Tatsujin Extreme (PS5/PC/Switch 2/Xbox Series)

[Steven]

It means exactly what it looks like it means...

[Sumez]

It means exactly what it looks like it means...

Could you explain it, then? Because I also have no idea what it "looks like it means"

In a genre where the ideal control is 1:1 with your direction inputs, and nearly every game in the genre already does that, what can you possibly do to make it feel "more smooth" outside of adding inertia or analog control? And I can't imagine anyone thinking that would be an improvement.

[Steven]

It feels smooth, as in "not rough". I don't know. Just play it. You'll see what I mean. Probably.

[Sumez]

I can't play it when it's not out though

What makes, say, Futari, Blazing Star, or RayForce feel "rough" compared to this? I'm honestly puzzled by the statement

[Steven]

Never played Blazing Star and don't remember anything about Futari, but if you want a game that I do consider to have similarly smooth control, it's Raiden DX.

[Sumez]

Doesn't matter if you've played them or not, these games are all the same

When you hold a direction, the game will move the ship/character a set number of pixels/subpixels per frame in the same direction, and stop doing it the moment you stop holding that direction. The only "common" difference you'd see in pure genre titles, is wether or not the diagonals use normalized vectors, or simply stack the horizontal and vertical travel speeds

There's not really any way to alter that in one way or another without doing one of the things I mentioned - which would make the game worse
Unless you're just talkling about the game running at a higher framerate? Which would be surprising, if this is a Unity game.

[ratlhead]

Does anyone have an Xbox? There is a thing on the Xbox online store or whatever it's called that says GET Free trial. Did they put a demo up for the Xbox version?

Thanks for the heads up. The trial is indeed up for grabs in the Xbox store, which shockingly seems to be a full game (if it not ends with the first stage ) with achievements, online leaderboards (there are 7 entries in the LB right now btw), and plethora of modes. I am not sure how it ended up in the store in this form, which seems to be a beta rather than a trial or a demo. It might be the publisher's mistake Or I am the one who mistaken this trial with a full game, idk

I played some story and arcade modes... can't even managed to clear the first stage -_-' The game punishes strolling at the bottom of the screen by sending waves after waves of kamikaze-ing zakos right to your nose, and also punishes you hard in "lose-a-life-and-get-screwed" fashion with a classic checkpoint system.

There are too many junk thrown at you at any given point in the first level, which I found detracting in terms of quality level design and pacing. The scoring system is based on maximizing your shot power, collecting further power-ups to increase multiplier and destroying large enemies and junk with ex shot, which is basically a narrow focused shot with increased firepower. All in all, while it does not seem to be an incredible revival, it is not hot garbage either...

[DietSoap]

Doesn't matter if you've played them or not, these games are all the same

When you hold a direction, the game will move the ship/character a set number of pixels/subpixels per frame in the same direction, and stop doing it the moment you stop holding that direction. The only "common" difference you'd see in pure genre titles, is wether or not the diagonals use normalized vectors, or simply stack the horizontal and vertical travel speeds

There's not really any way to alter that in one way or another without doing one of the things I mentioned - which would make the game worse
Unless you're just talkling about the game running at a higher framerate? Which would be surprising, if this is a Unity game.

Why are you like this

[carlbarx]

The Demo version on Xbox store seems to be a full game indeed I just got to stage 6..

Only something like 15 people in the online highscore list so far, guess we're the lucky ones

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Does anyone have an Xbox? There is a thing on the Xbox online store or whatever it's called that says GET Free trial. Did they put a demo up for the Xbox version?

Thanks for the heads up. The trial is indeed up for grabs in the Xbox store, which shockingly seems to be a full game (if it not ends with the first stage ) with achievements, online leaderboards (there are 7 entries in the LB right now btw), and plethora of modes. I am not sure how it ended up in the store in this form, which seems to be a beta rather than a trial or a demo. It might be the publisher's mistake Or I am the one who mistaken this trial with a full game, idk

I played some story and arcade modes... can't even managed to clear the first stage -_-' The game punishes strolling at the bottom of the screen by sending waves after waves of kamikaze-ing zakos right to your nose, and also punishes you hard in "lose-a-life-and-get-screwed" fashion with a classic checkpoint system.

