Toaplan games coming to PC (Steam, GOG)

[Fingolfin]

Wow! “arrogant and petulant” ?!?

Did not intend to incur wrath here regarding my-as-stated-uncertain and even genuinely ignorant and confused sense of Steam reviews.

What my words and phrasing focused on — or attempted to focus on — was questioning the nature and value of Steam reviews in general but especially for the PC Bitwave Toaplan STG ports. This was intended as uncertain speculation. Evidently I failed to sufficiently convey my primary point before posting my Steam Out Zone review (in italics): the vast extent of my own lack of knowledge and inexperience and uncertainty in encountering and engaging w/ Steam or other user reviews.

Although I called what appeared to be mostly 100% and or mostly positive reviews into question in a general sense, in my post 3 back I attempted to put that in the context of my own lack of knowledge re Steam reviews — I suppose user reviews in general.

Again the ignorance and naïveté to which I referred is/was my ignorance and naïveté — I was not presuming to suggest a) others don’t have a right to review stuff however they wish/deem fit or b) that the others who did post reviews were or are being ignorant or naive.

That is what I both stated in my last post and what I eternally believe.

”To each their own” is a good way to try to exist. “Judge not lest ye be judged” is a good policy with regard to considering or evaluating the words and intents of communication on the part of others.

I suppose that
“Would seem Steam reviews are just another social media platform for spouting absurdities/seeking attention (imagining most will read that roll eyes and be convinced of my naïveté and ignorance). “Ignorance is best”? Nah, not really…”
is perhaps a bit harsh but again it was written and intended to convey my own ignorance.

Every time I used the term ignorant (or naive/naïveté) I was referring to me, myself and I — not anyone else who wrote or writes Steam reviews of these or other products.

At the end of that quotation I did turn it around — “Ignorance is best”? Nah, not really…” — meaning only that I don’t wish to be ignorant, relating back to my own limited (and thus ignorant) knowledge of Steam reviews in general.

The speculation about “spouting absurdities/getting attention” I am willing to stand by — as a lot of the logic and language in Steam/user reviews seems somewhat a) specious and b) fawning (trying to curry favor w/ developers or within the Steam community?). Although such critical speculation’s not a rock I’ll die on. As stated and or inferred now several times, this is a learning experience on my end.

I sincerely apologize if questioning some of the nature and even function of Steam/user reviews — especially in light of these PC Bitwave Toaplan ports— makes me appear to be arrogant and petulant (I definitely don’t see my questioning of Steam/user reviews that way).

I did not and do not dismiss the opinions of others: I strongly believe in the importance and value of everyone having their own opinion and being able to express their opinions however they feel/see fit. That right would hopefully also be extended to myself.

I did ID what do genuinely seem to be the strengths that the PC Bitwave Toaplan ports have at present/at launch. I am optimistic and added this in my last post and in my Steam review.

Thanks again for reading.

[Rastan78]

From the first paragraph of the Eurogamer review:

After Toaplan closed its doors for the last time, former staff would go on to found or take senior positions at many of the shooting game genre's most important studios, such as Takumi, Gazelle, Raizing/Eighting, and the mighty Cave.

The idea that Raizing splintered off from Toaplan is often repeated. It's even on Wikipedia I think. Is that actually true at all? I'm under the impression that the key staff that founded Raizing came from Compile, and Raizing was founded the year before Toaplan went bankrupt.

The two companies had some type of friendly relationship and Raizing used hardware similar to Toaplan's. So was there a connection? Who are the unnamed staff who came from Toaplan to Raizing or Eighting?

Not counting Yuge and Uemura who are credited on later Raizing stuff and possibly worked on 1944, but not any time near Raizing's early days.

[Jeneki]

I just had a fun incident in Twin Cobra. Died right as the first boss was exploding. Next player helicopter comes in as usual, and then flies right past the carrier instead of landing for bonus points. Started an new game and intentionally went out of my way to do this again, and got the same result. Seems to be a reproduceable glitch.

I have to admit I've spent very little time with the Twin Cobra version with instant respawn. Not sure I like it, as just popping back into whichever spot I died seems harder to recover than checkpoints.

