Yeah, I know Snow Bros. is pretty popular outside of the shooting games community as far as Toaplan games go, and I have seen plenty of comments in various places online where people are specifically looking forward to Batsugun and not the rest.Sumez wrote:I think these predictions are gonna be pretty close to reality. Though a few comments:hamfighterx wrote: Vol. 1 (Oct 2021): Tiger-Heli & Kyukyoku Tiger
Vol. 2 (Apr 2022): Flying Shark & Fire Shark/Same! Same! Same!
Vol. 3 (2nd half 2022): Tatsujin/Truxton & Tatsujin Oh/Truxton II
Vol. 4 (1st half 2023): Hellfire & Zero Wing (the side scroller collection)
Vol. 5 (2nd half 2023): Daisenpu/Twin Hawk & Vimana (a bit less star power here so perhaps they split these two up, mix them into collections with 3 games per release, pair them with more notable non-STG "bonus" titles like Snow Bros. 1 or 2, etc.)
Vol. 6 (1st half 2024): Out Zone & FixEight (as run-n-gun games, these two naturally fit together and they feel notable enough and STG-like enough to warrant being the focal point of a release; but I suppose it's conceivable that they could be split up and paired with more traditional shooters, as bonus games, etc.)
Vol. 7 (2nd half 2024): Slap Fight & V-V/Grind Stormer (basically a spiritual sequel to Slap Fight)
Vol. 8 (1st half 2025): Dogyuun & Batsugun (my god, what a thought)
As for the bonus games, the list would look something like the below. And hey, this is 8 games... a perfect match for the 8 two-in-one volumes noted above.
- Guardian/Get Star
- Wardner
- Rally Bike
- Horror Story/Demon's World
- Snow Bros.
- Snow Bros. 2
- Ghox
- Knuckle Bash
- I don't think Hellfire and Zero Wing, or Daisenpu and Vimana are deserving of their own standalone releases. Maybe they'll make one with "all the games with no star power", but it might be more likely they'll just accompany other more popular games down the road. Though, if that was the case we probably would have seen Daisenpu alongside the Sharks.
- Given the above assumption, I'm sure Outzone/Fixeight are going to be next after Tatsujin. And apparently M2 have already confirmed those two will be the last of the initial four releases, so that seems pretty on point.
- I've said this before, and given even stuff like Tiger Heli gets its own branded release, it would be crazy not to do the same for Snow Bros. The only "issue" is that it doesn't fit the shottriggers label, but I'm not sure that matters. It's probably Toaplan's most popular title by a long shot if you don't limit yourself to the STG community. It has a full sequel that's been an arcade exclusive so far, and the original has multiple ports that are interesting in their own way, and typically considered coveted collectables. There's no way they'd just throw that in as a bonus game that doesn't even get billing on the box art.
- Batsugun is probably gonna get its own stand-alone release (still with a bonus game or two, but they won't share top billing with Batsugun), but obviously include Special version, and I wouldn't be surprised to see this game get a new arrange mode similar to the other non-Toaplan shottriggers. A lot of people don't care about older Toaplan games and are only waiting for this game, so if M2 knows what up, they'll be sure to milk that.
Hellfire and Zero Wing... I've only played the Genesis/MD versions of those and not the arcade versions (this is my experience with most Toaplan games, unfortunately), but I actually enjoy MD Zero Wing, and right now for the Toaplan documentary I'm in for signed Zero Wing, as I think that game does a little better on the MD than Tatsujin does because unlike Tatsujin, Zero Wing doesn't suffer from having the screen size reduced. I am very much considering switching to signed Tatsujin while I still have time, though, as I know it's a better game than Zero Wing is. Every time I play MD Tatsujin after playing it at the arcade I can't help but think to myself "Why am I playing this when I could be playing the real arcade version instead?", although I imagine that I might have a similar experience with Zero Wing. It's on the MiSTer now as a public beta, so I will probably try it soon.
Hellfire doesn't really do much for me, though. Need to play it more to judge it fairly, but there are other games on the Genesis/MD that I'd much rather play instead, so I don't think too highly of it right now.
As for Snow Bros. not being a shooting game and therefore maybe being weird to get the ShotTriggers branding, Teki-Paki has the ShotTriggers branding and it's definitely not a shooting game, so it's possible. I'm looking forward to whatever M2 decides to do.