SNK presents King of Fighters...SkyStage?

[MachineAres 1CC]

I guess we should just change the thread title to "SkyStage community daycare" since everyone is just whining and crying about how bad the game is when they haven't played it Can't wait for this, either way.

[supergrafx77]

^+1...even if if does turn out to suck... for $10, you decide if Mai's titties look like "proper jobs," or not in a shmup. At least September 15, relatively soon, for a fairly inexpensive dl plus $$ goes to snk if not raises a red flag to keep shmups pumping that arse on the 360.

[TaygetaVendetta]

No its not, The 15th is the worldwide release date. It even says that in the English version trailer.

Link for mentioned trailer.

Good Lord the English dub is terrible.

[PsychoGun]

I guess we should just change the thread title to "SkyStage community daycare" since everyone is just whining and crying about how bad the game is when they haven't played it Can't wait for this, either way.

I've played it, PCB and PSP versions, it's terrible.

[supergrafx77]

Damn...then add me to the list of whiners. I just watched the linked trailer and IT DID LOOK AWFUL, so I take all my good will optimism back. Looks worse than Shikigami games and
Triggerheart Excellica, and I thought those were without much merit. Hopefully 5pb's Bullet Soul will be good though. I think I may pass on this one and save my $10 for some micro brew instead. I guess I'm only happy these days when I'm playing Cave titles...

[clp]

Damn...then add me to the list of whiners. I just watched the linked trailer and IT DID LOOK AWFUL, so I take all my good will optimism back. Looks worse than Shikigami games and
Triggerheart Excellica, and I thought those were without much merit. Hopefully 5pb's Bullet Soul will be good though. I think I may pass on this one and save my $10 for some micro brew instead. I guess I'm only happy these days when I'm playing Cave titles...

Whats so special about cave titles?

[supergrafx77]

They make me want to insert coin.

[PsychoGun]

Damn...then add me to the list of whiners. I just watched the linked trailer and IT DID LOOK AWFUL, so I take all my good will optimism back. Looks worse than Shikigami games and
Triggerheart Excellica, and I thought those were without much merit. Hopefully 5pb's Bullet Soul will be good though. I think I may pass on this one and save my $10 for some micro brew instead. I guess I'm only happy these days when I'm playing Cave titles...

As far as the game looks, it definitely reminded me of Shikigami, except the bullet patterns are so shitty, nothing like Shikigami at all. Nothing about it reminds me of triggerheart, plus that game is actually fun to play.

The bottom line for me is, I hate the game, it's terrible, but I'll buy any arcade shmup conversion for 10 bucks, so I'll be playing it and bitching with everyone else here when it comes out next week.

[TLB]

Funny, I thought Triggerheart was terrible and Shikigami was fun. KoF looks in between somewhere, though I may be pleasantly surprised.

[nZero]

Funny, I thought Triggerheart was terrible and Shikigami was fun.

Funny, I thought the opposite

I'm not terribly optimistic about this from the vids, but I've got some spare points stored up these days so I might end up picking it up just for the hell of it

[Phellan Wolf]

No matter how you look at the game It is terrible and buggy. 'You'd better waste your points in something else, like Guwange.

[emphatic]

Tried the demo and I think it's not bad, but not OMG great either. 800 pts is a fitting price. It has TATE at least.

[Kiken]

D/Led the full version this morning and gave it a quick play. It seems ok.. nothing ground breaking but hardly awful. Only made it to stage 2 since I ran into a bunch of enemies trying to get the max value for the medals (which is proximity based). It has an overscan adjust, but scales up and down in preset increments (like DOJ BLEX). And as stated above, it supports both 90 and 270 degree tate displays.

[Ghegs]

I'd say it's a pretty decent game. I like how the characters' special attacks work and because the super meter recharges pretty quickly the game really encourages you to use them often. The provoke function is an interesting take on the risk/reward -formula. Made it to Stage 3 on a credit and my ~2,1m score was the sixth highest on the leaderboards, heh.

And big props for being able to configure every button on the controller individually, far too many XBLA games lack this basic feature.

[Van_Artic]

i think it's actually a pretty good game, some patterns are hard to deal with (since the characters don't have focused movements, just relying on using the special attack to cancel the bullets)

[PsychoGun]

Just bought it, great value for sure at 9.99, just don't expect anything deep.

[MachineAres 1CC]

I really like the game a lot, but just as I was expecting, it isn't OMFG BEST SHMUP EVER, but it's very enjoyable. I like how the scoring system is basically like Ketsui/Ibara where you got a lot more points for killing enemies based on your proximity. It inspires that risk behavior that can make shmups pretty exciting.

[PsychoGun]

It inspires that risk behavior that can make shmups pretty exciting.

The only problem is the hitbox/bullet patterns/movement is ultra shitty in this game.

Try taunting and still getting cold bars, and they don't put extends in this game for lives?

Bullshit.

