R79 wrote: ↑Tue Apr 28, 2026 10:46 pm
I seem to remember playing Metal Slug on a PC around the year 2000, bit choppy of course, Win '98 possibly. By then, any of the pubs, snooker clubs or bowling alleys where you might see a battered 4-slot MVS were gone, and the Saturn version was pretty sought after, with the home cart already really expensive.
So what shooters were on the system in total? I can think of:
Strikers 1945 Plus
Alpha Mission II
Ghost Pilots
Sonic Wings 3
Blazing Star (pretty sure this was always high priced this century for AES)
Pulstar
You had a shooting adjacent game like NAM-1975 sat on eBay for years well under £100 IIRC, but then kinda trebled in price last few years or so, same with Magician Lord. It's sad, as they were kind of great entry games for a long time. I remember seeing King of Monsters shown on UK TV at the time, clearly looked more beefy than your average Mega Drive type release. You can still pick up Fatal Fury Special fairly reasonably complete, big game in it's time, and was still played competitively in Japan many years later. I think all the other 16-Bits had conversions (NEC infamously used an 'arcade card'), but all cut down in some way to the real thing.
Also:
Last Resort
Sonic Wings 2
Andro Dunos
Viewpoint
Ninja Commando
Twinkle Star Sprites
Ironclad / Brikinger
Zed Blade / Operation Ragnarok
Prehistoric Isle 2
Captain Tomaday
Plus indie titles from NeoDev Team and other groups.
Josh128 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 27, 2026 5:13 pm
Emulation is perfect, indistinguishable to the human eye and ear, as far as I know. Basically has been for 2+ decades now.
Indeed it is. I remember ever since as far back as 2003 I could emulate Neo Geo stuff perfectly in my Pentium 4 with Windows XP.
Up until 3 years ago or so you couldn't emulate, say, Garou "perfectly", and the glitches were quite evident unless you overclocked the emulation. And input latency was always behind the real thing until Groovymame's frame delay or Mister's core were born (and finished). I guess "perfectly" has different meanings depending on you ask.
How does ACA compare, not necessarily for only this game, but in general?
R79 wrote: ↑Tue Apr 28, 2026 10:46 pm
So what shooters were on the system in total? I can think of:
Strikers 1945 Plus
Alpha Mission II
Ghost Pilots
Sonic Wings 3
Blazing Star (pretty sure this was always high priced this century for AES)
Pulstar
Zed Blade
Andro Dunos
Sonic Wings 2
Prehistoric Isle 2
Viewpoint
Last Resort
Captain Tomaday
Ironclad (physically on Neo Geo CD only, but an official ROM exists of a cart version, so I guess it should count)
Twinkle Star Sprites is a Puyo Puyo-ish structured vs. game, but it is technically still a shooter
Ninja Commando and Shock Troopers 1 and 2 are top-down run-n-guns if you want to qualify those
If you want to count homebrews also, there's:
Last Hope
Fast Striker
Neo XYX
Razion
Project Neon
Xeno Crisis (smash tv'ish mutli direction shooter/runngun)
Yes, a repro cart of Neo-Geo MVS Ironclad/Brikinger has been offered for sale in the past and does officially count, release-wise -- it's awesome to play it on the ol' Neo-Geo MVS hardware from time to time.
PC Engine Fan X! ^_~
Last edited by PC Engine Fan X! on Wed Apr 29, 2026 5:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Steven wrote:How does ACA compare, not necessarily for only this game, but in general?
I recall Arcade Archives Garou having the same issue as Mame and then having it fixed like a week later? I may be mixing things up, not sure.
I'm not the best to say, as my experience with those versions is too meager. Pretty sure you know this, but there's something clear from a theoretical standpoint - consoles' limitations prevent the v-sync and latency issues from getting truly optimized. You need M2-style "workarounds" to get there (kind of) and those still only come from M2, I'm afraid. But even then, you can't use an analog display and native resolution, so they'll always be in another league in my book.
Yeah, if you see a cartridge of Ironclad, that's a bootleg. I believe it was the Wii Virtual Console release that officially sold a ROM version of the game, legally? I haven't kept up and don't know if it's been released again since.
