Jaleco Arcade Collection

[BulletMagnet]

Game Tengoku fans rejoice, two volumes of ten games each (EDIT: announced so far) headed to Steam; in terms of shmups, Volume 1 includes Formation Z, Cybattler, Field Combat, P-47, and Saint Dragon, while Volume 2 brings Argus, E.D.F., Plus Alpha, and (if you count it) Exerion.

The Steam pages for both state that "other titles will be announced in due course", so we'll have to wait and see what that might entail.

[Atariboy]

16 games each.

Not too exciting from my personal perspective, since if I'm at a PC I just tend to fire up MAME. But if these hit consoles at a good price point, I'd support them if it turns out decent enough. Especially if Cisco Heat makes the cut.

[Jeneki]

Nice collections, but I already picked up the Hamster releases of almost all of these. Modern Jaleco ownership is doing a good job of making the games available, even the Evercade got some physical carts.

This is my first time looking at Field Combat though. Looks like a very unique game, stealing and summoning allies to help out like it's a Shogi match haha.

[Atariboy]

When the full lineups get announced there will be a lot of games here that haven't seen the Arcade Archives treatment. Only ~20 Jaleco games in the AA line. And most of those came out 5+ years ago, although D-Day last August suggests that we could see that slowly start increasing again.

Still, it's a good counter to this for sure. Exerion is a big favorite of mine for instance. Hard to get excited seeing it here when it's available to me already with Hamster's typical solid emulation.

[BulletMagnet]

When the full lineups get announced there will be a lot of games here that haven't seen the Arcade Archives treatment.

I'm wondering if at least some of the additional games turn out to be console versions of the stuff they've already announced, but obviously that's all just conjecture.

[hamfighterx]

Nice collections, but I already picked up the Hamster releases of almost all of these. Modern Jaleco ownership is doing a good job of making the games available, even the Evercade got some physical carts.

Yeah, the Evercade releases are quite good!

The Jaleco arcade cart has been one of my most played on the bartop Evercade Alpha, has 8 arcade titles: Rod Land, Saint Dragon, EDF Earth Defense Force, Avenging Spirit, 64th Street: A Detective Story, Cybattler, P-47 The Phantom Fighter, and The Astyanax. I suppose that's more a factor of me enjoying playing on that format, since 7/8 of these are also on Arcade Archives. Avenging Spirit is the only one that isn't, but that's also on current consoles (Switch, PS4/PS5, Xbox) via a solid low priced ($5.99 US) stand-alone release from Ratalaika.

They also did a Jaleco console cart for Evercade with a nice 10 game lineup, I've put some time into the SNES versions of the first two Rushing Beat games (Rival Turf and Brawl Brothers).

[Bassa-Bassa]

Doesn't Evercade just use Mame, though?

[hamfighterx]

Yeah, a custom MAME build. Quality feels pretty good, though I admittedly don't know any of these games in enough depth to know the tiny little quirks that might show up in emulation.

That's not really the point though, the reason I play on Evercade is for the physical format. Mostly my little bartop with full sized Sanwa controls, which gets me plenty of real arcade feel without taking up much space (and with save states, and without the exorbitant cost of a bunch of PCBs). I did pick up one of the little portables too.

The biggest downside to arcade games on Evercade is that you're generally getting one region (US or World, typically), and although they've added some dip switch functionality (but not to all games) sometimes you don't have the full array of original dipswitch settings.