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.

[M.Knight]

Ah yes, the innovation line. I've heard that one before, taken from the press kit, the back of the box, or in the pointless fluff in gaming reviews from journos dumber than pigeons. Supposedly there was nothing but the endless dark void of space in the world of shmups, and then Toaplan said "let there be light". And then there was light. But what actual real innovations did they come up with?

-Enemies on the ground? Xevious!

-Enemies from behind? 1942 had those!

-Helper side planes/options? Also there in 1942! It even got copy-pasted in Tiger Heli down to the annoying "feature" where side options block you early when trying to hug the screen edge compared to not having options. You could also probably even go all the way back to Galaga for this one.

-""Realistic"" settings? Xevious had you covered with the grass, the water, and the brown ground mud sand dirt shit to complete the Holy Trinity. And how much more real-world can you get than the actual Nazca lines?

-Military ship designs? Choplifter featured helis and tanks some years before.

-Limited bomb stocks? Vulgus already had secondary weapons restocked with Pow items giving you access to strong lance attacks that were even helpful for scoring combos. 1942 had the loop-de-loop that gave you temporary invincibility and could gain extra uses once again by collecting Pow items. Besides, it was restocked at the end of stages while also simultaneously giving you score bonuses for not using them...exactly like how a certain Hishouzame will copy-paste years later. Now who's actually inventing things?

-Aggressive enemy waves with intricate behavioral designs? Star Force featured plenty of those with aimed bullets thrown at you to kill you, and the waves push you to do specific movements and use distinctive approaches to take them out and dodge them. It has the kamikaze fast enemies, it has the revenge bullet enemies, it has long strings of enemies to take out one after the other, it has enemies coming from the left and the right to push you to alternate sides, it has enemies continuously chasing you, it has all that stuff and more.

And so on and so forth. The Toa propaganda machine is good at making us think they invented everything, but it is clearly not the case. Now I do not know if bullet sealing was a thing before them, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was also taken from another dev, but since I don't know I could give them the benefit of the doubt. That would be the one cool idea of theirs. Everything else that defines their output is more an iteration over concepts that were there already.

Actually I guess awful green weapons, annoying toilet flushing weapon item movement, eurobosses with bloated health and one single pattern that they shoot over and over might all be their doing though, yuuup, I'll easily give them that. But that's not innovation, that's regression. Oops.

Hishou felt rather unfun to play for me but it didn't seem like a bad shmup either, maybe that one specific game is worthy of praise even if it innovated on almost nothing, since at least one can say it succeeded in combining all those already existing elements. But for a dev, you want a high batting average for your entire library and not just be a one-hit-wonder if you want to be called yourself a legend, and I'm not seeing it. Also for the record Tatsujin straight up starts with boring sleep-left sleep-right harmless popcorn repetition. Probably even worse in that instance since you can just stay center and shout out some donations while the game plays itself. No need to wait 5 stages or anything to witness it.

[MJR]

Ah yes, the innovation line. I've heard that one before, taken from the press kit, the back of the box, or in the pointless fluff in gaming reviews from journos dumber than pigeons. Supposedly there was nothing but the endless dark void of space in the world of shmups, and then Toaplan said "let there be light". And then there was light. But what actual real innovations did they come up with?

-Enemies on the ground? Xevious!

-Enemies from behind? 1942 had those!

-Helper side planes/options? Also there in 1942! It even got copy-pasted in Tiger Heli down to the annoying "feature" where side options block you early when trying to hug the screen edge compared to not having options. You could also probably even go all the way back to Galaga for this one.

-""Realistic"" settings? Xevious had you covered with the grass, the water, and the brown ground mud sand dirt shit to complete the Holy Trinity. And how much more real-world can you get than the actual Nazca lines?

-Military ship designs? Choplifter featured helis and tanks some years before.

-Limited bomb stocks? Vulgus already had secondary weapons restocked with Pow items giving you access to strong lance attacks that were even helpful for scoring combos. 1942 had the loop-de-loop that gave you temporary invincibility and could gain extra uses once again by collecting Pow items. Besides, it was restocked at the end of stages while also simultaneously giving you score bonuses for not using them...exactly like how a certain Hishouzame will copy-paste years later. Now who's actually inventing things?

