M2 Toaplan collection

[BrianC]

Mine hasn't shipped from Amazon JP yet, but I just got charged for it, so it should be shipping soon.

[hamfighterx]

Mine hasn't shipped from Amazon JP yet, but I just got charged for it, so it should be shipping soon.

Yep, same here. My Switch version (Amazon special edition) also has not yet shipped from Amazon.jp, but looks like the charge is pending on my credit card. It does show as in stock on the site and I'm getting a delivery estimate of May 3-12 to the US. I'm not too concerned, got the PSN version immediately and have decided I'll double dip on this series with PS download and Switch physicals

Just fired up, goddamn, that soldiering dual-lead menu arrange of "Against The Attack." Gorgeous.

Man, it only really hit me after starting up Hishouzame, how damn long it's been without a definitive home release of this game! Certainly turned out alright in the end.

No refuge from dreaded Same1P now, haha. What a treat this gen has been for reference-standard home STG (and AC in general) releases.

Right? And yeah that arrange track... like I said before, I get that they have budget/time constraints that may reasonably preclude doing entire arrange soundtracks . But it would be nice if you could at least use the arrange tracks that HAVE been created in actual gameplay. Maybe selecting each stage's music in Custom mode, allowing you to use the arranges in the Arcade Challenge mode, whatever. Minor complaint though.

I've been playing a lot of Hishou Zame today. One question: is it true that the appearance of the white planes is purely random? I see notes on shmups.wiki saying it's just a 1/16 random chance of them replacing the yellow planes. I assume that's probably accurate, but curious if perhaps there is anything else that has been discovered to affect the odds (weapon power level? consecutively destroying whole groups of yellow planes?). Never really thought about this before, but the PS trophy for getting a 1up from destroying a group of them made me wonder...

On a related note, The M2 gadget showing time until the next group of special colored planes is pretty great.

[Steven]

What's generally the recommended autofire rate for Hishouzame (for general use in stages, not point-blanking)? I'm guessing it's like 5Hz or something. I have 5Hz on my arcade stick, so it's no problem for me, but...

[ZPScissors]

What's generally the recommended autofire rate for Hishouzame (for general use in stages, not point-blanking)? I'm guessing it's like 5Hz or something. I have 5Hz on my arcade stick, so it's no problem for me, but...

I use 6hz personally.

Also smc and I found a new recovery strat for Stage 10 checkpoint 4 in Sam3 1p which saves a bomb over the old method.

[Steven]

I use 6hz personally.

Alright, thanks. My arcade stick only has 5, 12, and 20, 3 of which are already covered by M2 here, so I'll try the 5 and see how it goes. I guess I'll just fire manually on Switch.

Also smc and I found a new recovery strat for Stage 10 checkpoint 4 in Sam3 1p which saves a bomb over the old method.

If I ever get that far, that looks like an interesting strategy. I've been studying the run Jaimers posted a while ago for the past few weeks, which greatly helped me on the Mega Drive version, so hopefully that will help me with the arcade version a little as well. I still have yet to get past Kyuukyoku Tiger's stage 5, though. I actually did kill the stage 5 boss a single time, and on my very first attempt without dying at all somehow, but I game overed on stage 6 and have yet to be able to kill the stage 5 boss since then, so hopefully I'll be able to get past that stage/game eventually and make some progress in 1P Same!. I think I'll stick with the 2P and MD versions for now...

If Yamato ever decides to deliver my games to me.

Edit: get

https://imgur.com/a/H7kZoUw

Reverse cover is the Hishouzame arcade flyer.

[Steven]

Reminder: M2's stream started. URL = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4sxXNUFOFA

Live now. I imagine will be Tatsujin at the end of October.

[DenimDemon]

What are the 2 Same Same versions available at Amazon.jp?

[Rastan78]

https://youtu.be/G4sxXNUFOFA

They're streaming now

[Steven]

What are the 2 Same Same versions available at Amazon.jp?

With/without Wardner alt cover.

[jehu]

Now I want the bomb to be a giant angry pilot head.

This is a genuinely great idea.

PTSD Pilot Head for new Zombie Nation port DLC!

What's generally the recommended autofire rate for Hishouzame (for general use in stages, not point-blanking)? I'm guessing it's like 5Hz or something. I have 5Hz on my arcade stick, so it's no problem for me, but...

I use 6hz personally.

We really need slower autofire rates on these ports. Would be such an easy fix!

Reverse cover is the Hishouzame arcade flyer.

................ I'll get to work.

Steven, if there are any revelations in the stream, would you do a quick summary here? I'm on the stream, but - as you might imagine - my complete lack of Japanese is hampering my comprehension a bit.

