Last Hope Remake?

[HardcoreOtaku]

Personally I found the NeoGeo CD rendered most titles unplayable due to truly ridiculous load times, which admitedly are not as much a problem with shooters as Beat-em-ups. NeoGeo CDZ load times are better but IMO still leave the games unplayable.

Huh? On my CDZ, the only shooter with somewhat annoying load times is Pulstar; everything else loads at the beginning or in a few (<10) seconds) per stage, which I'd say is very playable... Fighters are a whole different story.

Well maybe I'm wrong then or perhaps i'm just impaciant, I had a NeoGeo CD back when it first came out, I had vague memories of atrocious load times, monkeys juggling...
Then a couple of years ago I thought I'd give a Neo-Geo CDZ a try, I bought one with with Pulstar, Metal Slug, Last Blade 2 & a few other Fighters, sold it pretty much immediately as in 2006 I wasn't prepared to do waiting times, I didn't want to wait for levels to load in a shooter, but it was far, far worse with fighters when I pulled off a Special it f8cking had to load, I thought f%ck this threw the pad down and stuck it on ebay.
Its just hard to justify when freinds were playing NEO Emus for free with zero loading times...

[LSU]

Personally I found the NeoGeo CD rendered most titles unplayable due to truly ridiculous load times, which admitedly are not as much a problem with shooters as Beat-em-ups. NeoGeo CDZ load times are better but IMO still leave the games unplayable.

I'd absolutely agree with you 100% for beat-em-ups. Playing KOF '99 even on my CDZ is a disjointed and cumbersome experience. I'd also say that Pulstar is less enjoyable on CD since that one still has fairly long load times, even with the cut scenes turned off.

BUT... Every other shooter I have is absolutely fine.

Last Resort and Viewpoint actually load pretty much everything into memory all in one go (at least on my CDZ they do - never played them on a standard machine). So once the initial load is done, there are no load times between levels for those games - at least for the first few levels of each (I'm not sure if I've ever got as far as the fourth level on either, so can't say for sure after that... yes I'm a bit crap).

The Sonic Wings games actually load levels as fast or faster than the Saturn version of Sonic Wings Special. And Last Hope just takes a few seconds between levels, so that's no biggie either.

So basically, yes the CD(Z) system is not good at all for fighting games, but really it's absolutely fine for 90% of the shooters (the one exception IMHO really just being Pulstar).

[ubersaurus]

Meh.

Remake the same game with improvements? Nah, but Last Hope 2 would be cool.
____________

While I will agree that Last Hope was flawed and could've benefited by more play testing, etc. it was by no means as bad as some of you claim it to be.

I've been shmupping since I bought my Atari 2600 back in the late 70's...and I've played some pretty bad shmups, but Last Hope is by no means a terrible game. Upon close examination one can tell a lot of blood and sweat went into making it happen. I for one enjoyed it quite a bit (on DC) even though it infuriated me at times, but I honestly see no reason to trash it so.

It reminds me of Ikaruga...I had high hopes, I bought it, played it extensively and I must admit...I don't like it. I know some of you swear by it, but I was very disappointed...I'd play Last Hope over Ikaruga any day.

I'm with Robo 100% on this one. Last Hope wasn't perfect, but I really enjoyed the game. Way better and more addictive than Ikaruga and most of the bullet hell shooters that come along these days.

It doesn't need to be "fixed" by some random ass programmers. The game is perfectly fine as it is.

[Ganelon]

Yeah, I'd definitely agree Last Blade 2 on NGCD is unplayable. You can go to the bathroom, get mail, do your laundry in between the loading times.

I'm with the "Last Hope is a decent game" crowd too. Still haven't managed a 1CC but the visibility really isn't an issue for me (no more than it is for Garegga).

[grovsnus]

Just decide in advance that you won't be playing any of the newer fighters (say post 96), and presto - the NeoCD is an awesome piece of machinery. It's cheap, the games are cheap, and you won't run out of storage space even if you buy 30 games for it.

[Kiken]

Last Resort and Viewpoint actually load pretty much everything into memory all in one go (at least on my CDZ they do - never played them on a standard machine). So once the initial load is done, there are no load times between levels for those games - at least for the first few levels of each (I'm not sure if I've ever got as far as the fourth level on either, so can't say for sure after that... yes I'm a bit crap).

So basically, yes the CD(Z) system is not good at all for fighting games, but really it's absolutely fine for 90% of the shooters (the one exception IMHO really just being Pulstar).

Any Neo-CD conversion of a game that was less than 100 Megabits (in cart form) can normally squeeze completely into the system's memory (meaning practically no load times after the initial boot-up load). Pulstar was a 336 Meg cart, so it does have some pretty nasty load times (Choutetsu Brikin'ger also has some really long load-times).

[Nate]

I would strongly suggest saving up and getting Pulstar AES. That price is actually pretty good for right now. I've seen it for more in the past. It's a great collectible and it's absolutely fantastic to play on your TV. Also, see about getting one of those cool arcade Neo Geo stix from Arcade Kingdom. I myself am trying to save up for one or two of those. Lack of games on the AES? Hmmm.

[ROBOTRON]

I've not played Last Hope,

So what makes it lame????

Enemy bullets were hard to see, explosions made it hard to differentiate bullets from shrapnel, etc. Some complained of the Amiga graphics which I quite enjoyed. The music was pretty dam good too. There were these mines that were hard to see...sometimes you would die...and you were like, wtf? What happened? But there were these mines placed everywhere with circling red dots that would kill you...hard to see till its too late. A lot of the game is memory + timing, and I think this also cheesed people off the ones expecting an typical R-Typish game. It suffered from not being play tested more and some bad coloring (not being able to see enemy bullets).