And NCI releases are repros, so they make (made?) money out of others' work and IPs as well.
Brikinger cartridge version appeared on Wii first, indeed. I think it hasn't been rerelased ever since. Never checked how the OST differs from the NGCD release (which was actually a port from the unreleased MVS version).
Yeah, if you see a cartridge of Ironclad, that's a bootleg. I believe it was the Wii Virtual Console release that officially sold a ROM version of the game, legally? I haven't kept up and don't know if it's been released again since.
It's on the first Neo Geo collection for Evercade - their blog states it's the MVS version:
The Wii release has an emulation defect - the display was too dark, I think stuck at the brightness of the demo mode or something like that?
There's also a release on GoG (which I think pre-dates Arcade Archives?), courtesy of the same DotEmu team responsible for Raiden Legacy. Not sure if that's the emulated MVS version or the CD one. Either way it's not well-received.
Steven wrote:How does ACA compare, not necessarily for only this game, but in general?
I recall Arcade Archives Garou having the same issue as Mame and then having it fixed like a week later? I may be mixing things up, not sure.
I'm not the best to say, as my experience with those versions is too meager. Pretty sure you know this, but there's something clear from a theoretical standpoint - consoles' limitations prevent the v-sync and latency issues from getting truly optimized. You need M2-style "workarounds" to get there (kind of) and those still only come from M2, I'm afraid. But even then, you can't use an analog display and native resolution, so they'll always be in another league in my book.
Modern consoles have v-sync on everything, right? I think I read that once somewhere. I wonder if that is some sort of mandate from Sony or whoever to avoid screen tearing because it makes games look bad. I still use v-sync a lot anyway on non-STG stuff because there is no need for my computer to run games at 500+ FPS when my monitor doesn't support that, and I'm also too lazy to go cap framerates in Nvidia settings.
Speaking of that, I remembered that the MVS and AES have different refresh rates for some reason. Great. I never figured out what the deal with that is, but they have different refresh rates, with the AES being higher.
Yeah, AES and MVS don't share refresh rates, I mentioned it in the other thread (how long till they get merged...?). Seems it was clearly to avoid complaints from AES users - the original refresh from MVS is likely too low to keep the picture vertically centered on TVs against other sources, so geometry (service) tweaking would be needed every time, and that's not a consumer setting. That's why all consoles are set at ~60Hz and ports of some arcade games always had this issue. Shows as well that the NG wasn't planned as a home system at first.
I figured it was something like that. I've never messed around with arcade hardware on consumer CRTs, just on my arcade monitor, so I'm guessing some weird shit would happen if I was to get an R-Type PCB (I wish...) and run that on my Trinitron.
Fortunately emulators don't really have refresh rate problems since they can display the weird refresh rate within a 60Hz environment and call it good, but this does go back to what I was talking about before with the refresh rate on even the AES being weird enough to cause drops on modern displays, so I do wonder what they are going to do about that on the HDMI out on this AES+. The OSSC has drops with the AES, at least for me, and the RT5X just completely hates the AES and they don't work at together all last I checked, so the logical thing to do would be to increase from 59.whatever to ~59.94Hz, even though people will complain about it. I think one of the MVS versions works fine on the RT5X though, so I don't know.
Seems they're aware because it's been said that the HDMI out will not output at the same refresh rate as the original hardware/analog out.
I run R-Type or the X68000 at their 55hz on my Trinitrons with no issues via Groovymame, mind. Admittedly, they're PAL sets and that may help with that particular refresh, but Trinitrons with service menus are really easy to tweak. May well be worth a try.
Last edited by Bassa-Bassa on Thu Apr 30, 2026 8:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I've never been able to access my Trinitron's service menu. I've tried, but I have never been able to find it. I always use my modern PC monitor instead of my Trinitron anyway so I don't have to sit on the hard fake wood floor to be at a comfortable height to use it. I don't find I miss anything, especially because the Trinitron's picture is noticeably very crooked and my PC monitor's isn't, and without the service menu I can't fix it, which sucks.
