M2 Toaplan collection

[Bassa-Bassa]

Thank you. This maybe a hot take, but this seems like a more reasonable package for these games. As much as I love M2, for my needs the Toaplan releases are very overkill and I would rather not pay the price they are asking. All I really need is solid emulation and the basic QoL features that are expected in a rerelease. I'd personally prefer to pay less for more arcade games than a whole lot more and get stuff like the console releases. For the console releases I would most play those on original hardware. I'm just kind of annoyed that I now have a useless Saturn Tribute of Batsugun. FOMO is a mutha.

That's easy to agree with, but this:

solid emulation

seems to be questionable at best with Bitwave releases.

[Creamy Goodness]

I haven't paid too much attention to them as I don't really use Steam much. But I thought I saw the emulation was at least decent.

[hamfighterx]

Hmm. Still hoping the ShotTriggers versions come out someday.

Hamster is able to release Namco arcade titles on consoles even with other versions of the games, like Pac-Man, getting published by Namco themselves on the same platforms. Hope M2's license is similar with Toaplan.

I wish I was as optimistic as some here about the prospects of more M2 Toaplan Arcade Garage, but it just doesn't feel like a good business move any more. Although many of us here would still care (I'd buy Playstation and Switch versions of Vol.4 in a heartbeat, same as I did for Vol.1-3), it seems like a real stretch to think that more M2 volumes wouldn't have significantly lower sales due to competing releases of the same games on the same consoles as long as quality is at least decent (which, judging by the Bitwave PC releases, seems like they're "good enough" even if they don't match M2).

M2 was already handling these on a more obvious budget than the ShotTriggers series proper, evident from things like minimal arranged music (Vol.1-3 each had two remixed menu/arcade challenge tracks from chibi-tech, in-house at M2 - as opposed to most of the ShotTriggers games having multiple full arranged soundtracks), less game modes, no Toaplan Arcade Garage release in getting close to 2 years, etc. And speculation was already that these weren't making much money.

I don't view this the same as something like Hamster releasing Pac-Man for a budget price in their weekly series. For one thing, that's a super famous game that will generate some impulse buys for the low cost, regardless of being available via other means. And for Hamster, they do weekly Arcade Archives releases so it's a small fraction of their overall lineup. M2 releases like 1 or 2 self-published games per year, so it's a much bigger risk to the company if any one release does poorly. Or Batsugun Saturn Tribute existing on the same console - probably would have had some impact on an M2 version (and perhaps they'd intentionally do that game last of their Toaplan releases, to give it more distance), but that's a one-off thing, so way less impact than having EVERY Toaplan shooter already released by City Connection on the same platform.

With that in mind, if I'm M2, I'm thinking it makes no sense to proceed here. Feels a lot easier for other potential releases to make more money, if they can instead use their resources to do stuff like ShotTriggers versions of Batrider or other Raizing stuff, Ibara Kuro, DDP Bee Storm (???), Air Gallet, whatever...

Hmm. Still hoping the ShotTriggers versions come out someday.

Hamster is able to release Namco arcade titles on consoles even with other versions of the games, like Pac-Man, getting published by Namco themselves on the same platforms. Hope M2's license is similar with Toaplan.

In general, this kind of license agreement likely covers specific platforms and it's common to see a defined term with an end date. Wouldn't be all that surprising if licenses are non-exclusive (i.e., multiple companies have the right to publish). But even if M2 has the legal right to continue using the licensed IP, it's still a business decision of whether that makes sense for them.

[DrTrouserPlank]

Are these physical releases only for sale through the publisher's site or are they expected to be general releases which might show up on play-asia for example. Nowhere I check is listing them as pre-orders yet (I assume neither volumes are out currently?)

[Sumez]

They were only announced a couple of days ago. But since MSRP and release date for the physicals were announced as well, I'm going to assume retailers will have them up for preorder pretty soon.