[xris]

Glad this is finally out, but I guess I've been getting used to playing top tier shooters lately, this is totally mediocre. Feels like a beta version, the hit box also seems like it's in the wrong spot for some reason. Way too many deaths from running into a bullet from the side. Yes, it really does need a focus feature, I'm glad that I'm starting to like speedier ships at least. It does at least do the right thing by rewarding continues, but is pointless when there is a stage select right from the start.. Neat ideals in this, but rather poor presentation overall. What the hell is up with that stoopid sprite that rolls along the road like a "jeep" in the middle of the first stage, so dumb looking. All the art in this looks like it's missing a chromosome.

[TaygetaVendetta]

Has anyone figured out what triggers certain bosses to appear, or how to get the "Intruding Boss" to appear before the final one? I've yet to face Yashiro as a boss.

Seems like a decent game after playing it for a hour or two. I wish there was more KOF fanservice in the game than there is (IE shooting giant floating Changs instead of generic spaceships), but what's in is good.

[PsychoGun]

Has anyone figured out what triggers certain bosses to appear, or how to get the "Intruding Boss" to appear before the final one? I've yet to face Yashiro as a boss.

Seems like a decent game after playing it for a hour or two. I wish there was more KOF fanservice in the game than there is (IE shooting giant floating Changs instead of generic spaceships), but what's in is good.

You need to taunt and get your score up for certain stages. Go for gold and silver bars point blanking enemies.

Stage 1 is a good place to just taunt the entire stage and rack up points, I can get a million+ on a good run. The trouble is tauning on later stages is balls hard. This game really needs extends, it's fucking bullshit the way it's set up.

[A peaceful death]

Not a bad game, but far from exceptional. Though, for $10, can't really complain too much. Reminds me a lot of Shikigami, especially in how terrible I am at getting through later bosses' bullet patterns.

[njiska]

Is it just me or is this game really really easy? I've only played the trial, but i no misses on my second run and the only reason I got hit on the first was because i was trying to figure out provocation. Not sure if i want to invest the time/money if it's going to be a cake walk.

[E. Randy Dupre]

That's pretty subjective, I think - I find that there's simply too much shit flying around the screen to be able to concentrate properly on it all, which is a kind of difficulty, I suppose. One that I can't deal with.

Personally, I *do* think it's quite a poor game. Not as bad as I was expecting, certainly, but then I was expecting a complete turd. Visually it's a mess - Raiden III / IV-style enemies mixed in with bizarre fan-game character sprites. it's like they couldn't make up their minds what to go for with the enemy designs, so basically plonked some shitty mini KoF sprites in there for the people wanting a KoF game, then had some alien spaceships for the people wanting a shmup, in order to try and please everybody (or at least not alienate anybody).

You can't turn off the wallpaper, the colours on-screen are beyond garish, the attempt to squeeze two entirely separate scoring mechanisms - chain-based and proximity-based - together ends up being confused and uworkable, there's no subtlety to the control... in terms of 360 verts, this is easily one of the worst.

[PsychoGun]

I hope they release some of the neo geo heroes mode characters from the PSP version as DLC. It's quite fun playing as the SydIII ship in heroes mode on the PSP, feels more like an actual shmup. I really fucking hate the flying character aspect in this, the hitbox just seems in the worst possible place.

Kula and Terry are also pretty worthless characters as far as they play. Terry is just weak as hell.

[TaygetaVendetta]

I hope they release some of the neo geo heroes mode characters from the PSP version as DLC. It's quite fun playing as the SydIII ship in heroes mode on the PSP, feels more like an actual shmup. I really fucking hate the flying character aspect in this, the hitbox just seems in the worst possible place.

Kula and Terry are also pretty worthless characters as far as they play. Terry is just weak as hell.

There is a "Content Download" box on the game's website on Xbox.com (switch locale to Japanese) and there aren't any gamerpictures or themes available, so it is certainly a possibility. Leona was made available as DLC for Metal Slug XX, so SNK may be getting on the DLC train.

Agreed on Terry, no idea what he is good for. Kula OTOH seems pretty good as far as controlling a crowd of ships with the really wide range of her shot. Weak against stronger ships and bosses, though. I haven't tried it on bosses yet, but her level 2 special attack completely freezes/locks enemies in place and prevents them from firing for a set amount of time, so that helps her deal with the bigger ships. Dunno if enemy bullets from other ships not locked can travel through the frozen enemy, but that could provide temporary cover if not.

[PsychoGun]

neat trick.

if you set your xbox language to japanese you unlock the japanese version of skystage. no more shitty dubbed voices!

[PsychoGun]

Having a lot more fun playing this as Athena. When you go into her level 3 special move it's kind of like the high tension mode in shikigami, just weave through the popcorn enemies and rack up gold bars. Just topped my high score with kyo. The only draw back is she's kind of weak on bosses, but her bomb is godly powerful.

[EPS21]

Anyone try the versus mode? Is it any good?

[Kiken]

This game really needs extends, it's fucking bullshit the way it's set up.

I've found an extend in stage 3. Destroy all of the large floating island enemies and the last one will drop a dumpling that'll refill 1/3 of your health meter.

I've been maining Mai recently (managed to break 4 million last night)... her level 1 charge is fantastic for damaging larger enemies and generally clearing out portions of the screen while her level 2 charge allows you to cheese through difficult bullet patterns (the only problem is that it can drop you off in an awkward position). Her level 3 charge is useless though since it only lasts about 3 seconds.