produced but never reached the retailers. If this is true, where are they now
It's all a bit tragic, because not only were there a lot of longtime European fans waiting for this, but the games had a certain mainstream appeal, unlike most Cave stuff. After all, while I've never seen a Cave title in a European arcade, I've certainly seen Raiden Fighters many times. It also had a rather attractive price tag of 30 Euros.

I really hope this new remix collection is basically a port of the 360 version with some extra BGM... and hopefully no extra lag

[seattlexc]

The streaming event took place yesterday, there are several videos of various Raiden game runs. I'm not sure if they mentioned any news about the releases though

https://youtube.com/@mikado4649?si=KG-qAPWemAD2fUyF

[Lemnear]

They convinced me with Raiden Nova, the bosses are really badass.
But what platforms does Raiden Fighters Remix come out on?

[Starfighter]

Looks like The German publisher dtp entertainment responsible for the PAL release filed for insolvency one month before the release.

Feels good to finally have a face to the evil that denied us europeans Raiden Fighters Aces. I'm still salty, not gonna lie.

[JBC]

So... is it just emulation? I'll wait for an FPGA core if so. Same for VP1, which releases like today I think

[Bassa-Bassa]

It's not known. It was quite likely at first it was going to be a modified port of Aces, but now that Hamster has somebody emulating the SPI, it really might be anything involving both companies.

Seibu's SPI system was a unique beast with a 386-based CPU. It doesn't have proper emulation in Mame even after decades (though this doesn't mean too much actually - it's one of those drivers Mame devs historically just like to ignore). It's home to a handful of games only traditional STG fans care about. Chances of having a FPGA core for it before 2035 (specially one truly improving Mame's emulation) are... nonexistent?

[Steven]

How was Aces running BTW? I'm assuming that it was emulated and not native, but there's always the possibility that it's native. I also never played Aces, or any of the games in it, although Viper Phase 1 is at Mikado along with at least one of the Fighters. Pretty sure it was 2, but I forgot.

Anyway, FPGA isn't inherently better than software emulation, despite what Analogue's marketing might say. Assuming that this collection is good, it doesn't really matter if it's running in a software emulator or not unless you are really interested in such things like I am.

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

Or to get it on PC, which lasts forever unlike the 360, which is discontinued 20-year-old hardware that supposedly has a 54% failure rate.

You shut your mouth. It's only 19 years old.

[Bassa-Bassa]

How was Aces running BTW? I'm assuming that it was emulated and not native, but there's always the possibility that it's native. I also never played Aces, or any of the games in it, although Viper Phase 1 is at Mikado along with at least one of the Fighters. Pretty sure it was 2, but I forgot.

Anyway, FPGA isn't inherently better than software emulation, despite what Analogue's marketing might say. Assuming that this collection is good, it doesn't really matter if it's running in a software emulator or not unless you are really interested in such things like I am.

Aces was a port (well, three at it) by some of the original games' devs and it showed, despite the extremely odd refresh rate of the original hardware.

I do think FPGA is inherently better than "software" emulation, just not precisely Analogue's. It doesn't have to deal the v-sync issue you'll always face under Windows or Linux (not to mention whatever console out there). Even Groovymame, which has been making of the issue an irrelevant one for years if your PC is capable enough, benefits from using an FPGA device as the video card, if only for having it all more predictable and automated. And then there's the audio latency and input polling things. So yeah, you can get your emulation as perfect on PC (not on consoles, lol) as you can with FPGA, just with so many requirements, it's not realistic for most people.

[JBC]

FPGA isn't inherently better than software emulation

Ah, all those hundreds of people developing cores and fpga devices are just wasting time because we already have MAME. Silly gooses.

[Steven]

Neither of you understood what I meant, so here it is: FPGA emulation is still subject to programming errors and still relies entirely on its creator(s) to actually make it work properly/accurately. It running on an FPGA doesn't inherently make it better because it's still possible to break things or reach hardware limitations.

I don't like emulation. I trust no emulators to actually run games properly or accurately unless they are made by M2 or Hamster, and even then both companies are known to make mistakes. That's why I have over 40 consoles (lots of duplicates, but...) and buy or borrow PCBs for games that I am really interested in playing, as I dislike and distrust emulation in general.

I've said this before, but it seems necessary to say it again: given a choice between playing something on MAME and not playing it at all, I choose to not play at all.

[Bassa-Bassa]

You were understood. And you're still kind of wrong. Let's see this way - not having to care about OS layers makes FPGA inherently better for emulation in a general sense. Disregarding the fact that current FPGA is just too weak to compete with Mame/PC.

Ah, all those hundreds of people developing cores and fpga devices are just wasting time because we already have MAME. Silly gooses.

Too bad that, basically other than NG and some Capcom, you're not playing properly many arcade games from the 90s on FPGA in 2024, and that doesn't seem to be changing much in the next years. A Groovymame setup, even if not perfectly configured, is a must specially for CRT users.

[Steven]

I am not wrong because the hardware is 100% completely irrelevant because the programmer can still fuck it up no matter what it's running on. You can have the best hardware available, regardless of the cost, and it's still not magically going to make games run properly or accurately.

[Bassa-Bassa]

^That goes without saying.

[Sumez]

So... is it just emulation? I'll wait for an FPGA core if so. Same for VP1, which releases like today I think

What alternative to emulation would you consider better?
For this release I mean.

[JBC]

A port.

[Sumez]

You're gonna have to go into more details than that. What would make a "port" better? Wouldn't the objective of a port be to emulate the original game as closely as possible?
Or, I guess, what qualifies as a "port" in this context?

[Steven]

^That goes without saying.

And that's Analogue's marketing: "it's FPGA, so it's automatically better!"

It's wrong, but people actually believe it. One of my IRL friends believes it and wonders why I still bother with real hardware. Meanwhile, the MiSTer is stuck running Toaplan games with about double the lag of the PCBs because it's not powerful enough, and even then the boss music is broken on Tatsujin, which is also broken on the Bitwave software emulator even though I sent them the audio files that I pulled from the soundtrack CD so they could hear what it sounds like when it's not broken so they could fix it. Two emulation solutions, one running in software and one on an FPGA, and both have exactly the same audio problems.

[Sumez]

And that's Analogue's marketing: "it's FPGA, so it's automatically better!"

It's wrong, but people actually believe it.

Eh, that's not entirely wrong. It doesn't mean the end product is necessarily better, and I know this is what you're getting at here.
But looking at just those two factors on their own, FPGA emulation of computer hardware is absolutely better than software emulation running in an operating system under various other software layers, drivers and other sorts of overhead and restrictions.
And even ignoring that, there are just things you can do much simpler (and thus also less error-prone) with state-based (is that the correct word?) hardware programming compared to functional programming trying to simulate hardware behaviors.

I'm not experienced with FPGA programming, but I have tried programming hardware emulation in software - and there are definitely a ton of things where I've been thinking to myself "I wish I could just make this logic work the same way it happens in the original circuit"