[Steven]

They did at least a load of cool stuff out of the way in those three volumes. But it's a shame that all those Outzone revisions don't get put out properly. Plus there's still some interesting home ports absent - Slap Fight, Twin Hawk and Truxton. Hopefully M2 will be back with more Toaplan Arcade Garage when they're ready.

Out Zone is a very confusing mess of ROM versions to begin with. Assuming that they don't add the final non-hard version, the almost final version is almost identical to the finished version, so it's one of those "good enough but could be better" things. I'm actually really glad that the prototype is in the selection because prerelease versions of games are awesome as hell. I just wish it was properly labelled. There's a prerelease build of Hellfire in here too, which is cool. I asked half of the dev team (Uemura and Iwabuchi) about the weird shot graphics in this version and neither of them remembered them.

But yes, Slap Fight MD. What a glorious treasure that thing is. It's almost like a ShotTriggers version of Slap Fight from 23 years before ShotTriggers existed. You've got your arrange soundtrack, original soundtrack, arrange mode, practice options that were likely close to unprecedented for a 1993 console shooter... yeah, it's the best. I hope nobody forgets to buy the Retro-bit cart because that game is not cheap in normal conditions. It's about the same price as the PCB and I know that they didn't make many copies of either.

[hamfighterx]

Surprisingly, western versions release two weeks EARLIER than Japan: August 14. Physicals will be available at retail too. First print bonuses with Vol.1 coming with a slipcase to hold both volumes, and Vol.2 coming with art cards (including for the Vol.1 games).

Trailer with ESRB rating indicates US/Canada, but it's published by Clear River Games so looks safe to assume there's also a European retail release.

[DrTrouserPlank]

AmiAmi are listing both versions for sale with pre-order bonuses and amiami keyrings. Price is pretty good, although if these are getting European retail releases then I'd rather skip the international postage. Hopefully it'll show up on some European sites to confirm this.

I'm sure some people will be sad to see M2 not doing their shottriggers releases of these games, but imo selling them in packages of 8 games at this sort of price is a more viable business model. I think even amongst the hardcore fanbase, some of those individual shottriggers releases like same!same!same! and Tiger Heli were a hard sell at the price they were asking (high quality though the ports were).

I really hope that M2 go back to porting more of Cave's library so that we can get some of those games off the decaying hardware that many of the previous releases are still stuck on.

[TransatlanticFoe]

It's Clear River Games, so it'll be on Amazon

[Lemnear]

Hmm. Still hoping the ShotTriggers versions come out someday.

Hamster is able to release Namco arcade titles on consoles even with other versions of the games, like Pac-Man, getting published by Namco themselves on the same platforms. Hope M2's license is similar with Toaplan.

I wish I was as optimistic as some here about the prospects of more M2 Toaplan Arcade Garage, but it just doesn't feel like a good business move any more. Although many of us here would still care (I'd buy Playstation and Switch versions of Vol.4 in a heartbeat, same as I did for Vol.1-3), it seems like a real stretch to think that more M2 volumes wouldn't have significantly lower sales due to competing releases of the same games on the same consoles as long as quality is at least decent (which, judging by the Bitwave PC releases, seems like they're "good enough" even if they don't match M2).

M2 was already handling these on a more obvious budget than the ShotTriggers series proper, evident from things like minimal arranged music (Vol.1-3 each had two remixed menu/arcade challenge tracks from chibi-tech, in-house at M2 - as opposed to most of the ShotTriggers games having multiple full arranged soundtracks), less game modes, no Toaplan Arcade Garage release in getting close to 2 years, etc. And speculation was already that these weren't making much money.

I don't view this the same as something like Hamster releasing Pac-Man for a budget price in their weekly series. For one thing, that's a super famous game that will generate some impulse buys for the low cost, regardless of being available via other means. And for Hamster, they do weekly Arcade Archives releases so it's a small fraction of their overall lineup. M2 releases like 1 or 2 self-published games per year, so it's a much bigger risk to the company if any one release does poorly. Or Batsugun Saturn Tribute existing on the same console - probably would have had some impact on an M2 version (and perhaps they'd intentionally do that game last of their Toaplan releases, to give it more distance), but that's a one-off thing, so way less impact than having EVERY Toaplan shooter already released by City Connection on the same platform.

