Saturn Tribute: Cotton 2 + Boomerang, Guardian Force, 9/21

[Buffi]

I've kept my game card copy of the collection around since that's now an archive of the disastrous lag present in version 1.0.

They've included an option so you can switch back and forth between the two kinds of lag to do a direct comparison. They originally did that for the playtest earlier this month but I guess they decided to keep it. Guess they must be confident if they're making it easy to compare, but I'm not going to get my hopes up.

Thats the weirdest fucking thing ive heard in a long time

[Ms. Tea]

Next Saturn Tribute release leaked: RayForce, under its Saturn titles. Guessing it's using the same emulators, so, uh. Guess I'll wait to see how the Cotton Saturn Tribute patches turn out. https://twitter.com/shmups/status/1488659312327401472

[Jeneki]

I don't recall Saturn Rayforce having any extra features/options that would make it more desirable than doing a regular arcade port. But then again, their Saturn emulator supposedly already works with other games (there's a switch mod that let you use Cotton/Guardian to load other Saturn games) so I suppose this is easy enough to shovel out the door.

But yea, Rayforce rules. Easy top-25 pick every year. This better not suck, it pains me greatly to see Guardian Force (another favorite of mine) have such performance issues on modern consoles and Rayforce suffering the same fate would drive me nuts.

[mamboFoxtrot]

The only real desirable aspect of the Saturn port (besides them already having a Saturn emulator) is the CD-quality music. Though, I've only really played Rayforce via the Saturn port so I'm not sure really how much of a difference the music quality really is.

Something to bear in mind before getting too dreadful about this release is that Rayforce isn't going to have the inherent 4+ frames of input delay that the Cotton and Guardian Force games did. So even if they don't fix their emulator, it might be more like Psikyo collection than double-digit latency; but obviously let's hope for better.

[Creamy Goodness]

I don't recall Saturn Rayforce having any extra features/options that would make it more desirable than doing a regular arcade port. But then again, their Saturn emulator supposedly already works with other games (there's a switch mod that let you use Cotton/Guardian to load other Saturn games) so I suppose this is easy enough to shovel out the door.

But yea, Rayforce rules. Easy top-25 pick every year. This better not suck, it pains me greatly to see Guardian Force (another favorite of mine) have such performance issues on modern consoles and Rayforce suffering the same fate would drive me nuts.

Wonder if they will do a Game Tengoku thing and have both the arcade and console port in one

[Bassa-Bassa]

They aren't emulating the original arcade hardware. This happens because they have the Saturn emu and that's that. Game Tengoku arcade version was already included in the Saturn disc (and CC has people who developed the original game, anyway).

Layer Section was easier than Rayforce AC without the possibility to set it equally hard, wasn't it?

[harborline765]

We're due that Saturn Tribute update any time soon - didn't City Connection have it pencilled in for late January/early February?

[Jonpachi]

We're due that Saturn Tribute update any time soon - didn't City Connection have it pencilled in for late January/early February?

Yeah but you have to account for the lag! By that measure we should see something by June.

[harborline765]

The eShop got updated in Japan at midnight JST, but my digital copy of Cotton 2 is still on version 1.00

Meanwhile, though, the PC versions of the Saturn Tribute games are live and available for purchase:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1708 ... n_Tribute/

Not exactly going to be an apples-to-apples comparison with the console releases but it could give an indication of a best case scenario of latency post patch.

[harborline765]

Picked up Cotton Boomerang, quick details:

- they've added a scanlines option, you can set the contrast of the scanlines, and combined with the antialiasing option you can have either a sharp or fuzzy appearance overall. It's okay - wouldn't say these are particularly good virtual scanlines, about similar to the ones in Capcom Arcade Stadium.

- there's a "fast loading" setting which "makes loading faster. This will not affect gameplay, but animations and music may desync". Not sure if this is related to disc load times or if this is the new latency setting. It's set to "off" by default.

I don't think this is the placebo effect...the new version, albeit on PC, definitely feels more responsive than the older version on console. I'm not struggling to pull off combo moves any more despite using the same controller, and holding down the dash button while making lots of movement - like when you're dashing around during tea time - is actually playable, it no longer feels like you're wrestling with the controls and moving in treacle. I can accurately direct cotton over to the tea cups.

