Tatsujin Extreme (PS5/PC)

[Sumez]

Yeah this is sadly on purpose, it is the entire series (and maybe the entire dev)'s shtick after all. So I guess this sleep->sleep->sleep->murder->sleep->sleep->sleep pattern means fans of the series will likely feel right at home.

What Toaplan games are like that, outside of Tatsujin Ou?
Answer sincerely

It's made with Unity. I am doing a shmup with Unity, and optimizing it to make a shmup work at a decent framerate isn't simple. If they did stuff the "Unity way", performance suffers a lot.

Unity sucks.

It really confuses me why anyone would want to use Unity for making a shmup. Literally anything else would be more effecient

[Basil]

It really confuses me why anyone would want to use Unity for making a shmup. Literally anything else would be more effecient

Calling it the absolute worst choice seems like a stretch. Gana Blade is a decently fun game made in Unity.

Unity makes sense if you're used to working in C#, I suppose. At least it can run games on a reasonable performance budget. I'd certainly take a Unity game over some bloated Unreal engine implementation that turns my PC into a space heater for literally no reason. Not everyone can be a programming whiz who belts out a bespoke engine for their project. At the end of the day, engines are just tools. An oddly chosen one used well is better than a good fit used poorly, so for now I'll wait and see how this project turns out.

[Shatterhand]

It really confuses me why anyone would want to use Unity for making a shmup. Literally anything else would be more effecient

It still gives me better performance (and lighter tools) than Unreal, easier to port than Godot, 3D graphics that aren't available on Gamemaker, I don't have the resources to build my own 3D engine from scratch and I don't know how to use anything else.

I hate Unity. I really hate Unity, and I can't grasp how people can make 2D games with this piece of shit software. But I couldn't find a better option for this project, and I guess it could be the same case with the devs of this game. And like Basil said, I know C# pretty well.

I don't own a Steam Deck. My computer has a newer CPU (Ryzen 7 5700x), but the GPU is the old RX 580. I had absolutely no performance issues with Truxton Extreme demo, it ran smooth as butter at 60 fps.

[Sumez]

Calling it the absolute worst choice seems like a stretch. Gana Blade is a decently fun game made in Unity.

Unity makes sense if you're used to working in C#, I suppose.

I don't know if it's a stretch. I guess if you include specific things like RPGMaker, you can find worse contenders - but honestly I think RPGMaker is probably more well suited for it.
Picking Unity for the C# part only really makes sense if your game absolutely needs to be in 3D and you don't want to make the rendering code yourself. And even then, I think Godot's got your back for all of those?

Also, the way Unity utilizes C# the only real advantage you get is being able to recognize the syntax. If you just want to make something in C# I'd probably go MonoGame or just make my own framework. Most of the stuff that comes prebaked in Unity isn't really useful for tight arcade-style shmups anyway, unless you really want your game to suck.

[Shatterhand]

Picking Unity for the C# part only really makes sense if your game absolutely needs to be in 3D and you don't want to make the rendering code yourself. And even then, I think Godot's got your back for all of those?

In my case, yeah, it's the 3D rendering, and I can't port to Switch and PS4/PS5 with Godot.
Engines make development quicker, even Unity.

[DietSoap]

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills reading what some of you guys are saying, because I swear Unity runs worse for me than Unreal.

[M.Knight]

Yeah this is sadly on purpose, it is the entire series (and maybe the entire dev)'s shtick after all. So I guess this sleep->sleep->sleep->murder->sleep->sleep->sleep pattern means fans of the series will likely feel right at home.

What Toaplan games are like that, outside of Tatsujin Ou?
Answer sincerely

The original Tatsujin is already a prime example of the cycle with lots of sleepy easy popcorn acting as interactive dead air where the only challenge is precisely remembering if the developers arbitrarily made one guy spawn behind you on the 321st wave or the 322nd one, followed by euro(mid)bosses spamming the same attack over and over that will kill you except if you spam bombs I guess.