With that in mind, if I'm M2, I'm thinking it makes no sense to proceed here. Feels a lot easier for other potential releases to make more money, if they can instead use their resources to do stuff like ShotTriggers versions of Batrider or other Raizing stuff, Ibara Kuro, DDP Bee Storm (???), Air Gallet, whatever...

Hmm. Still hoping the ShotTriggers versions come out someday.

Hamster is able to release Namco arcade titles on consoles even with other versions of the games, like Pac-Man, getting published by Namco themselves on the same platforms. Hope M2's license is similar with Toaplan.

In general, this kind of license agreement likely covers specific platforms and it's common to see a defined term with an end date. Wouldn't be all that surprising if licenses are non-exclusive (i.e., multiple companies have the right to publish). But even if M2 has the legal right to continue using the licensed IP, it's still a business decision of whether that makes sense for them.

Yes, but these collections contain practically all the Toaplan games or almost, it doesn't make sense to continue with the Toaplan Garage series of M2 at this point.
Maybe it's better this way, I hope that M2 focuses on more urgent ports like ESPGaluda, DoDonPachi or Battle Bakraid instead of porting things that already have 1 or more ports... but above all I wish they worked faster! Their slowness cost them practically the entire line of games. And honestly I didn't expect this "competitiveness" .

[Sumez]

I do really want these collections also. But based on what I heard about the Steam versions of the same releases, I'm worried about their quality control.

At least they seem to have a really good handle on input lag, which is commendable.

[Steven]

They're mostly fine as long as you mute the audio and don't care about having good autofire settings like Hamster, M2, and even City Connection have. Tatsujin has a horribly awkward practice mode where you choose not which stage you want to practice but which number boss you want to practice and then choose if you want to start at the checkpoint or at the boss. Don't know where boss 12 is in the game? Well, too bad. Want to practice a specific part in a stage? You just have to guess what the nearest boss/miniboss is until you get lucky.

Tatsujin Ou's is the same except you choose the checkpoint number instead of the stage or boss. Don't know which checkpoint is where on what stage? Again, too bad, go figure it out. It also gives the exact same RNG for item movement every single time and there is no way to choose where in the item table you are.

[Sumez]

They're mostly fine

Cool!

as long as you mute the audio

lol no

and don't care about having good autofire settings like Hamster, M2, and even City Connection have.

Definitely don't care

[TransatlanticFoe]

What revisions do these releases offer? I can't find the info on the Steam/GoG store pages. Or is it just the World version, like the Evercade carts? Obvs the Outzone one is a mess.

[Augemitbutter]

Not sure if this was mentioned here already but Clear River released Batsugun Saturn Tribute this week in EU

https://www.coolshop.de/produkt/batsugu ... ed/23R7MN/

Deluxe will follow later

https://www.coolshop.de/produkt/batsugu ... on/23R7MQ/

Now M2 have to get their version out on top of all this

[Lemnear]

Wait a second...they're not making me understand a damn thing...
on consoles they are 2 collections, but on steam they are divided into 4?

I suppose they have no frills and are more similar to the ports of Psikyo (also in terms of input lag) right?

[Bassa-Bassa]

We don't even know who's porting those.

[hamfighterx]

I suppose they have no frills and are more similar to the ports of Psikyo (also in terms of input lag) right?

The current Psikyo ports aren't a very good reference from a lag perspective. Those were developed by ZeroDiv, BEFORE they were acquired by City Connection, so CC wasn't involved at all. FWIW, City Connection actually sold ZeroDiv earlier this year to Edia (same company that owns the Telenet Japan IP).

That being said, pretty much anything is more no frills than M2, so yeah, in that respect I'd say these will be a bit more bare bones.

[Lemnear]

We don't even know who's porting those.

I thought it was BitWave..? Don't tell me it's a port of a port...

