Play Out Zone, Today if Possible (feat. You Really Need to)

[Sumez]

Out Zone retains more of a shoot'em up feel to me than most of its top-down run 'n gun contemporaries, it's especially a completely different experience from Shock Troopers with its multidirectional scrolling and AI-controlled enemies.
I think it's mostly tied to the *types* of enemies which often still feel like traditional STG fare, and the fact that blasting forward at a high rate is usually prefered to changing and shooting in other directions. I see it primarily as a shmup where you can occasionally pause the scrolling if you're a coward.

[Steven]

Yeah, the speed at which the game moves really sets it apart from a more typical game like Shock Troopers. I love Shock Troopers, especially the version where each character has a separate life meter (fortunately the revision chosen for ACA!), but Out Zone is a very different game even though it looks the same upon initial inspection. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure the game out, and also to figure out why everyone besides me loved it so much. I didn't understand until after I bought my PCB, which I did somewhat reluctantly due to having mixed feelings about the game, but once I got that PCB...

Yes, it's the best Toaplan game (sorry, Hishouzame), and yes, it's amazing beyond words, and everyone needs to play it.

[XoPachi]

OutZone kicks ass. What a sick game with a badass dumb as shit premise.

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

Shock Troopers is great but I find it incredibly slow at times. Even picking the fastest character, the game still feels like an exercise in dodge rolling instead of...dodging.

I've also noticed that I'd suddenly be slower in later levels, which of course makes it even worse, never figured out why. Maybe someone here knows.

[Steven]

Shock Troopers character speed is based on what character you use on which level. Specific characters will suck in some places while others will have high speed there. I believe it's actually shown on the map screen in the revision that makes all character share the same life bar.

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

That's actually really cool, thanks Steven. I suspected something similar but I thought some levels just debuffed you in general. What a fool I was. I assume it's the medal icon thingy when you select stages yeah?

[Steven]

Yep, that's the one. I don't normally play that revision, but I think it's more medals = more speed or bigger medal = more speed. I forget if it shows more medals or bigger medals, but it's one of those two.

[SavagePencil]

Yep, that's the one. I don't normally play that revision, but I think it's more medals = more speed or bigger medal = more speed. I forget if it shows more medals or bigger medals, but it's one of those two.

Every version of Shock Troopers I have played (including the MVS -> AES conversion I had) allowed a selection of Lone Wolf or team play. Are there actual ROM differences?

[Steven]

Yep, that's the one. I don't normally play that revision, but I think it's more medals = more speed or bigger medal = more speed. I forget if it shows more medals or bigger medals, but it's one of those two.

Every version of Shock Troopers I have played (including the MVS -> AES conversion I had) allowed a selection of Lone Wolf or team play. Are there actual ROM differences?

Yep. One has the medals on the map screen to indicate character speed on that stage and in team play all characters share a single HP meter. In the other, there are no medals on the map and your characters have separate HP. The latter is the revision used on ACA. There may be other differences, but these are the ones that I know about.

[hamfighterx]

Good summary here, reposting this from a 2006 post by BBH on the Neo-geo.com forums:

There is no way to toggle the changes between the two versions of Shock Troopers. It is an actual change in the program roms. Here is the lowdown between the two versions, I shall call them Version A and Version B.

Version A
-The player's lifebar consists of 128 "points". (whenever you pickup a life-restoring item, the number of points that it adds is shown. The first-aid kits are worth +64 points)
-When a new credit is started, the lifebar does not start fully filled up at 128 points. In Lonly Wolf the lifebar starts at 112 points, and in Team Battle it starts around 90-96 points (I do not remember the exact amount right now, but it's somewhere in that range).
-At the start of each level, it will show you each character's "rating" for the level. They will be given anywhere from 0-3 stars for the level. The higher the star amount, the faster that character will be able to move ON THAT STAGE ONLY. In addition to this, if a character is rated 2 stars a +8 life bonus will be added, and if they are rated 3 stars they will get a +16.
-You are given only one life. If you are playing in Team Battle, all three characters share that lifebar, so once it runs out it's game over.

Version B
-The player's lifebar consists of 64 points, which means you can only take half as much damage before dying.
-Lifebar starts at 100% in both Lonly Wolf and Team Battle modes.
-There is no display of the star rating inbetween stages, and no life-ups are given for characters that are rated 2 or 3 stars on the stage. However, THE STAR RATINGS ARE STILL THERE EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE NOT DISPLAYED TO THE PLAYER, so characters will still move at different speeds depending on the level.
-By default the game is setup to give you 3 lives in Lonly Wolf, and a 3-character team in Team Battle. This setting is changeable in the soft dips under "HERO" to be a number from 1-8 (Yes, this means that if you change it to 8 and select Team Battle, you will all have 8 characters on your team). The "HERO" setting is absent entirely on Version A.
-Also worth noting that in Team Battle if the game is finished after 1 or 2 of the characters die, those characters will not be present in the ending. In Version A all 3 characters will always be there (since they all share one lifebar, naturally).