[Bassa-Bassa]

From the first paragraph of the Eurogamer review:

After Toaplan closed its doors for the last time, former staff would go on to found or take senior positions at many of the shooting game genre's most important studios, such as Takumi, Gazelle, Raizing/Eighting, and the mighty Cave.

The idea that Raizing splintered off from Toaplan is often repeated. It's even on Wikipedia I think. Is that actually true at all? I'm under the impression that the key staff that founded Raizing came from Compile, and Raizing was founded the year before Toaplan went bankrupt.

The two companies had some type of friendly relationship and Raizing used hardware similar to Toaplan's. So was there a connection? Who are the unnamed staff who came from Toaplan to Raizing or Eighting?

Not counting Yuge and Uemura who are credited on later Raizing stuff and possibly worked on 1944, but not any time near Raizing's early days.

A friend of mine I trust a lot for this stuff has always said the same - there're no known Toaplan names involved in Eighting/Raizing's origin despite all the talk. While the developers came mostly from Compile, the main name behind the foundation is Tomonori Fujisawa, formerly of Naxat.

[Steven]

The closest thing there is to a connection between early Raizing and Toaplan that I am aware of is that Toaplan published Musha Aleste for Compile and Toaplan became close with some of the guys over there. Those same guys then later went to Raizing and I guess Toaplan helped them out by teaching them game development and giving Raizing access to (or was it licensing? I forgot the specifics) what's generally referred to as the Toaplan V2 arcade hardware, although I don't know if Toaplan ever actually called it that officially, especially as it has a few variations anyway, even within Toaplan.

Everyone knows that Uemura-san made the sound driver on Battle Bakraid, but Yuge-san also somehow ended up there as well, and he worked on Kuru Kuru Kururin. As for 1944 The Loop Master, they talked about it during Yuge-san's panel at the event 6 weeks ago. I forgot the specifics (and my knowledge of Japanese game development words is rather lacking), but I remember that Yuge-san mentioned that they found it difficult to make a vertical game with a 4:3 screen.

I just had a fun incident in Twin Cobra. Died right as the first boss was exploding. Next player helicopter comes in as usual, and then flies right past the carrier instead of landing for bonus points. Started an new game and intentionally went out of my way to do this again, and got the same result. Seems to be a reproduceable glitch.

I have to admit I've spent very little time with the Twin Cobra version with instant respawn. Not sure I like it, as just popping back into whichever spot I died seems harder to recover than checkpoints.

Yeah, that's how the game is; this is "normal" behaviour, although I'm not sure if it is intentional or not. Probably not judging by how the music continues when you do this, but if you want to hear a certain stage's music for the entire game, you can bring it with you by intentionally suiciding right as you kill each boss.

[TransatlanticFoe]

Yeah I've had that happen in Twin Cobra playing on MAME for years (I used MD emulation, and later a Genesis Twin Cobra cart, to play Kyukyokyu Tiger). Does strike me as the result of a quick and dirty Western conversion - implement respawn and 2P mode, reduce rate of fire, done.

Pretty bizarre they're talking about adding a meme rather than fixing the issues. I'd love to support this via the GoG release (and see whether a low-end Surface Pro can run them) but it baffles me why they were put out in the state they're currently in.

[Rastan78]

https://twitter.com/Sakrac/status/16288 ... a2GKg&s=19

Looking at that tweet isn't super encouraging. Seems there's a bit of hiding his head in the sand here. And mentioning the possibility of of arranged modes without addressing any of the issues? I guess time will tell.

From the eurogamer review:

Running Out Zone on my treasured arcade PCB alongside Bitwave's digital version, you'd have to be fairly picky to notice a meaningful difference. The very best players out there to whom a second is enough time for all kinds of strategic play? Perhaps they'd feel tiny shifts more than other of players.

It's funny how so often when reviews of shmups mention a problem it's brushed aside as if only the top 1% of obsessively addicted players will ever notice. Sometimes they also like to include a mischaracterization of what it means to be dedicated to playing the genre. "If you have the reflexes of a cyborg on Adderall and have been pumping quarters into arcade machines since 1979, you may notice the issues. For 99.999% of normal human beings this collection will be fine." Usually something like that lol

[DenimDemon]

Yeah I dig Eurogamer stg reviews but that one kinda sucked for me. It’s not about being nitpicking at all…and that comparison with a pcb….jesus this out zone version is a friggin beta.