There are too many junk thrown at you at any given point in the first level, which I found detracting in terms of quality level design and pacing. The scoring system is based on maximizing your shot power, collecting further power-ups to increase multiplier and destroying large enemies and junk with ex shot, which is basically a narrow focused shot with increased firepower. All in all, while it does not seem to be an incredible revival, it is not hot garbage either...

On the USA region Xbox Microsoft Marketplace portal, you have to enter the "Tatsujin Extreme" in the search box in order for it to appear. It's a whopping 10.86gb digital d/l on either the Xbox Series S or Series X consoles indeed.

Not to mention that the publisher of TE is none other than "Clear River Games AB" themselves.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[hamfighterx]

Direct link to the US Microsoft Store webpage: https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/store/ ... MGVV98C2VW

As expected for the US region, I'm seeing it come up as "Truxton Extreme" - not "Tatsujin Extreme"

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Yes, typing in "Tatsujin Extreme" in the Search box of the USA region Microsoft Marketplace does bring up the "Truxton Extreme" namesake indeed. At least the AI behind the search engine is smart enough to route to the correct game title, that's all that counts/matters in the end -- nothing more and nothing less than that, folks.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Steven]

Does anyone have an Xbox? There is a thing on the Xbox online store or whatever it's called that says GET Free trial. Did they put a demo up for the Xbox version?

Thanks for the heads up. The trial is indeed up for grabs in the Xbox store, which shockingly seems to be a full game (if it not ends with the first stage ) with achievements, online leaderboards (there are 7 entries in the LB right now btw), and plethora of modes. I am not sure how it ended up in the store in this form, which seems to be a beta rather than a trial or a demo. It might be the publisher's mistake Or I am the one who mistaken this trial with a full game, idk

looooooooooooooooooooool

Somehow I don't think this was supposed to happen, but here we are. How complete does it look? Any obvious placeholders or stuff that is definitely missing or unfinished? Are all the modes there? There should be Heart Starter, story, arcade, arena (the 2-minute caravan mode), and maybe some other stuff. I wonder how old this build is.

If the game is supposed to launch on July 30, I think it should basically be more or less finished at this point, with the next few months being mostly finishing debug and production and shipping of the physical copies to retailers.

[carlbarx]

I can't play it anymore so maybe it's a time limited full version demo.

The game seems very complete and I had a great time with it. From playing the story mode I can say that the last level felt a bit empty and was not as hard as some of the others. Hope they fix that.

Music was fantastic all the way through

[hamfighterx]

Somehow I don't think this was supposed to happen, but here we are. How complete does it look? Any obvious placeholders or stuff that is definitely missing or unfinished? Are all the modes there? There should be Heart Starter, story, arcade, arena (the 2-minute caravan mode), and maybe some other stuff. I wonder how old this build is.

Version number on the menu screen says v0.8.7, and it sure looks and feels feature complete. It has Heart Starter (1 level easy mode), Story, Team (2-player co-op w/ shared bombs), Arcade, Arena, Extras, Options. Nothing appears inaccessible or grayed out.

I went through the Heart Starter mode once, dabbled with Arcade, and completed Stage 1 in the Story mode level (with the "A" named guy). That unlocked access to A-guy's Stage 2 going down the screen from top to bottom, or over to the right to B-girl Bergamot's Stage 1. Haven't yet played the C-name character.