I suppose they have no frills and are more similar to the ports of Psikyo (also in terms of input lag) right?

The current Psikyo ports aren't a very good reference from a lag perspective. Those were developed by ZeroDiv, BEFORE they were acquired by City Connection, so CC wasn't involved at all. FWIW, City Connection actually sold ZeroDiv earlier this year to Edia (same company that owns the Telenet Japan IP).
That being said, pretty much anything is more no frills than M2, so yeah, in that respect I'd say these will be a bit more bare bones.

Ty! I didn't know that ZeroDiv wasn't even from City-Connection at the time (or that they've now gone to Edia).
On their steam page they state "super low input lag"...but who knows what they really mean...and by multiple versions they mean US/JP/EU/WW/Etc. or also between console and arcade?
Also how many versions of Batsugun exist today? wtf?

[Jonpachi]

I suppose they have no frills and are more similar to the ports of Psikyo (also in terms of input lag) right?

The current Psikyo ports aren't a very good reference from a lag perspective. Those were developed by ZeroDiv, BEFORE they were acquired by City Connection, so CC wasn't involved at all. FWIW, City Connection actually sold ZeroDiv earlier this year to Edia (same company that owns the Telenet Japan IP).

That being said, pretty much anything is more no frills than M2, so yeah, in that respect I'd say these will be a bit more bare bones.

The PS4 ports fared much better. It’s the Switch that got hit with the laggy stick. PS4 are pretty decent but definitely bare bones. Dragon Blaze feels very snappy, better than the PS2 version, so it’s worth it for that alone.

[Lemnear]

I suppose they have no frills and are more similar to the ports of Psikyo (also in terms of input lag) right?

The current Psikyo ports aren't a very good reference from a lag perspective. Those were developed by ZeroDiv, BEFORE they were acquired by City Connection, so CC wasn't involved at all. FWIW, City Connection actually sold ZeroDiv earlier this year to Edia (same company that owns the Telenet Japan IP).

That being said, pretty much anything is more no frills than M2, so yeah, in that respect I'd say these will be a bit more bare bones.

The PS4 ports fared much better. It’s the Switch that got hit with the laggy stick. PS4 are pretty decent but definitely bare bones. Dragon Blaze feels very snappy, better than the PS2 version, so it’s worth it for that alone.

Thank goodness....of course they could have also put a stage select to practice...ok they are very short as games (perhaps the shortest shmups among the famous names, since they last 15min at most).

But then...what connections does Clear River have with City-Connection exactly?

[Steven]

What revisions do these releases offer? I can't find the info on the Steam/GoG store pages. Or is it just the World version, like the Evercade carts? Obvs the Outzone one is a mess.

Out Zone is the only Toaplan game that is known to have a million revisions that are accessible. Otherwise, it's mostly just Japan/overseas. In the case of these, you get Japan/US/Europe/Hong Kong versions where applicable. I want to say that Hong Kong is basically the Japanese version for at least Tatsujin Ou, but I forgot about the rest.

Out Zone is also weird in that the region setting probably only affects the number of letters on the name entry screen and the presence or absence of the little story thingy in the attract mode, which was translated to English for this release, and it is the actual code of the ROM that determines which version of the game that you play. Almost every other Toaplan game has regional differences except for like Slap Fight, although regional differences in Vimana, FixEight, and Batsugun are complete mysteries to me. I guess Flying Shark/Sky Shark is actually easier than Hishouzame, but just barely. Only played Hishouzame, so I don't know. I don't think they actually separated the leaderboards for regional variants of some games despite differences in difficulty, but I haven't checked all of them.

On their steam page they state "super low input lag"...but who knows what they really mean

The emulator that the PC versions use basically supports unlimited refresh rates, so as your refresh rate increases, input lag approaches zero, so in theory you get infinitely small input lag. Of course, you need to play on PC for this to happen because consoles have restricted refresh rates, but in theory the 120Hz modes of modern consoles should allow these to have about half the lag of the PCBs, provided that the emulators don't add any lag that isn't there on the PCBs.

