Received my Skycurser PCB today, some pix

[exidy]

PCB w/USB







here is a cruddy 1 handed play video (holding the camera with the other):
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/r ... directlink

[Nug]

Awesome! I'm really looking forward to this game! What are your initial thoughts?

[trap15]

Looks pretty damn euroshmup. Not unexpected.

[Strikers1945guy]

How much did that cost you?

[Jeneki]

Oh interesting, so Airframe hardware is out now? Last I heard about was a prototype back in June.

[Strikers1945guy]

Oh interesting, so Airframe hardware is out now? Last I heard about was a prototype back in June.

From the sky curser website I guess its still in prototype but people with legitimate arcades get the stuff early. General public can't have it yet I guess

[jandrogo]

I am very interested in the hardware.... Would you comment what's inside the box and post some pics?

[Strikers1945guy]

I am very interested in the hardware.... Would you comment what's inside the box and post some pics?

One guy on YouTube does an unboxing video of his.

[Ex_Mosquito]

I watched the first 3 levels on a Facebook link earlier but unfortunately I can't seem to find it now. The graphics are gorgeous and very Irem/Nazca. The enemy placements seems a little amateurish in design with enemies seemingly placed arbitrarily without any real overall plan or creative structure, much like most non-Japanese shoot em' ups. Also from what I've seen the bullet patterns are pretty much non-excistent, with the main survival focus is taking out the kamakazi enemies quickly with a melee attack before they ram into you. I really had high hopes for this going by the gfx but from what I've seen of it in action it has fallen short like most non-Japanese 2D shoot em' ups. Pity

[GGA_HAN]

@Ex_Mosquito, this is the one I posted on the shmups Facebook page:

https://youtu.be/6wWpsAD65cs

[jandrogo]

I am very interested in the hardware.... Would you comment what's inside the box and post some pics?

One guy on YouTube does an unboxing video of his.

I was talking about the hardware itself.. "The guts" of the device.. Not in the box that contains the device

[PC Engine Fan X!]

It's official, Griffin Aerotech will be accpeting preorders on 4/03/2017 for the upright dedicated SkyCurser cabinet & Jamma PCB kits -- http://www.griffinaerotech.com/skycurser/

Griffin Aerotech's Twitter annoucement with SC: https://twitter.com/hashtag/arcade?src=hash (Just scroll down a bit and you'll see it.)

Back in July of 2016, Griffin Aerotech had a demo booth of the first three stages of SkyCurser up & running at the 2016 California Extreme show. There was a price sheet of listing the SkyCurser Jamma PCB kit at $799.99 USD (it could've gone up since then but that was the price listing at that point in time). The preorder that open up tomorrow will finally reveal what the asking price for a SC Jamma PCB kit. I had the rare opportunity to watch Eugene Jarvis (creator of the classic Robotron: 2084 arcade game) play a single round of SC on Saturday night at the SC demo booth -- priceless. Mr. Jarvis didn't fare too well during his short stint with SC though.

This latest version of SkyCurser features 2 player co-op from the get-go (this particular feature/option was missing from the 7.14.2016 build of SC shown at the 2016 CAX show and remained a solo player shmup session -- the player had the opportunity to select any of the given three stages as desired).

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Upon clicking the above SkyCurser link today dated 4/03/2017, it brings up three SC pricing options:

SkyCurser Pro Kit - $699.99 USD (this would be the one to get for a Japanese candy cab setup)

SkyCurser Deluxe Kit - $1199.99 USD (this one is aimed at the American Dynamo type of cab setups)

SkyCurser Dedicated Cab (with a 25" monitor setup) - $3499.99 USD

So Griffin Aerotech lowered the asking price for a SC Pro kit by a mere hundred bucks -- not too shabby imho.

The above listed three SC sets will be available June 2017.

Payment options include an American debit or credit card or you can use Paypal as an alternative method of payment according to the developer/publisher Griffin Aerotech.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[trap15]

Too bad lowering the price doesn't magically make it a better game :[

[Bananamatic]

SkyCurser Pro Kit - $699.99 USD (this would be the one to get for a Japanese candy cab setup)

SkyCurser Deluxe Kit - $1199.99 USD (this one is aimed at the American Dynamo type of cab setups)

SkyCurser Dedicated Cab (with a 25" monitor setup) - $3499.99 USD

bad joke gone too far

[pegboy]

Upon clicking the above SkyCurser link today dated 4/03/2017, it brings up three SC pricing options:

SkyCurser Pro Kit - $699.99 USD (this would be the one to get for a Japanese candy cab setup)

SkyCurser Deluxe Kit - $1199.99 USD (this one is aimed at the American Dynamo type of cab setups)

SkyCurser Dedicated Cab (with a 25" monitor setup) - $3499.99 USD

So Griffin Aerotech lowered the asking price for a SC Pro kit by a mere hundred bucks -- not too shabby imho.

The above listed three SC sets will be available June 2017.

Payment options include an American debit or credit card or you can use Paypal as an alternative method of payment according to the developer/publisher Griffin Aerotech.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

April fools! ...oh wait.

[stampfer]

Well, given the collector warped prices of old stuff these days, it does not even seem so expensive

[Fudoh]

What hardware (and OS if any) is this running on ?

[stampfer]

They stated here http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... 2#p1087132 that they use GM to build and the target is some embedded style intel setup. Given that GM compiles to windows and linux (among a few others) I would suspect it runs on linux (to save the cost for a license).