Quick thoughts:
- I get what you're saying Steven, the ship does just feel nice to control.
- The ultra-wide levels take a little getting used to, particularly since the game uses the full 16:9 display but ALSO still has room to scroll further to either side. Almost feels like playing something like the PCE version of Kyukyoku Tiger. But like others have mentioned, it does feel like there's some actual intelligent use of space and thoughtful design to accommodate the super wide playfield. I think I share DietSoap's opinion that, perhaps against all odds, they seem to have made it work. I actually feel like I'll really enjoy playing it portable on Switch 2 thanks to the widescreen design approach.
- Needing to collect 3 P items to power up your weapon means that it can take some time to build back up, which I can see being tricky in some spots. Not quite Gradius here, but probably gonna need some checkpoint recovery practice! The lock on blue multi-laser feels weak as hell if you die with that and get reset, so take care!
- On the other hand, certain weapons when powered up feel REALLY strong. Like the white homing shot, at least in the early levels. Overall, you do get that sense of feeling kind of overpowered, but that can really get turned on its head if you take a hit. Not something we haven't seen before in Toaplan games (what's up, Zero Wing!)
- I actually really dig the minor features of (1) a "ruler" that you can apply to the top and/or bottom edge of the screen, with a small indicator to show your ship's position on the left-right axis, and (2) a nice little fairly unobtrusive LCD-looking clock you can turn on, and it sits on the screen in the background.
- The between stages comics in the Story mode are longer than I expected. It's not just a couple of interstitials with images, there's quite a bit of plot in there. If you don't want that, same levels are available in arcade mode without having to worry about the story.

Normally I wouldn't care about the story or whatever, but Joker Jun is very proud of it and quite confident in it, so that's good.

IDK where the plot is going, but I am proceeding with caution after the story started off talking about overpopulation and Earth in crisis, and an unnamed Asian country deciding to solve the problems by... using AI, to the point of deciding it would be a great idea to elect an AI President. Who of course, uses the magic of technology to solve overpopulation and food shortages, freeing up humanity to twiddle their thumbs and decide to colonize space with the brave Tatsujin squad...

Gonna give it the benefit of the doubt since I've only seen the intro and the first couple story bits. Perhaps the AI goes predictably rogue and we have to destroy it, Rayforce style (a little trite, but I could work with that). But maaaaan, if that doesn't happen? Starting out sounding like some real grade-F garbage lol.

I can't play it anymore so maybe it's a time limited full version demo.

Ah. Well, not sure if it's based on time since first play, or total playtime, or what... but perhaps I should get out of here now and go shut down the game since I've just had it playing on the title screen while I'm not even in the room!

[MJR]

Doesn't matter if you've played them or not, these games are all the same

When you hold a direction, the game will move the ship/character a set number of pixels/subpixels per frame in the same direction, and stop doing it the moment you stop holding that direction. The only "common" difference you'd see in pure genre titles, is wether or not the diagonals use normalized vectors, or simply stack the horizontal and vertical travel speeds

There's not really any way to alter that in one way or another without doing one of the things I mentioned - which would make the game worse
Unless you're just talkling about the game running at a higher framerate? Which would be surprising, if this is a Unity game.

Game can "feel" nicer to control compared to others without having any new amazing method for it. It's all about how you implement the details.

In case if you ask about "details" - If you really get down to the weeds of doing character control, it's not a simple issue of "get input from joystick, move sprite", there is way more to it than that. Is the movement triggered? Is it started? Ongoing? Completed? Are there input priorities? Many of these are also design questions rather than technical questions. And these were just some ridiculously crude examples from the top of my hat, simply to show that a simple issue of "get input, do something" is not so black-and-white. And this was not a believable exhaustive laundry list either. It's up to the developer what they feel is important to do.

I knew there was lot more to making games than what can be seen on the surface, but I did not really grasp it until I began programming one myself. Making controls feel GOOD is a HUGE amount of work and you really need to know your shit.

And I believe Yuge knows better than most people so in my mind Steve's claim is believable.