[spmbx]

I don't understand most of the reviews either. I feel a huge disconnect with most of the press on this. They will probably mean the devs think it's all great and i'd be surprised if they will patch this up anymore tbh. I mean putting your priorities at adding a meme-intro says enough. But hey maybe they'll surprise me.

[Rastan78]

Yeah it's easy to feel out of step with the way these things get reviewed. I really wish the narrative around accuracy or performance issues only being meaningful to a small group of experts will change.

If anything issues like these pointed out in K Tiger by RVY and others could hurt new players the most. They won't be able to know the difference and may assume the game is unbalanced, walking away with a bad impression of a classic. Why seek out the superior M2 version for example if you already believe you have something almost as good at a much cheaper price?

(4) The game is too difficult even on the lowest difficulty level. Obviously the speed and firing angle of the enemy bullets are wrong . . . .

It is possible that the behavior of enemy planes and bullets itself has been changed. The algorithm itself may have been changed.

@RVY welcome to the forum, and thanks for your detailed impressions.

BTW I totally think there's a place for casual reviews. Like if you're looking for something to play for an hour with friends and beers and aren't familiar with a game, is this one a good choice? Nothing wrong with that whatsoever.

In the case of the Eurogamer review though he said he's been playing Outzone for years and ran it side by side to the PCB?

[BIL]

Sorry for my bad English. I have been reading this forum for years and decided to join today. I don't know in which place to write my experience and information, so I want to share it here.

Welcome aboard, and thanks for posting - your English is very readable! It's always valuable to hear from players familiar with the PCBs.

From the eurogamer review:

Running Out Zone on my treasured arcade PCB alongside Bitwave's digital version, you'd have to be fairly picky to notice a meaningful difference. The very best players out there to whom a second is enough time for all kinds of strategic play? Perhaps they'd feel tiny shifts more than other of players.

It's funny how so often when reviews of shmups mention a problem it's brushed aside as if only the top 1% of obsessively addicted players will ever notice. Sometimes they also like to include a mischaracterization of what it means to be dedicated to playing the genre. "If you have the reflexes of a cyborg on Adderall and have been pumping quarters into arcade machines since 1979, you may notice the issues. For 99.999% of normal human beings this collection will be fine." Usually something like that lol

Isn't that our comrade Spadgy? Spadgy mon frere, even for men of inconsequential skill like ourselves, a whole second is a long-ass time on the battlefield! PIG JOE from the GUN.SMOKE will blast your knackers clean off in a quarter of that! Imagine - a pair of smouldering, fricasseed knackers, flying at speed down the dusty Wild West street!

[Kino]

Who are the unnamed staff who came from Toaplan to Raizing or Eighting?

Not counting Yuge and Uemura who are credited on later Raizing stuff and possibly worked on 1944, but not any time near Raizing's early days.

Battle Bakraid graphic artist "N. Kaneko" is almost certainly Nanpei Kaneko of Fixeight and Knuckle Bash fame, especially given the Uemura connection (although I believe it was technically freelance work? Toaplan was the only company he was ever officially employed by, from what I've read)

[BrianC]

the Uemura connection

Is that a place where all the Toaplan games join together and form the V-Five?

[Rastan78]

[Isn't that our comrade Spadgy? Spadgy mon frere, even for men of inconsequential skill like ourselves, a whole second is a long-ass time on the battlefield!

For Denzel a second is practically a lifetime.
https://youtube.com/shorts/dnfHVpAzeY0?feature=share

Nice finds on the Raizing stuff guys.

[Steven]

I checked Kyuukyoku Tiger's safespots and they definitely don't work now. The bullets also seem to travel through your helicopter instead of ceasing to exist after they hit you. Looks like the enemy switched to AP rounds or something... time to email Bitwave again. Anyone else got any oddities to send to them? Might as well lump everything together if possible. In 5 attempts to check the safespots, the training mode put me in the wrong stage twice (once on Twin Cobra because I forgot to change the game since it's the only game in the collection that doesn't remember what the last game you played was, and one time on Kyuukyoku Tiger) and every time it played Break a Leg! on stages 5 and 10 instead of Our Life. I LOVE Break a Leg! and you who are reading this probably do as well, but it's not supposed to play on stage 5 or stage 10 lol.

