Raiden legacy PC

[BPzeBanshee]

Loosely related: A SXX2E single board version of Raiden Fighters was found the other day. I'm not sure if RF1 had a single-board version listed until now, but interesting to see there's versions still floating around the place.

[AntiFritz]

For those interested, this is now available from gog http://www.gog.com/gamecard/raiden_legacy

[Drachenherz]

Anybody tried this yet? If yes, any idea how this fares in comparison to the pcb? Or to the xbox port?

[Mischief Maker]

Just picked it up. Here's my first impressions

Looks like arcade ports, but there have been a few changes. Raiden 1 is the only one I have any experience with (NES and arcade versions, years ago) so here are the changes I noticed

Most noticeable is the "autofire" option. Unlike traditional autofire, the ship just shoots at max speed without holding any buttons down. If you hold down the shot button, it slows the rate of fire to a crawl. Turn autofire off and it's back to normal.

5 lives, no option to change. Only an option to change the starting rank.

Instant respawn in Raiden 1 instead of checkpoint respawn. Also the fairy doesn't give you your powerups back. (These might have only been in the NES version?)

The powerup system in Raiden 1 might be more forgiving when switching weapons?

Option to turn screen filtering off.

I can't tell the difference between HD and non-HD music.

edit: Apparently there IS TATE mode, I just didn't see the option.

You play with the mouse instead of a joystick (Just kidding!)

[DocHauser]

It's also on Gamersgate, currently £6.29 and 10% off , at least on the UK store:

http://www.gamersgate.co.uk/DD-RAIDEN/raiden-legacy

[Greats]

when I tried doing fullscreen on a 1050x1680 TATE'd monitor, it didn't actually fullscreen at all, it was vertically and horizontally squished, has anyone gotten this to work yet?

[MadScientist]

What kind of leaderboard support do they have? The Android version that I have doesn't even save your high scores.

[DotEmu]

The game definitely supports TATE mode.

You have to select "portrait orientation" in the resolution menu of your screen before to launch the game.

@Greats Did you change your screen orientation before or after the launch of the game?

[DocHauser]

Most noticeable is the "autofire" option. Unlike traditional autofire, the ship just shoots at max speed without holding any buttons down. If you hold down the shot button, it slows the rate of fire to a crawl. Turn autofire off and it's back to normal.

I noticed that the toothpaste laser for the mk-II ship doesn't really work properly with Autofire off (when you hold down the fire button it just keeps going on and off and doesn't lock on to anything), so you pretty much have to play with Autofire on if you're using that ship...

[Fudoh]

when I tried doing fullscreen on a 1050x1680 TATE'd monitor, it didn't actually fullscreen at all, it was vertically and horizontally squished, has anyone gotten this to work yet?

the game assumes your monitor's rotated and not your desktop. In other words: disable pivot in windows, enable tate in the game and you're fine.

[Jeneki]

I noticed that the toothpaste laser for the mk-II ship doesn't really work properly with Autofire off (when you hold down the fire button it just keeps going on and off and doesn't lock on to anything), so you pretty much have to play with Autofire on if you're using that ship...

Doesn't the toothpaste laser always require tapping to keep it up? That's how it works on the Raiden II, DX, and Jet pcbs I've tried at least.

[Mischief Maker]

I noticed that the toothpaste laser for the mk-II ship doesn't really work properly with Autofire off (when you hold down the fire button it just keeps going on and off and doesn't lock on to anything), so you pretty much have to play with Autofire on if you're using that ship...

Doesn't the toothpaste laser always require tapping to keep it up? That's how it works on the Raiden II, DX, and Jet pcbs I've tried at least.

In truth, this should more accurately be titled "Raiden Fighters legacy" and the shared control scheme for all 4 games is meant for fighters. In that series your ships have a charge shot when you hold the attack button down a few seconds. While the new ships have to choose between laser or missile based subweapons, the original Raiden ship has both the toothpaste laser and homing missiles. The tradeoff, however, is that the Raiden ship doesn't have a charge ability.

So when you turn autofire on, it means rapid fire when you aren't pressing any buttons. When you hold the button down, it's to power up the charge shot. Since the Raiden ship doesn't have a charge attack, holding attack means nothing for that ship.

[DrTrouserPlank]

Just picked it up. Here's my first impressions



Most noticeable is the "autofire" option. Unlike traditional autofire, the ship just shoots at max speed without holding any buttons down. If you hold down the shot button, it slows the rate of fire to a crawl. Turn autofire off and it's back to normal.