-Aggressive enemy waves with intricate behavioral designs? Star Force featured plenty of those with aimed bullets thrown at you to kill you, and the waves push you to do specific movements and use distinctive approaches to take them out and dodge them. It has the kamikaze fast enemies, it has the revenge bullet enemies, it has long strings of enemies to take out one after the other, it has enemies coming from the left and the right to push you to alternate sides, it has enemies continuously chasing you, it has all that stuff and more.

And so on and so forth. The Toa propaganda machine is good at making us think they invented everything, but it is clearly not the case. Now I do not know if bullet sealing was a thing before them, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was also taken from another dev, but since I don't know I could give them the benefit of the doubt. That would be the one cool idea of theirs. Everything else that defines their output is more an iteration over concepts that were there already.

Actually I guess awful green weapons, annoying toilet flushing weapon item movement, eurobosses with bloated health and one single pattern that they shoot over and over might all be their doing though, yuuup, I'll easily give them that. But that's not innovation, that's regression. Oops.

Hishou felt rather unfun to play for me but it didn't seem like a bad shmup either, maybe that one specific game is worthy of praise even if it innovated on almost nothing, since at least one can say it succeeded in combining all those already existing elements. But for a dev, you want a high batting average for your entire library and not just be a one-hit-wonder if you want to be called yourself a legend, and I'm not seeing it. Also for the record Tatsujin straight up starts with boring sleep-left sleep-right harmless popcorn repetition. Probably even worse in that instance since you can just stay center and shout out some donations while the game plays itself. No need to wait 5 stages or anything to witness it.

I guess one of the long standing truths in this forum is that people here cant agree on anything at all and everyone is fiercely opinionated

[jehu]

This has taken quite the turn into the chimerical and neurotic. A grand conspiracy by the Big TOAPOWER industrial complex and its pigeon-headed cronies cooing to the language of propagandistic press kits.

Let it go

[1KMS]

This has taken quite the turn into the chimerical and neurotic. A grand conspiracy by the Big TOAPOWER industrial complex and its pigeon-headed cronies cooing to the language of propagandistic press kits.

Let it go

Go ahead, tell yourself it's all a coincidence.

[MJR]

This has taken quite the turn into the chimerical and neurotic. A grand conspiracy by the Big TOAPOWER industrial complex and its pigeon-headed cronies cooing to the language of propagandistic press kits.

Let it go

Go ahead, tell yourself it's all a coincidence.

This is awesome. It almost feels like I'm again in the lunatic pit this forum was when everyone was 20 years younger. So, is this thread like Tatsujin Extreme, last spirited fart from the expired madness gods ?

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

No matter the tone of the dude, he brought actual arguments to the table. I have to admit I've never understood the fascination with most Toaplan games, but I haven't spend that much time with them. I'd be interested in how were they actually innovative, what new mechanics etc. did they introduce?

[MJR]

No matter the tone of the dude, he brought actual arguments to the table. I have to admit I've never understood the fascination with most Toaplan games, but I haven't spend that much time with them. I'd be interested in how were they actually innovative, what new mechanics etc. did they introduce?

I feel your post is a bait, but what the hell, lets take it.

I am not sure if all of the Toaplan's games were as enormously innovative like R-type, Salamander and Star Force were, but then most of the stuff out there never was. Still, they certainly had enough ideas going on there -again compared to the pap that was released back in the day- to warrant this recognition.. They also were certainly popular and they inspired lot of other developers.

Slap Fight was certainly innovative with it's "build your own custom ship set up", and the scenery reacting differently to different weapons.
Truxton had screen-filling blue lasers that also locked-on to enemies, which was a first time I saw something like that. Raiden copied that and lot more stuff (like red spread vs vertical thin strong shot, enemy pattern behaviour where they try to fly past you and shoot you in the back)
Hellfire was the only game where you could change direction of shooting, so that stood out as well. Zero Wing had the enemy capture which you could then use as a shield and throw back at enemies.
So, theres your new mechanics there; and I am sure that wasn't all of them.
Also, when I saw Truxton for the first time in attract mode, I had never seen a weapon that covered the entire screen while having a boss that almost filled the screen as well, while still managing to stay playable.