[trap15]

Some AMD APU system with a stock Debian and a JPAC (clone?) for JAMMA out.

[Moonwalker]

Looks quite tempting, but want to be sure it's a good game for the price tag. Can anybody who played ot share their experiences please?

[trap15]

I've played it a fair bit, as it is at a place I go to frequently. It's not good. I'll explain more when I can type on something less awful than a phone.

[Casey120]

I would love to have a go but going from what i have seen the art looks great but no interesting bullet patterns and that huge player ship making it all seem a bit cramped on screen .

[Sumez]

I've played it a fair bit, as it is at a place I go to frequently. It's not good. I'll explain more when I can type on something less awful than a phone.

This game is sending mad europshmup waves all over the wazoo. That said, I'm not entirely opposed to the Euroshmup trope as long as they keep it mostly to the presentation and take needed cues from (Japanese) STGs that are actually good. The graphics are delicious, and I would love to see them grace a good game.

So I'm curious to hear your thoughts on what makes the game bad. I've seen the devs on Facebook trying to defend obviously horrible design choices, so at the end of the day I'm not too surprised.

[Bananamatic]

I've played it a fair bit, as it is at a place I go to frequently. It's not good. I'll explain more when I can type on something less awful than a phone.

when trap says it's bad it's either REALLY bad or actually good
depends on how brave you feel

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I don't know if big sprites necessarily means it'll fall prey to classic euroshmuppy pitfalls of design, and it certainly looks pretty, but I can't really tell how the game actually plays since nothing on the website actually tells me how the game mechanics work. What exactly does "tight and punchy gameplay" mean?

It seems to have a bullet reflecting melee mechanic, but I'm not sure how it ties to scoring, and it seems to reward frantic mashing rather than being deliberate and thoughtful like Giga Wing's reflect, or Eschatos's shield. The meter appears to be a kind of bomb/hyper mode that may or may not tie into scoring?

The production values and graphics look pretty good, but the gameplay... well, enemies are firing fairly slow, sparse shots and almost everything can be bounced back with the melee slash from the looks of it. Is there actually much dodging to do in this shmup or does it take "shoot-em-up" very literally?

[trap15]

So:

The stages are boring and trivial, nothing is a threat at all and the stage design is just "let's mob the screen with enemy X, then enemy Y" for the most part. The entire game is dreadfully easy, a few of the other people that've played it that are terrible at shooters can clear it no problem even. They added some wank scoring system a while ago to make there be something to do, but it never seemed to make any sense and I didn't want to put any more time into the game anyways.

The weapon system is entirely broken by their "power up for mashing" thing. Unlike, say, Pulstar where it charges for mashing, you get a different version of the shot for mashing instead of holding. It's 100% better than the hold version, so there's no reason to not just hook up an autofire and have straight-up better versions all the time. The weapons aren't balanced anyways, they've gone back and forth between which one is more broken, I think the last I gave it serious try the shotgun was massively overpowered and could reach most of the screen.

The katana makes it basically impossible to die, since you can cancel just about every bullet and kill just about every enemy with it. So you just sit in one spot mashing the machine gun fire and katana buttons and you win the game, pretty much.

The "super" thing is mostly pointless. Yes it gives you a reason to not just use one shot type the whole time, no it's not really that useful or important.

Visual noise is very high so seeing anything is impossible, good luck dodging anything (as if you'd ever need to).

The bosses are trivial except for actually-instant attacks that are nearly guaranteed to kill you unless you know about them.

Despite asking for feedback, they always just wave off whatever criticism we've given, or they've taken it and applied misguided fixes that cause other problems.

I've never actually been able to hear the music because the sound effects are massively overly loud, so I can't say anything about that. The sound effects get the job done, but nothing special besides being overdriven to hell.

Graphics are really really really nice. That's about only positive. It's a shame the game doesn't even come close to the graphics.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Unlike, say, Pulstar where it charges for mashing, you get a different version of the shot for mashing instead of holding. It's 100% better than the hold version, so there's no reason to not just hook up an autofire and have straight-up better versions all the time.

Oh for fuck's sake. This was the primary gimmick in Thunder Blaster made back in 1991, and it didn't work well there either; why would they think their implementation would be any better? Thunder Blaster at least is still fun to play thanks to having stuff to dodge and that bomb mechanic, but that's in spite of the stupid button mashing mechanic, not because of it.

DEAR ASPIRING SHMUP DEVS: There's a reason competent modern shmups and competent ports of older shmups have autofire buttons and don't require button mashing throughout the game. And that reason is because button mashing as a 'mechanic' in shmups to fire a machine gun is extremely stupid and not fun.

Graphics are really really really nice. That's about only positive. It's a shame the game doesn't even come close to the graphics.

Is this Sine Mora all over again?

Actually, no, that's not fair, even if it's unbalanced as hell it still looks way more fun to play than Sine Mora.

[emphatic]

lol

[Squire Grooktook]

Unlike, say, Pulstar where it charges for mashing, you get a different version of the shot for mashing instead of holding. It's 100% better than the hold version, so there's no reason to not just hook up an autofire and have straight-up better versions all the time.

Oh for fuck's sake. This was the primary gimmick in Thunder Blaster made back in 1991, and it didn't work well there either; why would they think their implementation would be any better?

From the sounds of it, ten imaginary bucks says they didn't know enough about the genre to have ever heard of a relatively obscure title like Thunder Blaster.