[Sengoku Strider]

Doesn't matter if you've played them or not, these games are all the same

When you hold a direction, the game will move the ship/character a set number of pixels/subpixels per frame in the same direction, and stop doing it the moment you stop holding that direction. The only "common" difference you'd see in pure genre titles, is wether or not the diagonals use normalized vectors, or simply stack the horizontal and vertical travel speeds

There's not really any way to alter that in one way or another without doing one of the things I mentioned - which would make the game worse
Unless you're just talkling about the game running at a higher framerate? Which would be surprising, if this is a Unity game.

Aside from things like input delay or controller dead zone settings, I remember seeing an interview with I believe one of the Cave guys, where he was talking about feel and smoothness and he said the secret was in the animation. I can believe it, a lot of their games from their mid-period onward do a really good job of making you feel like you're gliding along despite having precise 8-way digital movement.

[MJR]

Doesn't matter if you've played them or not, these games are all the same

When you hold a direction, the game will move the ship/character a set number of pixels/subpixels per frame in the same direction, and stop doing it the moment you stop holding that direction. The only "common" difference you'd see in pure genre titles, is wether or not the diagonals use normalized vectors, or simply stack the horizontal and vertical travel speeds

There's not really any way to alter that in one way or another without doing one of the things I mentioned - which would make the game worse
Unless you're just talkling about the game running at a higher framerate? Which would be surprising, if this is a Unity game.

Aside from things like input delay or controller dead zone settings, I remember seeing an interview with I believe one of the Cave guys, where he was talking about feel and smoothness and he said the secret was in the animation. I can believe it, a lot of their games from their mid-period onward do a really good job of making you feel like you're gliding along despite having precise 8-way digital movement.

Yes, and that's another thing I did not bring up. I am not making a shmup though, I make a brawler, and there how you design the animation state machines and use the frames has an ENORMOUS impact on how the controls feel. But I can easily imagine how it can apply to shmups as well, to some extent. Just how the ship moves and rotates and responds to your movements.

[Steven]

Somehow I don't think this was supposed to happen, but here we are. How complete does it look? Any obvious placeholders or stuff that is definitely missing or unfinished? Are all the modes there? There should be Heart Starter, story, arcade, arena (the 2-minute caravan mode), and maybe some other stuff. I wonder how old this build is.

Version number on the menu screen says v0.8.7, and it sure looks and feels feature complete. It has Heart Starter (1 level easy mode), Story, Team (2-player co-op w/ shared bombs), Arcade, Arena, Extras, Options. Nothing appears inaccessible or grayed out.

Hm... everything announced seems to be there. I'm guessing the Pipiru-seijin village thing is in there too, probably under extras.

I went through the Heart Starter mode once, dabbled with Arcade, and completed Stage 1 in the Story mode level (with the "A" named guy). That unlocked access to A-guy's Stage 2 going down the screen from top to bottom, or over to the right to B-girl Bergamot's Stage 1. Haven't yet played the C-name character.

Since there are red, blue, and green pilots, does the character you choose default you to that weapon? I doubt they'd make completely separate stages for each one, but having each stage arranged somewhat differently for each would be cool. Also guessing that each character's story is different somehow.

Quick thoughts:

I get what you're saying Steven, the ship does just feel nice to control.

Right? It's hard to describe but it feels so good!

Needing to collect 3 P items to power up your weapon means that it can take some time to build back up, which I can see being tricky in some spots. Not quite Gradius here, but probably gonna need some checkpoint recovery practice! The lock on blue multi-laser feels weak as hell if you die with that and get reset, so take care!

That sounds about right. Both here and in original Tatsujin the Thunder Laser is pitiful at minimum power and is basically a penalty weapon, but once you get it to max power it's devastating.

How are the checkpoints? Can't have Toaplan without excellent checkpoints. I know they are all good on stage 1, but beyond that...

The between stages comics in the Story mode are longer than I expected. It's not just a couple of interstitials with images, there's quite a bit of plot in there.

That is unexpected. I figured it was going to be kind of light on story, but it's not? That's... good, I guess? As long as it's good, which brings me to this:

Normally I wouldn't care about the story or whatever, but Joker Jun is very proud of it and quite confident in it, so that's good.