[DenimDemon]

What are the 2 Same Same versions available at Amazon.jp?

With/without Wardner alt cover.

Great. Thanks

And just ordered. Can’t wait!

[Steven]

Steven, if there are any revelations in the stream, would you do a quick summary here? I'm on the stream, but - as you might imagine - my complete lack of Japanese is hampering my comprehension a bit.

Sure. The most notable thing so far is that the Same! Same! Same! easy mode greatly increases the number of bombs dropped and also reduces the number of green items dropped, but that's about it so far.

lol Same! Super Easy becomes as difficult as loop 20 eventually. Have fun with that~

Wardner FDS version won't save without the patch, so get the patch. That's pretty much it. Save states will work, though, from what it seems.

And they are of course recommending everyone to check out the Same! Same! Same! funwari kouryaku, which is this thing: https://crossfish.sakura.ne.jp/same/TOP/top.html
They interviewed the creator for the book. Still need to read the first one...

Kubota says the story of the 2P Same!'s development is in the book. That's pretty cool, so I'll definitely take a look at it eventually.

Horii said... he wants to add the MD version of Teki-Paki in an update if possible? I might have misheard him, but that's what I thought I heard. That version never got released, so I hope it happens.

They made more of the books than last time, so they should be easier to get. I'm pretty sure Amazon still has them if you buy the version with the Get Star cover, though.

What are the 2 Same Same versions available at Amazon.jp?

With/without Wardner alt cover.

Great. Thanks

And just ordered. Can’t wait!

Any time!

[Rastan78]

FYI some Hori controllers let you set 5 shots per second auto. Just noticed you can do it on the Switch split pad pro for portable play. It's on the RAP joysticks, probably a bunch of others.

Other than that just slow tap to get some shots on screen before holding auto. Even with a fast rate you can get a pretty even spread that way.

[Steven]

Well, no announcements. Interesting. Oh well. Time to try to not game over on Same! 1P stage 1 like I did earlier today.

BTW it seems that the Super Easy difficulty setting in the custom mode is around Mega Drive normal level of difficulty

Edit: no it isn't! It's the Super Easy mode from Super Easy mode, so if you turn the extra bombs option on and pick those bombs up you'll have ridiculous bullet speed on stage 1!

lol someone is already at 8-2 on the Switch leaderboard.

Anyway, look at that, there is a Steven in 4th place on the Switch custom mode leaderboard who played as much of the game as possible with the green weapon. I wonder who that could be...

https://imgur.com/a/o6Ou4Ay

Here's my settings. As you can see, I made this as easy as possible, and this is the best I can do at my current skill level. Ended up intentionally wasting a shitload of bombs just to keep the bullet speed down. Dying gives you the blue spread shot even if you set the game to never reduce your power if you die and there is nothing you can do about it. I forgot where I died first, but I think it was stage 7, which is where I always die on the MD version's easy mode with the green laser, so in the end I did about the same.

[subcons]

Apologies if this has already been asked, I couldn't find it in the thread. Do the Teki Paki codes work on a US eShop account?

IIRC I had to use my Japanese eShop account to redeem it.

[Steven]

2 questions.

First, are the differences between 2p Same! and arcade Fire Shark documented anywhere? The high score thread says that Fire Shark is harder, but no specifics. I can see that the item table is different as early as halfway through stage 1, though.

Second, is anyone on Switch not able to assign themselves to the 2P side? It works fine on PS4 but on Switch it seems the only thing I can do is to get another controller and assign it as 1P and then set the one I want to use as 2P, and it also seems impossible to do this at all with the Split Pad Pro. I guess I'm not playing 2P Same! as 2P in handheld mode.

[ZPScissors]

2 questions.

First, are the differences between 2p Same! and arcade Fire Shark documented anywhere? The high score thread says that Fire Shark is harder, but no specifics. I can see that the item table is different as early as halfway through stage 1, though.

Second, is anyone on Switch not able to assign themselves to the 2P side? It works fine on PS4 but on Switch it seems the only thing I can do is to get another controller and assign it as 1P and then set the one I want to use as 2P, and it also seems impossible to do this at all with the Split Pad Pro. I guess I'm not playing 2P Same! as 2P in handheld mode.

Fire Shark has faster bullets than 2p but that's about it.

[hamfighterx]

We really need slower autofire rates on these ports. Would be such an easy fix!