So autofire is actually "autofire" literally.. i.e. you don't have to press any button for the ship to fire?.. weird

How does the PCB of this game work?... I assume it allows tapping with either a vendor enabled "traditional" i.e. "hold-button" autofire, or it's a widely accepted hack that is used almost as standard.

Probably gonna have to buy this even if it's not perfect. Aces is never getting a PAL release. I'm not paying £70 for the JP copy, and MAME is a waste of time.

[Ed Oscuro]

In truth, this should more accurately be titled "Raiden Fighters legacy" and the shared control scheme for all 4 games is meant for fighters. In that series your ships have a charge shot when you hold the attack button down a few seconds. While the new ships have to choose between laser or missile based subweapons, the original Raiden ship has both the toothpaste laser and homing missiles. The tradeoff, however, is that the Raiden ship doesn't have a charge ability.

The real tradeoff is that Judge Spear or slaves are the only real way to play this game. Original Raiden? How you gon' get chains with that slow thing? The RF-originating ships...well, they're finicky at best.

[theclaw]

$6.48 with coupon code GMG20-GGN5D-FC3NA

http://www.greenmangaming.com/s/us/en/p ... en-legacy/

It looks like DRM free is correct. Nothing I can see stopping giving to friends, if you're into that.

[DrTrouserPlank]

Gotta say I think the support for this from the Euros is pretty bad. You fuckers ought to be all over this. Just over £6 for a "localisation" of four games. Aces on the 360 is never gonna happen...

"I want it"... (but I don't wanna pay for it).. I've got it on MAME.

shmup community in a sentence.

[Drachenherz]

I got it. And I love the music. Compared to the faulty MAME-music this is... erhm, music to my ears...

Actually, this caught me completely left field.

[IseeThings]

I think a lot of people have suspicions that it *is* MAME, or at least the guys who made it have done no original research of their own (hence being unable to deliver real improvements) while having no real understanding of shmups or the terms used (like the way Autofire is really automatic fire, not autofire)

Now like i've rightly said before, they can use MAME as a *reference* but they can't use MAME code, it's entirely possible they did this, but I think a lot of people would have liked to see some REAL effort put in, get the rights to the Raiden 2 code and do a proper modern port, superior sound emulation to MAME rather than bypassing it entirely and hacking in samples etc.

I don't know, that's just the general feeling I'm getting...that people see these as 0 effort ports and in light of other offerings with arrange modes, redone HD graphics etc. expect better.

[Ed Oscuro]

♫ money, money, moneeeeey ♫

I like how MAME is supposed to be a reference, but when somebody (who has procured the rights to port the original games) follows it, albeit slavishly, people get out the pitchforks. The "no use of the MAME code" point is, let's admit it, just a legal nicety; MAME's existence shouldn't be a roadblock to reselling the software, even in the form of "soft pressure" on people not to "reward" resellers - who are hopefully profiting the original makers. That should hold unless we want to open a different discussion about "how long should programs stay in copyright?" or "shouldn't copyright have to deal with the evolving landscape in technology?" (i.e. the simplistic "take away their rights, it's everybody's now that it's on the Internet!" argument). It's hard to avoid the conclusion that this discourages the use of MAME as a reference, despite this being part of the overt rationale for MAME in the first place. Discouraging this quite reasonable use is a viewpoint other OSS (particularly FOSS) software has evolved past: "Actually, we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can." - Selling Free Software, GNU.org.

I don't know, that's just the general feeling I'm getting...that people see these as 0 effort ports and in light of other offerings with arrange modes, redone HD graphics etc. expect better.

The above isn't to say this isn't a valid viewpoint to have (certainly any buyer will want to get something beyond MAME for the money - but again, MAME isn't supposed to be a replacement for ports, or competition for the real thing, and this whole discussion demonstrates why), but I don't think that it's reasonable to put out prejudicial comments without proof, especially as a MAME developer playing with other people's code. If they are using the MAME code, of course you can legally shut it down.

also autofire vs. automatic fire, yeah I wonder why somebody could get confused about this. Do you mean the game's ships fire their weapons automatically? Can't tell from the context, even knowing what the terms mean.

[Enemy]

I know my pc is old but why the hell is the emu so bad, runs ok on my pc in mame so what the hell is the stuttering framerate ? menus run ok but the game runs awful.

is it that my monitor is syncing at 60hz and these games are a weird framerate? Please someone shed some light on this.

[theclaw]

also autofire vs. automatic fire, yeah I wonder why somebody could get confused about this. Do you mean the game's ships fire their weapons automatically? Can't tell from the context, even knowing what the terms mean.

Yes. The game has an option to fire without button press.

[J_Taishu]

How do I run it in TATE mode?

EDIT: Ok, found out the bit about changing windows in Portrait mode, but now when I run the game the screen is all squished up!