Hellfire and Zero Wing have really sluggish pacing with nothing interesting happening and choke points here and there like bosses and midbosses that make you redo the boring parts again if you fuck up for this. The sleeping part can even encompass multiple stages at once.

Dogyuun gets so boring that you play with the speed booster and move around and stuff because there's nothing else to do and for a moment you pretend the game's pace is fast even though it clearly isn't, exposing you to mistakes by carelessness.

Daisenpuu repeats ground tanks forever (with no air enemies to shake things up or anything) and then a big tank kills you.

The games that aren't nearly as bad are either the ones carried by Gradius mechanics (V-V, or Slap Fight even though in that one every idea that's not Konami but a Toaplan addition like the side pods blocking your ship movement kinda sucks), the better tankboatplane games that can be alright to play (especially Same3 since it's quite challenging) but still suffer from an overdose of brown ground dirt mud shit sand and (except for Hishou) have really bloated length, or Batsugun which is more or less a basic CAVE shmup instead.

[Sumez]

So having any section at all that isn't completely ball-busting qualifies as dead air to you?

Why are you even posting in this thread if you don't like the genre? Not trying to be confrontational here, just wondering. I think it's completely fair to criticize things, but it seems your disposition is negative towards this entire style of game altogether, and you even decided spice it up with some shade on people who like them as well. You did the same thing in the thread about military shooters, which apparently aren't allowed to exist either.

[Lethe]

Based speedkill enjoyer wants every game to be a caravan.

[Shatterhand]

So having any section at all that isn't completely ball-busting qualifies as dead air to you?

You mentioned Truxton 2, but I remember playing the *Mega-Drive* version of Truxton for a hi-score competition years ago. A long stretch of the game was just sweeping the screen left-right-left over and over and over while holding the fire button. I'd kill all enemies like that and not get hit by anything . This lasted for a while and the, outta nowhere, blam, an enemy from behind with no warning hits me.

I remember saying with the other guys in the group the biggest challenge was staying awake up until the enemy from behind appeared.

Other than that, yeah, I've played a lot of the Toaplan shmups 25+ years ago when I got Mame.... the games may repeat patterns a lot, which I see people see being a fail in shmup game desing. But a lot of older games do that.... and they aren't boring in my eyes because of this. The patterns aren't just "wave left and right" like the ones I saw in the first Truxton.

I remember Truxton 2 had some real long stretches of the same enemies attacking you over and over and over, but you had to stay on your toes and route perfectly, or you are screwed. I really don't see this as a problem.

[qmish]

M. Knight seemingly has their own reasons/perception (and if I'm not mistaken, enjoys leftfield/oddball stgs like Milestone inc. output).

As for me, I liked and enjoyed the most IKD-related games (V-V and Batsugun), and also liked Dogyuun as well. Lately, I was also getting a bit into Kyukyoku Tiger and Hishouzame.
Admittedly, my experience with Tatsujin and Tatsujin Oh was too brief in comparison. And I've yet to play many others like Zero Wing.

Cheers!

p.s.

@Faith thanks for information. I had an idea that I'm doing it in a funny way.

[M.Knight]

I guess I am just a bit annoyed at seeing Toaplan often praised as this ""legendary"" developer even though as soon as you dig a little bit into the actual meat of the games you find many of these stories of boredom and excessive repetition. Almost like those celebrities with many closet skeletons but good publicity. Though if the fans like the style of the new one and are happy (which is unfortunately not something Sonic Wings players can say right now about their own new game hahaha), good for them. I am not sure there's much I should do anyways and it's definitely not always fun to be a negative nancy. I'm not against the existence of military shooters either, I just think their fans need to drastically increase their standards when it comes to their presentation, mechanics, and ideas.