PSA for those who aren't aware, the Toaplan Arcade Garage releases actually do have a variety of autofire rates: 10, 12, 15, 20, or 30 shots/sec. However, setting them up is not very intuitive and might get overlooked. In the controller options, one of the pre-set button assignment selections is Shot 30/sec - and that rate cannot be changed. But if you select the normal "Shot" in button assignment, you can hit Square (on Playstation, IIRC it's Y on Switch) to toggle between all of the available autofire rates. I was confused on the Tiger collection and eventually figured it out, and when I saw the Shark collection I remembered it was screwy somehow but still struggled with it for a couple minutes (kept trying to change the auto-fire rate on the preset 30/sec option - which feels more logical to me!)

Now, 10/sec is still the slowest - so like jehu said, some slower rates would be helpful when people are preferring stuff like 5~6/sec.

FYI some Hori controllers let you set 5 shots per second auto. Just noticed you can do it on the Switch split pad pro for portable play. It's on the RAP joysticks, probably a bunch of others.

Good advice, I totally didn't remember the split pad pro had that feature and I have one of those!

And they are of course recommending everyone to check out the Same! Same! Same! funwari kouryaku, which is this thing: https://crossfish.sakura.ne.jp/same/TOP/top.html
They interviewed the creator for the book. Still need to read the first one...

LOL @ the second link on that page to some good strategy notes. Title of the page (Google translated version): "To those who cannot avoid enemy bullets". Sounds like this is for me!!!

I also like the following line, very poetic: "On this page, I will write some advice for those who are in trouble because enemy bullets are inevitable."

[ZPScissors]

[Steven]

Fire Shark has faster bullets than 2p but that's about it.

Interesting... the menu says that the enemy durability is different as well, but I haven't done any testing. Bullet speeds do seem faster, though. BTW I'm totally going to dissect your tasty replay. It seems my route from the Mega Drive version even on stage 1 tends to get me killed on 1P arcade, so I need to learn the arcade version separately, it seems. Congratulations. You're the first person to clear the PS4 version.

I can mostly get through 2P, as I'm up to stage 8 while playing 2P side. Should have the clear relatively soon, although playing on 2P side feels like cheating, so I'll probably try 1P side soon after that.

LOL @ the second link on that page to some good strategy notes. Title of the page (Google translated version): "To those who cannot avoid enemy bullets". Sounds like this is for me!!!

I also like the following line, very poetic: "On this page, I will write some advice for those who are in trouble because enemy bullets are inevitable."

lol yes, the funwari kouryaku is great. The amount of detail on that thing is insane. It also has some info on Tatsujin Ou, Raiden DX, Thunder Cross II, and Gradius IV, as well. There is absolutely nothing funwari about the 1P version of the game, though...

I made a shitty, low quality thing for those of you who wish there was arranged music: Same! Same! Same! stage 1 with Fire Shark Distortion!!! as the BGM. I almost died 7 times in like 2 seconds around the halfway point...

https://youtu.be/G0cYoD_7EGU

PS4 internal capture thingy = 1280x720 at 30 FPS, so sorry about that, but there is nothing I can do about it. It's really too bad that there are no arranged OSTs for these games. Toaplan's compositions are usually really good (maybe not Tiger-Heli's Little Heli music, which is pretty annoying), but the hardware and instrumentation really held them back and the company's management didn't really care about audio quality at all, something that Uemura has said in a few interviews I've read, so here's what the game might have sounded like if there were no hardware limits. I can't do anything about the sound effects, so please insert them with your imagination.

[professor ganson]

Just now I got an email from P-A that it has shipped, so that's awesome.

[Steven]

Is anyone else getting audio skipping on Hishouzame on Switch? It's fine on PS4, but on Switch it seems like it skips a lot. Same! Same! Same! is fine on Switch as well.

[hamfighterx]

Well, no announcements. Interesting.

Not getting an announcement of the next release on the stream was a bit unexpected. For some reason it almost makes me wonder if M2 could be breaking things up by doing a non-Toaplan ShotTriggers release next (Batrider?), and announcing that separately.

Anyway, been playing the PS4 Sharks like mad since release. What I've learned so far is that I was NOT ready for the pain that Same! 1P ruthlessly dishes out. Gonna have to study up on those funwari kouryaku tips and videos. Definitely some gold on that site, and I love the "People I met in Tokyo" stories from this page.

One gem of a (translated) quote about Same! Same! Same!: "Certainly it is not a game played by general office workers." (in response to a Same! master being impressed that a guy who was wearing a suit and looking like your average salaryman could play the game decently)

[Johnpv]

Anyone else still waiting on Amazon Japan to ship theirs? I've had the pending charge since like Wednesday evening, but still hasn't shipped.