[Jeneki]

is it that my monitor is syncing at 60hz and these games are a weird framerate?

I think the arcade versions were 54hz? If you look at the background on the PS1 ports you'll see a bit of stuttering.

[Greats]

The game definitely supports TATE mode.

You have to select "portrait orientation" in the resolution menu of your screen before to launch the game.

@Greats Did you change your screen orientation before or after the launch of the game?

I changed it before initially. Now I have tried to change back to a horizontal orientation, but when I look at the pre-game resolution settings, I only see the "Fullscreen" and "Original" options. I don't get any sort of extra window before the menu starts up, am I missing something?

http://i.imgur.com/6ojhYaL.jpg
note: doesn't actually look like this in the menu, I believe it's weirded out because using hyperdesktop caused it to auto-minimize when taking the screenshot

[KAI]

Hahahah, that logo looks awful.

[z0mbie90]

Hahahah, that logo looks awful.

The whole menu and backround looks awful

[IseeThings]

don't misunderstand me btw, I'm happy to see people licensing out the original IP and making it available through mainstream channels, and as long as they're doing that properly I think it's a great thing to see.

MAME has a no commercial use clause not to piss off people who want to use it in official ports, but to distance ourselves from the people who want to bundle it up with everything and sell it via shady advertising, or use it on multi-game boards (which we know does happen) By taking the no commercial use stance it is very clear that we do not approve of that. Maybe it could have been less aggressive and been a 'no commercial use unless you're the license holder of the ROMs / have been granted a license' but even then you people claiming they have an official / endorsed product when they in fact don't (the high profile Ultracade cases for example)

So MAME is better just saying 'no commercial use' and having none of it. It serves it's purpose, to document, and help other people understand what's going on, but if they want to release something they still need to put in the effort to understand how to emulate something, and emulate it, even if they don't need to do any of the figuring out of the hardware because we've already documented how we think things work. If you're doing something for a handful of games you actually have the licenses for that isn't a huge ask. Once somebody else has figured everything else out then emulation isn't hard

What you do inevitably have is MAME setting a benchmark tho, people expect an official port to be at least as good as MAME, and I don't think that's unreasonable. Here you do have the redone music, using techniques MAME would not consider valid and it opens the door for much higher quality audio than the original PCBs could ever output and for a port that is actually desirable I guess, I'm also going to guess it irritate you with the nitty gritty details of the hardware like the flash procedure (which is sound related anyway)

[DocHauser]

Gotta say I think the support for this from the Euros is pretty bad. You fuckers ought to be all over this. Just over £6 for a "localisation" of four games. Aces on the 360 is never gonna happen...

"I want it"... (but I don't wanna pay for it).. I've got it on MAME.

shmup community in a sentence.

Well, I bought it. Seems like other people have too. It's only been out for less than a day! Maybe you should give people a chance before you start slagging them off?

[DocHauser]

I noticed that the toothpaste laser for the mk-II ship doesn't really work properly with Autofire off (when you hold down the fire button it just keeps going on and off and doesn't lock on to anything), so you pretty much have to play with Autofire on if you're using that ship...

Doesn't the toothpaste laser always require tapping to keep it up? That's how it works on the Raiden II, DX, and Jet pcbs I've tried at least.

In truth, this should more accurately be titled "Raiden Fighters legacy" and the shared control scheme for all 4 games is meant for fighters. In that series your ships have a charge shot when you hold the attack button down a few seconds. While the new ships have to choose between laser or missile based subweapons, the original Raiden ship has both the toothpaste laser and homing missiles. The tradeoff, however, is that the Raiden ship doesn't have a charge ability.

So when you turn autofire on, it means rapid fire when you aren't pressing any buttons. When you hold the button down, it's to power up the charge shot. Since the Raiden ship doesn't have a charge attack, holding attack means nothing for that ship.

Ah, I forgot that you needed to keep tapping for the toothpaste laser. I guess I've been playing it on shmupmame with autofire enabled, since I usually pick Judge Spear, the slave, or fairy, so I wasn't playing with ships that had charge shot.

I guess it looks like I won't be able to select the slave or fairy in this version, though...

[The Coop]

I know my pc is old but why the hell is the emu so bad, runs ok on my pc in mame so what the hell is the stuttering framerate ? menus run ok but the game runs awful.

is it that my monitor is syncing at 60hz and these games are a weird framerate? Please someone shed some light on this.

Sounds like DOTemu hasn't fixed the issue they had with the Irem collection emulation (the graphics and sound stuttered like crazy for me).

Also, what the hell is up with the minimum specs? Why are they do demanding for a quartet of shmups?