That Eurogamer review is really strange. Like if you checked against the PCB, how did you notice, or not notice, that it's an unfinished prototype version of the game with completely broken music and sound effects and go "yeah, it's basically just like the PCB"? I can easily understand someone not noticing that it runs too fast if they don't have a lot of experience with the game, but one of the first things I did was to do a side-by-side comparison with the PCB to see how it goes and sure enough it's too fast.

Well, I finally played beyond stage 2 in Kyuukyoku Tiger and I can tell the difficulty does seem to be a bit messed up. It's pretty obvious if you no miss to at least the first half of stage 4, as the little boats on that stage seem to be a bit more aggressive than they should be. I am using difficulty B, assuming that the difficulty settings are not mislabeled like some of the other DIP switches are.

[pieslice]

I remember playing the prototype version of outzone back in the day as it was the most available rom of the game in late 2000's.
I've been playing the "official" rom for only couple of years.

[MJR]

Well who cares about fanatic curmudgeons in obscure forum when eurogamer has spoken?
Sigh.

At this particular moment I am not sure if I feel like trusting anyone else than hamster or M2.
But lets hope for the best.

[MX7]

https://twitter.com/Sakrac/status/16288 ... a2GKg&s=19

Looking at that tweet isn't super encouraging. Seems there's a bit of hiding his head in the sand here. And mentioning the possibility of of arranged modes without addressing any of the issues? I guess time will tell.

From the eurogamer review:

Running Out Zone on my treasured arcade PCB alongside Bitwave's digital version, you'd have to be fairly picky to notice a meaningful difference. The very best players out there to whom a second is enough time for all kinds of strategic play? Perhaps they'd feel tiny shifts more than other of players.

It's funny how so often when reviews of shmups mention a problem it's brushed aside as if only the top 1% of obsessively addicted players will ever notice. Sometimes they also like to include a mischaracterization of what it means to be dedicated to playing the genre. "If you have the reflexes of a cyborg on Adderall and have been pumping quarters into arcade machines since 1979, you may notice the issues. For 99.999% of normal human beings this collection will be fine." Usually something like that lol

This review was written by old school Shmups Forum member and former moderator Spadgy/OTA. Maybe he's lost his touch, bless him, but I will say that we spent a LOT of time playing Outzone on PCB in the bowels of the Casino arcade (RIP). If he's playing down the differences a bit because of the target audience of the piece, but frankly, if it's good enough for Spadgy, it's definitely good enough for me.

I reckon the PCB in the Casino was the prototype version now I think about it. No idea, it was a long time ago, but I sort of remember it looping the first three stage themes, DDP style?

[Bar81]

https://twitter.com/Sakrac/status/16288 ... a2GKg&s=19

Looking at that tweet isn't super encouraging. Seems there's a bit of hiding his head in the sand here. And mentioning the possibility of of arranged modes without addressing any of the issues? I guess time will tell.

From the eurogamer review:

Running Out Zone on my treasured arcade PCB alongside Bitwave's digital version, you'd have to be fairly picky to notice a meaningful difference. The very best players out there to whom a second is enough time for all kinds of strategic play? Perhaps they'd feel tiny shifts more than other of players.

It's funny how so often when reviews of shmups mention a problem it's brushed aside as if only the top 1% of obsessively addicted players will ever notice. Sometimes they also like to include a mischaracterization of what it means to be dedicated to playing the genre. "If you have the reflexes of a cyborg on Adderall and have been pumping quarters into arcade machines since 1979, you may notice the issues. For 99.999% of normal human beings this collection will be fine." Usually something like that lol

This review was written by old school Shmups Forum member and former moderator Spadgy/OTA. Maybe he's lost his touch, bless him, but I will say that we spent a LOT of time playing Outzone on PCB in the bowels of the Casino arcade (RIP). If he's playing down the differences a bit because of the target audience of the piece, but frankly, if it's good enough for Spadgy, it's definitely good enough for me.

I reckon the PCB in the Casino was the prototype version now I think about it. No idea, it was a long time ago, but I sort of remember it looping the first three stage themes, DDP style?