Unsurprisingly, it isn't as responsive as the Saturn game but it's close enough to work with the constraints of the game, though I did only just play through stage 1. The overall lag, to my hands, feels in line with the Psikyo ports.

So in summary, then, lag is reduced over the console versions (but this is running on a PC with a much more capable CPU) and the Zebra Engine has seen some nice QoL improvements outside of performance.

(System: Tiger Lake Intel Core i5-1130G7)

[Ms. Tea]

Patch for the retail Switch version is out. Haven't tried yet though, still at work.

[Astro City II]

https://city-connection.co.jp/cotton/topics/#2022021001

The latest version is as follows.

Nintendo Switch version: 1.01

PlayStation 4 package version: 1.03

PlayStation 4 download version: 1.02

[About the improvement status of input lag]

For each title of each model, the improvement result of the number of frames for the following average value (*) was obtained.

* It is the average value obtained by verifying and comparing the old version and the improved version multiple times under the same environment in our company. It may vary depending on your device and environment


Nintendo Switch:
Cotton 2 -1.4
Cotton Boomerang -2.1
Guardian Force -2.4

PlayStation 4:
Cotton 2 -1.6
Cotton Boomerang -2.3
Guardian Force -1.3


The Xbox One version is scheduled to be distributed in the first half of 2022. - boooo

[harborline765]

Hm, a 1.4-1.6 frame (on average) improvement in Cotton 2 doesn't seem great.

[EmperorIng]

Hm, a 1.4-1.6 frame (on average) improvement in Cotton 2 doesn't seem great.

I will have to test on PC, where I presume an extra frame will be added on because the soytendo switch is just a shitty system all around for latency.

I'll probably pick this up tonight and do a little bit of a stream, since i played a looot of Cotton 2 on the saturn until I foolishly sold my copy thinking the switch version would be acceptable!!

[drauch]

Much appreciated for the info doods. Hopefully the feedback for C2 is a positive one! I've still got my Saturn copy, but anymore just the convenience and lack of room makes these releases so much more desirable.

[harborline765]

Much appreciated for the info doods. Hopefully the feedback for C2 is a positive one! I've still got my Saturn copy, but anymore just the convenience and lack of room makes these releases so much more desirable.

Based on my time with the PC version, you should definitely hold on to your Saturn copy. But at least it's now playable, and there are scanlines filters. But I couldn't get it to go into fullscreen and there weren't aspect ratio options, everything looked a bit compressed to me.

[Sima Tuna]

So it takes the lag from 11 frames down to 9? LMAO if so.

[To Far Away Times]

Well that sounds like wet fart.

[Steven]

I kind of regret buying this if this is the best they can do and I'm not sensitive to lag at all. I need to try it with this patch, though. I put it back in its box on launch day almost immediately after playing it and left it sitting there ever since, but even now I don't have much motivation to go take it out again and test it. Please don't ruin Layer Section...

[EmperorIng]

Posting my thoughts from playing the Cotton 2 steam port from elsewhere:

I would say the steam port of Cotton 2 is pretty close if not identical to playing Cotton 2 in the emulator, SSF.
I did not play Cotton 2 on the switch but Cotton Boomerang on the switch felt unplayable. This by contrast felt far more workable, though not as good as the saturn (which I did not expect). The sound emulation is much better than SSF (SSF sounds horrid) but there are some instruments here that just don't quite play properly (notably on stage 3 and 4). On SSF instruments are off-key all the time and it drives me fucking nuts. I turned off Vsync, I did not enable fast-loading but it said that that didn't affect gameplay (do I believe them??).

The online leaderboard is implemented in a sloppy and bizarre fashion. It opened up a whole new executable/window, which tried to load, then crashed. I can't get it to open again. Uh, what?! This is something that will have to be fixed/patched but I have never heard of a separate scoreboard .exe.

"ZebraEngine" (aka SSF licensed to CityConnection) features: I was surprised (and a little disappointed) that there was only one savestate. Apparently SSF has 10? I can't recall. Rewind feature seems pretty extensive, you can get probably half or more of the stage in a single go.