And they were certainly copied, or "inspirational" if you want to put it that way. It stuck to my eye immediately when I played Slap FIght and TIger Heli for the first time on Mame; "oh crap, now I know where Battle Squadron copied all it's weapons from!" "Oh so thats where Xenon got it's inpiration for those tile-based graphics!" "Oh so thats where SWIW copied stuff from!".

So, they had ideas for sure. But going jump into a full-blown argument about game design theory with other autists while trying to retcon and write history on who designed what for the first time is kinda pointless if you weren't making games back then, especially with japanese - how are you going to know who invented what and who ripped off from where if you were not there? I remember that back in the day, Pretty much everyone copied from everyone and as soon as someone had an idea, it was copied immediately everywhere and everyone did it. You could single out certain games that had stood out more than others, but I am not sure if any company was particularly consistently "innovative" on arcade scene.. Konami, Irem, Capcom, Taito and Toaplan had their moments but not always. If I really had to single out one, I'd say Tehkan.

Trying to diminish Toaplan sounds like someone does not like their games and is annoyed when it gets recognition, and then tries to build some kind of argument where they can redress their annoyed opinion into some kind of academical fact. Everyone who was following arcade scene back then did recognize and remember them as innovative, and most of the arcade games were not. Disliking them is another matter entirely - there is no accounting for taste. What may constitute as "dead space" to someone else is brilliant pacing to me, and it's not a scientifically dressed fact, but an opinion that comes down to your taste.

We have had lot of meaningless wars here when people have refused to admit that their opinion is just that - an opinion. Everyone has a right to dislike or shrug Toaplan catalogy; it's quite fine, and here this right is exercised with sometimes amusing enthusiasm.

Note: edited the post multiple times in order to make it less provocative. I have no interest on getting into an argument.

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

Neither have I; It was simple interest in the subject of innovation in shmup mechanics and in what other people find makes a good and innovative game. No idea why you assumed that my question was in any way bait or provocative, if you look at my posting history (which you won't obviously and I'm not asking you to, because people have better things to do, still it's there if anybody cares) you'll find that I like having civil discussions based on proper arguments and sources and shit. Thanks for typing up that detailed answer.

[Bassa-Bassa]

Being innovative and being influential are not the same thing. As a friend of mine says, Japanese video game history is not so much about milestones which rewrite past formulas by other authors as it is about sucintly copying and then evolving them.

Grosso modo as most people here know this - Tiger Heli was the first game with actual smart bombs, Slap Fight was the first featuring bullet sealing and got the most complex power-up system for a STG at its time together with the bountiful hidden items feature, K. Tiger basically evolved its predecessor's formula and was such a huge hit every other developer just had to take notes, Tatsujin perfected the smart bomb feature with instant activation, made of sub-bosses a seminal aspect to diversify progress, and audiovisually was a clear step up in the genre featuring the biggest and most detailed bosses to date and a sense of spectacle which had no precedent, Out Zone was and still is a unique piece in its subgenre built after Tatsujin's premises, Tatsujin Ou, Dogyuun! and V V got some of the most intricate and inspired pixel art ever made, and the latter, together with Batsugun, was the germ of Donpachi and its school.

[MJR]

Neither have I; It was simple interest in the subject of innovation in shmup mechanics and in what other people find makes a good and innovative game. No idea why you assumed that my question was in any way bait or provocative, if you look at my posting history (which you won't obviously and I'm not asking you to, because people have better things to do, still it's there if anybody cares) you'll find that I like having civil discussions based on proper arguments and sources and shit. Thanks for typing up that detailed answer.

Probably because I am cranky cynical bastard, that's why. I tried to clean up my reply though so it didn't come across as too antagonistic. Still, I should have removed the line about bait, but thankfully it didn't set you on fire (too much)