[hamfighterx]

Anyone else still waiting on Amazon Japan to ship theirs? I've had the pending charge since like Wednesday evening, but still hasn't shipped.

Same thing for me. Mine is the Switch version with Amazon bonus. My credit card has a pending Amazon.jp charge from 2 days ago (28th in Japan).

[Steven]

I was so close to clearing Hishouzame yesterday on like my second time playing it on PS4. Killed that huge plane on stage 5 but wasn't expecting the game to throw a shitload of planes at me and I had no bombs and the basic shot, so I died with the fucking runway in sight. Tried again 5 more times but did increasingly worse every time. Maybe it's because I felt like complete shit yesterday, so I'll try to sleep properly and not suck next time. Game's clearable with very little practice.

I see why BIL really likes this game now. For as plain as it is, the design is basically flawless. I actually find this game kind of relaxing, which is weird, but I like it.

I can also finally answer this question properly:

To those of you who've managed both:

What is more difficult?
A) Clearing first five stages of K. Tiger
B) Hishouzame 1-ALL

Unquestionably Kyuukyoku Tiger's first half, which I've cleared once by sheer luck after a lot of practice. Hishouzame is quite easy in comparison, and now that I know about that massive wave of planes at the end of stage 5, I know I can clear it within a few days. I've only put like 2 hours into Hishouzame across the PCB, MAME, PS4, and Switch, and I'm already looking at a clear within the next few days.

Well, no announcements. Interesting.

Not getting an announcement of the next release on the stream was a bit unexpected. For some reason it almost makes me wonder if M2 could be breaking things up by doing a non-Toaplan ShotTriggers release next (Batrider?), and announcing that separately.

I am surprised that they didn't announce anything at all. No updates for Senjin Aleste, nothing on Aleste Branch, no Toaplan... nothing at all. I was basically watching it specifically for the announcements they typically do at the end, so when it just kind of ended I was kind of disappointed, especially since all they really did was introduce the super easy modes.

Anyway, been playing the PS4 Sharks like mad since release. What I've learned so far is that I was NOT ready for the pain that Same! 1P ruthlessly dishes out. Gonna have to study up on those funwari kouryaku tips and videos. Definitely some gold on that site, and I love the "People I met in Tokyo" stories from this page.

One gem of a (translated) quote about Same! Same! Same!: "Certainly it is not a game played by general office workers." (in response to a Same! master being impressed that a guy who was wearing a suit and looking like your average salaryman could play the game decently)

lol yes, this game is funny like that. I'm not sure if I love it or if I hate it. Maybe both...?

The funwari kouryaku is insanely good, though. I've known about it for about a month now, and the information there is very excellent. Since I already know the stages and enemy locations from the MD version, which I have been playing daily for about 3 weeks now, that has helped me a lot with the 1P arcade version. It still plays quite differently and the MD version removed the tanks during the stage 6 boss fight, so it's not 100% identical, but most of the enemy positioning is the same. I'm up to stage 4 on the 1P version now. I think I want to clear the 2P version first, though the 2P version seems kind of dull after the insane 1P version. I game overed on stage 8 the other day, so I should be able to clear it very soon with a little more practice.

[BrianC]

Anyone else still waiting on Amazon Japan to ship theirs? I've had the pending charge since like Wednesday evening, but still hasn't shipped.

Same thing for me. Mine is the Switch version with Amazon bonus. My credit card has a pending Amazon.jp charge from 2 days ago (28th in Japan).

I'm in the same boat for the PS4 version. I went and bought the switch digital to tide me over (was planning on doing that anyway).

edit: Just shipped.

[Sumez]

Weird
Amazon shipped my copy Thursday morning. I'm expecting to have it by Monday if they do as well as they did with the Pocky.

[Steven]

Hey cool, I found an error in the Hishouzame instruction manual: https://imgur.com/a/fWeZyCZ

"Destroy an entire formation of red planes to get a 1000 point bonus!"

"Destroy an entire formation of yellow planes to get a shot powerup!"

Maybe it was changed after they made the manual or something. It also says that you can get a 1up by killing an entire formation of light blue planes, though. They do have blue markings, but they definitely look white to me.

Anyway, this game is really nice. There is one thing that I don't like about it, though; sometimes I have difficulty seeing the bullets because they tend to blend in with the trees. That's about all of the bad things I can think of. It seems that a lot of sections on the first 3 stages are completely trivialized by simply strafing back and forth across the bottom of the screen holding 5Hz autofire when you are powered up, though.

[Some-Mist]

same as sumez, amazon.jp shipped mine thursday and said it'll be here 05/05