The game doesn't start off booting in full-screen, which is annoying to set the game to full-screen on each boot.

Overall verdict? Uh, well, it is pretty close to playing on SSF, maybe SSF feels a little better, they feel basically the same to me. That might be a good, or a bad thing, according to your perspective. Either play the game for free on emulation (with worse music and more savestates) or play essentially the same game in the same emulator with some other accoutrements. Hey, it's better than the soytendo!

[Abadd]

Wish they'd hook up with Treasure/Microsoft to re-release Radiant Silvergun.

[DazTM]

I just bought Guardian Force for a small fortune on Saturn because the Switch version didn't feel right. Guess I'll be buying the Cotton games as well. Time to sell off my final Dreamcast shooters

[harborline765]

Tried the Switch patch, it's' a definite improvement but it definitely feels like there's an extra frame of lag over the PC version that I played yesterday. There's still some uncomfortable weirdness when making quick movements or bashing the shot button.

Will try both versions again later today using the same controller, though from what I understand Steam's controller handling API is laggy.

-

Interesting that Guardian Force's latency improvements on Switch are 1 frame better than PS4. That should mean that both the Switch and PS4 versions have identical latency post-patch, since Switch was originally 1 frame laggier than PS4 in version 1.00. Both should be at 8 frames now.

Does anyone know why the gains in Cotton Boomerang are higher than Cotton 2, on average? Version 1.00 of Cotton Boomerang wasn't any laggier than Cotton 2.

[Augemitbutter]

Wish they'd hook up with Treasure/Microsoft to re-release Radiant Silvergun.

This and Guardian Heroes remaster. It's strange they put it on 360 and forgot about it altogether for some reason.

[Steven]

How much inherent lag do the ST-V and Saturn versions of all 3 of these games have? Cotton 2 always seemed fine to me on my Saturn and I played Guardian Force at Mikado on an ST-V not long ago and it seemed fine there, as well.

[porchka66]

How much inherent lag do the ST-V and Saturn versions of all 3 of these games have? Cotton 2 always seemed fine to me on my Saturn and I played Guardian Force at Mikado on an ST-V not long ago and it seemed fine there, as well.

According to an older thread i found here some time ago:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=62277
Guardian Force seems to have 6-7 Frames of lag on the ST-V hardware

[Steven]

How much inherent lag do the ST-V and Saturn versions of all 3 of these games have? Cotton 2 always seemed fine to me on my Saturn and I played Guardian Force at Mikado on an ST-V not long ago and it seemed fine there, as well.

According to an older thread i found here some time ago:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=62277
Guardian Force seems to have 6-7 Frames of lag on the ST-V hardware

Yeah, ST-V Guardian Force is the only one I've been able to find numbers for, and pretty much every search I've tried just gives a ton of results from this thread regarding these emulated versions specifically. Fortunately 6-7 frames of lag is not enough for me to detect it unless it's something like the MD Mini, where after like 25 years of using the real thing, the lag was very obvious.

[BulletMagnet]

Had a quick go at my PS4 physical version (which, weirdly, required me to manually check for the update, despite automatic updates being turned on), and my decidedly non-expert impressions were that the Cottons didn't feel too bad, but Guardian Force was still quite laggy. I also ought to note that I was using a wired controller, which probably tipped things in my favor on this front a bit more.

[Sengoku Strider]

I just bought Guardian Force for a small fortune on Saturn because the Switch version didn't feel right. Guess I'll be buying the Cotton games as well. Time to sell off my final Dreamcast shooters

A lot of people must have had the same sentiment, because both Cottons shot up after this collection was released. I held off on getting Boomerang before that because it was $300+ and this collection was coming. Now I'm sitting here realizing that was somehow a bargain. There seem to have been a bunch of sealed copies of 2 which appeared on the market recently, which is keeping that one reasonable. Y'know, by the unreasonable standards of Saturn shmups.

[EmperorIng]

And now my steam ver. of Cotton 2 won't launch. The weird, jank-ass Ranking.exe that tries to run simply crashes the game, and the update gets stalled with a "disk write error." They better fuckin' fix that, I tend to like my games playable.