IDK where the plot is going, but I am proceeding with caution after the story started off talking about overpopulation and Earth in crisis, and an unnamed Asian country deciding to solve the problems by... using AI, to the point of deciding it would be a great idea to elect an AI President. Who of course, uses the magic of technology to solve overpopulation and food shortages, freeing up humanity to twiddle their thumbs and decide to colonize space with the brave Tatsujin squad...

Gonna give it the benefit of the doubt since I've only seen the intro and the first couple story bits. Perhaps the AI goes predictably rogue and we have to destroy it, Rayforce style (a little trite, but I could work with that). But maaaaan, if that doesn't happen? Starting out sounding like some real grade-F garbage lol.

...oh. Okay. I don't know if you've read any of his manga, but I did read the first half of Btooom! and never got around to buying the second half, which is the part at which I've heard it becomes significantly worse. That was his immediate and unhesitant recommendation to me when I asked him what I should read, but it's honestly pretty difficult for me to recommend to someone because it's... quite frequently rapey and very gory, and sometimes both simultaneously. Yeah. Is it good, though? I'm going to say yes, it is, at least so far, so I was hoping that this game's story would turn out good too. No choice but to wait and see, I guess.

I actually have known about Ash, Bergamot, and what's-her-name-that-starts-with-C for a few years now since they're all in this thing that I got from him at Tokyo Game Show a while ago.

Spoiler

It's actually a preview for his other manga that he's doing now, but there are three pages at the end for Tatsujin Extreme, which is also obviously on the back cover. There's not much in it though. It's mostly Ash and Bergamot talking about Tatsujin. Yes, the original Tatsujin, not Extreme, which is basically just mentioned in passing.

[Jackoz]

And I believe Yuge knows better than most people so in my mind Steve's claim is believable.

The man has been out of action for decades during the genre’s evolution. This does not bode well.

[Steven]

Unless I'm missing something or forgetting something, which is very possible, I don't think the genre has done much evolving since DDP and maybe Ikaruga.

[Sengoku Strider]

I don't think the genre has done much evolving since DDP

Ketsui has cubes.

[Lethe]

I don't think the genre has done much evolving since DDP

Ketsui has cubes.

False. This may shock you - the "cubes" are actually 2D sprites.
They could be replaced with stars and it wouldn't make any difference. It's a scam.

[Sengoku Strider]

I don't think the genre has done much evolving since DDP

Ketsui has cubes.

False. This may shock you - the "cubes" are actually 2D sprites.
They could be replaced with stars and it wouldn't make any difference. It's a scam.

Most of Cave's sprites are actually Donkey Kong Country-style 3D pre-renders, the Ketsui cubes especially. Imo the true scandal is that they're really just metallic frames with a sphere inside.

[Steven]

So if I want (2D) cubes do I have to play Gradius III? Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo~ do not want~

[Faith]

lol. I remember I once saw on Yahoo Auctions someone in Japan selling the Ketsui cube in acrylic block >.<!~

[Steven]

I found the Ketsui 5 cube in a 3D crystal on Yahoo Auctions, which is close enough, but I also remembered that Mars Matrix has cubes too, and they're gold cubes. That means that not only did Ketsui steal its cubes from Mars Matrix who stole them from Gradius III who probably stole them from someone else who definitely stole them from whoever invented cubes, it means that Mars Matrix has the best cubes because GOLD, obviously.

[rampaging-sloth]

Steven-- Thank you! Its obvious with your mention of them gold cubes -- that they gold -- that you are playing home run derby and most of us are just playing tee ball.

[Steven]

lol I forgot about that entirely!

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Upon d/l'ing the USA region Truxton Extreme demo through the USA region Microsoft Store portal, it's listed as Version0.8.0 displayed through the game files' 411. Upon trying to start it, it says "trial is over."

Is there another Tatsujin/Truxton Extreme demo to d/l on another gaming platform besides the Microsoft Series S/X consoles?

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~