Anyway, I guess having the HDMI out be 59.94 and the analog output be the normal AES refresh rate is the way to go, but in that case it's going to be impossible to get simultaneous HDMI and analog output, isn't it? Only reason to care about that that I can think of is if you're playing on a CRT while recording footage from the HDMI with a capture device, but you never know. It would be cool if they gave an option to run it at the MVS refresh rate too, but I somehow doubt that will happen. Who knows, maybe they'll even have a poor quality HDMI output like the Neo Geo X and only the analog output will be serviceable. I'm sure the HDMI out will have terrible or no scaling options at all because the only company to get scaling of old games over HDMI right so far that I have seen is Analogue. Literally everybody else is either 4:3 with uneven pixel sizes like ACA, which just looks terrible, or square pixels, which I'll definitely take over 4:3 with uneven pixel sizes.
Steven wrote: ↑Thu Apr 30, 2026 11:12 am
I'm sure the HDMI out will have terrible or no scaling options at all because the only company to get scaling of old games over HDMI right so far that I have seen is Analogue. Literally everybody else is either 4:3 with uneven pixel sizes like ACA, which just looks terrible, or square pixels, which I'll definitely take over 4:3 with uneven pixel sizes.
If both 4:3 and square pixels are wrong, then what's right?
4:3 with non-fucked up pixels would be my first choice. You can't get that on a fixed pixel display without interpolation, and unfortunately nobody uses that besides Analogue.
Steven wrote: ↑Thu Apr 30, 2026 3:38 pm
4:3 with non-fucked up pixels would be my first choice. You can't get that on a fixed pixel display without interpolation, and unfortunately nobody uses that besides Analogue.
MiSTer also has that option, as well as scanline filters and aspect ratio adjustment, though integer scaling has to be set in the ini for some arcade games (which AFAIK is equal to the v-integer in cores that have the adjustment in menu) for the best results.
Yeah but MiSTer is an open source hobby project, not a commercial thing made by a company specifically for profit. Its interpolation is also unfortunately way worse than Analogue's.
The Wii release has an emulation defect - the display was too dark, I think stuck at the brightness of the demo mode or something like that?
There's also a release on GoG (which I think pre-dates Arcade Archives?), courtesy of the same DotEmu team responsible for Raiden Legacy. Not sure if that's the emulated MVS version or the CD one. Either way it's not well-received.
Emulation issues aside for all those releases, my point was that all of these include an actual ROM of the game, purchased legally Nothing is keeping you from buying it and putting it into another emulator, flash cart, or even your own reproduction cartridge You just can't sell it.
I bet the DotEmu one is the MVS rom as well, anything else would be nuts.
Steven wrote: ↑Thu Apr 30, 2026 10:39 am
Fortunately emulators don't really have refresh rate problems since they can display the weird refresh rate within a 60Hz environment and call it good
Actually that's a pretty big problem. If the rendered framerate doesn't match what the emulated game is outputting, you're gonna have visible stuttering, especially noticeable with certain scroll speeds. Lots of emulated releases have this issue.
I meant in terms of display compatibility, but stuttering is definitely a problem. M2's Zero Wing is a pretty obvious example. Most of the other ShotTriggers games have pretty obvious stuttering, but Zero Wing is one where I notice it the most. It used to bother me a lot more than it does now, but VRR would have been helpful. I don't think the PS4 supports that and I don't have a display that does either, but going forward I hope M2 makes it an option on PS5 ShotTriggers once they eventually move the series to that system.
Edit: actually, wait, they already did PS5 ShotTriggers with Gradius, didn't they? I don't have that on PS5, just PC, and no VRR there, so I'm guessing it doesn't have it on PS5 either. Oh well.
Not sure that Gradius Origins is officially a "ShotTriggers" releaase, it's an M2 release with some ShotTriggers type features. I have it on PS5. Haven't noticed any stuttering. Not at home right now so can't confirm if my (VRR capable) TV is detecting VRR
Nothing is keeping you from buying it and putting it into another emulator, flash cart, or even your own reproduction cartridge 
You just can't sell it.