When I was beta testing Slap Fight, I did a non-scientific three-way comparison between the PCB, Bitwave, and MAME. Bitwave's felt pretty laggy at first, but after I told them about it they got it pretty damn close to the PCB. Bitwave Slap Fight will make your ears bleed, but lag is not a concern at all.

We don't even know who's porting those.

I thought it was BitWave..? Don't tell me it's a port of a port...

The emulator is going to be ported for sure. Old games from Toaplan's era are almost never ported, but it does happen from time to time. X68000 Cotton is the one that comes to mind. That's actually a port, which is cool.

You remember City Connection's Batsugun, right? That's an emulated rerelease of the Saturn version, which itself at least is partially emulated, so it's your PC/PS4/PS5/Switch emulating the Saturn emulating the PCB.

[Lemnear]

well now I don't know whether to take these 2 collections and try the rest of the Toaplan titles or take Gradius Origins, which appeals to me less BUT, there is the certainty of M2 behind it.... damn!

[Steven]

Well, they aren't going anywhere. You're using the digital PS5, right? Don't have to worry about stock issues, in that case. I'd probably get Gradius just because it's M2 ShotTriggers. M2 breaks stuff on occasion, but they almost always fix it. Still waiting on them to fix PS4 Horror Story's PCB autofire and add the select button to the PC Engine emulator on Switch Zero Fire, but those aren't super terribly serious omissions.

[XtraSmiley]

Well, they aren't going anywhere. You're using the digital PS5, right? Don't have to worry about stock issues, in that case. I'd probably get Gradius just because it's M2 ShotTriggers. M2 breaks stuff on occasion, but they almost always fix it. Still waiting on them to fix PS4 Horror Story's PCB autofire and add the select button to the PC Engine emulator on Switch Zero Fire, but those aren't super terribly serious omissions.

Yeah, stock issues aren't an issue, however delisting is. The Switch Cave games got delisted b/c I think the company that was publishing them lost the rights, so consider that.

[Steven]

And that's why nobody should ever buy digital games anywhere except GOG.

[tomwhite2004]

And that's why nobody should ever buy digital games anywhere except GOG.

https://delistedgames.com/all-delisted-gog-games/

[Steven]

That's not the gotcha you think it is; with GOG, you can back your games up, (maybe illegally?) give them to people, or do whatever else you want to do and nobody can stop you. Or I guess you can just go illegally download them somewhere, as I've heard that most of the illegal downloads of PC games are of GOG versions, but that's not the point, and it's not helpful anyway because GOG is struggling financially. The point is that those will always be accessible somehow, legally or otherwise, and you won't have to resort to emulation unless PC architecture greatly changes between now and whenever.

Buy on GOG and give Steam and DRM the middle finger.

Buy CDs, DVDs, and BDs, for that matter, too. I know I'm always saying this, but I say it because it's important, not just because they provide higher quality than Youtube or whatever. There are exceptions, like how mora now offers high resolution DRM-less music that is of higher quality than what you can get on CDs, but yeah.

[tomwhite2004]

That's not the gotcha you think it is

Just showing that there's nothing to stop content being delisted from GOG too.

give them to people, or do whatever else you want to do and nobody can stop you.

You can do this with a cracked Steam game or switch NSP/XCI file as well.

The point is that those will always be accessible somehow, legally or otherwise,

Yep, just like Steam and Switch games are.

[Lemnear]

Well, they aren't going anywhere. You're using the digital PS5, right? Don't have to worry about stock issues, in that case. I'd probably get Gradius just because it's M2 ShotTriggers. M2 breaks stuff on occasion, but they almost always fix it. Still waiting on them to fix PS4 Horror Story's PCB autofire and add the select button to the PC Engine emulator on Switch Zero Fire, but those aren't super terribly serious omissions.

it's for "priority", I hope Earthion doesn't come out in August. Anyway, a delisted game, if it's purchased, remains in your history (or at least that's what happened to me with OutRun Online, it couldn't be purchased but I could redownload it whenever I wanted).