That's pretty much it. It's still unclear as to why there are two different versions in the first place, considering the game only saw an MVS release. I have a US cart and a Japanese cart, and they're both Version B. No serial number is given on the Japanese cart, the US one is 011XXX (all my carts are in a box right now). I'm pretty sure somebody here had a Version A cart with a low serial number, so it seems to imply that the Version A carts are in fact earlier. Strangely though, there are some screenshots of Shock Troopers contained in the Shock Troopers: 2nd Squad Original Soundtrack booklet, and they are clearly screenshots of Version A. Hmmmm.

Oh, and just as a correction in this thread (although Shito already pointed it out), changes in stuff like intros from AES to MVS do *NOT* count as a separate version of a game. All the data is programmed onto every game, it just depends on which format the game is running in of course. Magician Lord IS a game with two separate versions though, the MVS carts are programmed with the smaller lifebar and the "respawn where you died" function. The AES carts are programmed with the larger lifebar and the "restart the level when you die". If you somehow played the MVS version on an AES, you would get the extra AES-specific intro AND be able to play the game in the "respawn where you died" format.

[Steven]

I have confirmed that the 1UP item can appear twice on one credit. I saw it before one time and thought I might have been mistaken because I was playing while tired, but I played the game just now and I got a 1UP on stage 2 and then again on stage 3. This is probably extremely unlikely to occur, and sometimes it never shows up at all, but it can happen.

[MJR]

I played both of these games today for the first time. I don't get the love for Outzone against Fixeight.

Fixeight looks better (better colors, more animation, faster, smoother than outzone).

Fixeight doesn't have that goddam checkpoint system (instant respawn on death will always be preferable to me).

Fixeight has 8 different characters each with multiple weapon types, lots of variety.

Given everything I would pick Fixeight every time, I just don't get the love for Outzone unless you're a massochist who likes crappier everything

Full disclosure: I historically have always preferred Shock Troopers 2nd Squad over the original if that means anything

Only now I noticed this. Funny, I disagree over every point here;
-Fixeight has worse animation and dull washed-out color palette with no contrast
-Checkpoint system makes the game better because figuring out recovery is one of the joys of Toaplan games
-I prefer playing one character well than 8 characters badly, quality, not quantity

Given everything I would pick Outzone every time, I just don't get your love for Fixeight unless you're a masochist who loves crappier everything :p

[Sumez]

Fixeight is probably underrated, but at the end of the day Out Zone has much better stage design. Your mileage may vary, but to me that matters a lot more than a character selection

[Steven]

I've only briefly checked out FixEight, but it's a good game and I want to play it more. Its major flaw is that Out Zone exists. Ignoring Out Zone's existence, FixEight is a fine game on its own, but with Out Zone around, it makes FixEight look weaker in comparison. FixEight's only major advantage over Out Zone is... uhhhhhhhhhhh... internal autofire lol.

I played both of these games today for the first time. I don't get the love for Outzone against Fixeight.

Fixeight looks better (better colors, more animation, faster, smoother than outzone).

Fixeight doesn't have that goddam checkpoint system (instant respawn on death will always be preferable to me).

Fixeight has 8 different characters each with multiple weapon types, lots of variety.

Given everything I would pick Fixeight every time, I just don't get the love for Outzone unless you're a massochist who likes crappier everything

Full disclosure: I historically have always preferred Shock Troopers 2nd Squad over the original if that means anything

Only now I noticed this. Funny, I disagree over every point here;
-Fixeight has worse animation and dull washed-out color palette with no contrast
-Checkpoint system makes the game better because figuring out recovery is one of the joys of Toaplan games
-I prefer playing one character well than 8 characters badly, quality, not quantity

Given everything I would pick Outzone every time, I just don't get your love for Fixeight unless you're a masochist who loves crappier everything :p

Also FixEight's music is... I'm going to be nice to Tomizawa-san and say "definitely not as good as Out Zone's".

[Sumez]

FixEight and Out Zone are different enough that none of them suffers from comparison to the other. It's not as good as Out Zone, but it's also not just a "worse Out Zone" either.

[PerishedFraud ឵឵]

It's something you see often with sequels (not even restricted to games).

Fixeight is fine, and only starts looking like shit when compared to Out Zone. If it didn't have history behind it, people would be calling it a decent game unbiased. This is 'cause Fixeight is decent while Out Zone is great. That's all.