While I get that it's a shame that the games aren't 100% faithful (and it's not clear what ROMs they are using - I agree it would be nice to know this), the reality is that outside of people on these forums, being close with minimal lag is going to be more than good enough to allow people to fully experience this great game. While we should push for 100% accuracy, poo pooing a game that plays well because it's effectively not the PCB is not productive. Anyone not being unreasonably critical is going to give this a solid thumbs up and that doesn't mean they can't mention some of the shortcomings, but to pretend that those keep this from being amazing is not credible. They even got scanlines looking decent, which is above and beyond.

[Bassa-Bassa]

It's 2023. The dev even worked in noncommercial emulation, they're well aware what Mame is. Moreover, their parent company freaking owns Toaplan's succesor and IPs.

Even if I personally didn't expect much better from a Western developer, I honestly can't figure out how to justify a release like this. If there's anything good here it's because the original material was superlative, but that they managed to degrade it for no other reason than plain incompetence shouldn't be forgiven even by casual players.

[Sumez]

From the eurogamer review:

Running Out Zone on my treasured arcade PCB alongside Bitwave's digital version, you'd have to be fairly picky to notice a meaningful difference. The very best players out there to whom a second is enough time for all kinds of strategic play? Perhaps they'd feel tiny shifts more than other of players.

It's funny how so often when reviews of shmups mention a problem it's brushed aside as if only the top 1% of obsessively addicted players will ever notice. Sometimes they also like to include a mischaracterization of what it means to be dedicated to playing the genre. "If you have the reflexes of a cyborg on Adderall and have been pumping quarters into arcade machines since 1979, you may notice the issues. For 99.999% of normal human beings this collection will be fine." Usually something like that lol

I think that snippet you quoted is a lot more fair about how it phrases it though. Reads to me more like a "if you are playing on this level, the accuracy of this port might not be sufficient" than the typical narrative you're referring to, and which I've seen many other places as well.

The bigger issue of course is that they are wrong. I mean, I haven't played the port because I don't have a PC for that kind of stuff, and I'm happy with my PCB, but from what I can tell people in here stating, even the music is completely wrong?
Or maybe the reviewer just went straight into the "hard" mode romset like any decent player should, and didn't notice any differences I think that would be completely fair.

[Steven]

Here's Jaimers playing Steam Out Zone: https://youtu.be/HEfLL6Dk8uI

The music is broken as early as the intro, including the tempo almost immediately becoming inconsistent, and the sound effects are broken right there on the title screen.

The very first thing I did when I bought this was to go to the sound test in Out Zone and I immediately noticed that the sound is broken. I have no idea what is going on with these, but the amount of broken things is ridiculous and saddening.

[Jaimers]

To be fair, you'd have to be fairly picky to notice that more than 60% of the music is missing.

[Sumez]

Or maybe the reviewer just went straight into the "hard" mode romset like any decent player should, and didn't notice any differences I think that would be completely fair.

:3

[reckon luck]

I ended up refunding. I wouldn't notice the smaller things but bad music + running too fast is the line. That puts these ports on the same tier as Raiden Legacy for me; if DotEmu doesn't get a pass then neither should BitWave. I will rebuy if/when these issues get fixed.

[SavagePencil]

It's puzzling to me how these issues could be there. It feels like more than just running 60Hz vs. 55.xx or whatever Hz the original PCB ran at. It sounds like fundamental issues around how the sprite hardware worked. Like there was game logic based on sprite collisions (as an example) that was relying on the VDP/GPU to send signals, vs. all of the game logic to be done in the CPU. That's the only way I can square up the issues that are being reported.

[EmperorIng]

Poo-pooers, I'm starting to feel pretty good.

[BIL]

Poo-pooers, I'm starting to feel pretty good.

I know I felt good after those refreshing farts at Out Zone's title screen, you can't beat a good trump after a long day in the office

Waitaminute. That was the video.

[DenimDemon]

To be fair, you'd have to be fairly picky to notice that more than 60% of the music is missing.

True. Specially if you play with mute sound or while listening to some music/pod cast.

[maximo310]

That's just the tip of the iceberg if you play through the game at least once.