And sure, caravan-style speedkill mechanics are often a great addition, but I'm sure there's still many other ways to make old-school shooting enjoyable. Enemy variety (as in not reusing the same boring harmless popcorn eleventy billion times in a row like a euroshmup would), items and medals to collect, Sol towers to uncover, micro-milking enemy turrets or destructible bullets, using different weapons (which Hellfire does to a certain extent to be fair, even though the controls for it suck), etc. When I think about it, I also spent a few hundreds of hours scoring a shmup where you instead have to milk bosses and keep up a chain so as far as I am concerned, there's room for everything in my eclectic tastes, even if quirkier stuff indeed catches my fancy more.

It's not even about difficulty either, actually most of my favorite shmups are relatively easy when it comes to survival. It's about having things to do, tools to use and get better at, and moment-to-moment pacing that does not make you doze off. And for older games where you just hold shot and sometimes press B, you need some sort of design lever to keep things fun and fresh. Being challenging is one of those, but there's many more.

[1KMS]

Most Toaplan games are balanced around manual shooting, with built-in autofire added to specific weapons. Modifications like external autofire and Game Genie codes shouldn't factor in to why a game isn't engaging, if that's the case.

Stay away from Hudson and Compile STGs if you think Toaplan is dull.

[Firehawke]

Not sure I can agree on Compile. Zanac and Zanac Neo get downright hectic.

[M.Knight]

Playing something like Tatsujin without rapidfire would probably make it even worse because instead of bomb + 30 Hz to try and negate the spam-heavy midbosses and go back to sleep, you just can't kill them on time and have to dodge their one single attack for an eternity, making the murder part longer while not fixing the sleep part.

And accurate assessment on Hudson/Compile Zanac Neo is one of the rare exceptions because the scoring system with chaining based on killing everything and the chain reactions with special attacks recontextualize a lot of the stage design and makes everything matter for once. Also excellent music with some future Milestone composers in the team But it's still way too long so sitting down to start a run is a massive ordeal

[Sumez]

I guess I am just a bit annoyed at seeing Toaplan often praised as this ""legendary"" developer even though as soon as you dig a little bit into the actual meat of the games you find many of these stories of boredom and excessive repetition. Almost like those celebrities with many closet skeletons but good publicity.

I'd understand this explanation if not for the fact that Toaplan are indeed some of the most influential innovators of the genre altogether. They pretty much dictated what the vertical arcade shoot'em up would look, feel and play like for the majority of the era where the genre was going the strongest and featured literally hundreds of derivatives. It's kind of hard to deny this level of influence, regardless of the relative obscurity of the company.
Granted, this was probably primarily due to the popularity of Raiden (which also has a near-legendary status around it), but Raiden was also pretty much a Toaplan ripoff in the first place.

Tatsujin is a game that I enjoyed a lot, going for the 1CC. I wouldn't consider it a "top shmup" by any means - it's pretty janky and weird, but it's a very fun game with a lot of memorable segments. There are a couple of moments (with the biggest offender being the second to last stage) where you can do pretty much what is discussed here and just wave back and forth holding the shot button - but this only happens when you have a fully powered blue laser and is pretty much the reward for being able to survive long enough. The game is broken up by enough mini-boss encounters which feel like small puzzles in their own right, so the "turn off your brain" segments really aren't as prevalent and egregious as people make it sound.
One thing I'd really highlight about the game though is that it has some of the most fun recoveries I've experience in any shooter. It's pretty much the perfect counter-argument to "gradius syndrome" gripes people have with checkpoint STGs.

Aside from this however, I like to highlight Hishouzame as one of the most emblematic classic shooters ever made. It's extremely lean, cut to the bone, featuring only a basic set of few enemy types which dictate the entire game and its core gameplay which essentially make up the core components of traditional shoot'em up gameplay, done to near perfection. It's one of those games that feel like a definition of an entire genre. Maybe you don't like this one either, but I think that game alone justifies Toaplan's position in the annals of shoot'em up history.