Toaplan games coming to PC (Steam, GOG)

[FunktionJCB]

They also started locking threads on the Steam forums that dare to mention anything that's broken. That's... promising.

I don't want to play "devil's advocate", although it may sound like it, but the threads being closed (which, by the way, they have been doing that pretty much since launch, it's not something recent), I really don't think it's to erase negative feedback.

They have a post on the top of each forum about reaching out to their support service for any problems/bugs, and when they are closing some threads (and not deleting them, by the way; that would indeed be crappy), they are doing so and posting the same message, asking bug reports to be sent to their support email, so they can take a look at it.

I admit it would probably be better to just have a separate Steam forum for bug reports (like many other games do), but with now 8 games in this series (and in the future, a total of 16 games), and from what I gather a single guy checking these, I somewhat understand what they are doing. Instead of having to check possibly several threads in 8 different forums (actually, double that, considering the games are also on GOG), I'm sure it's easier for him to just have an email address for this purpose, and have a centralized channel for bug tracking.

I remain hopeful about future improvements, especially since they keep applying fixes to all games (anything they add/fix as part of the work on the latest batch of titles, they also update the previous games).

[Steven]

They also started locking threads on the Steam forums that dare to mention anything that's broken. That's... promising.

I don't want to play "devil's advocate", although it may sound like it, but the threads being closed (which, by the way, they have been doing that pretty much since launch, it's not something recent), I really don't think it's to erase negative feedback.

They have a post on the top of each forum about reaching out to their support service for any problems/bugs, and when they are closing some threads (and not deleting them, by the way; that would indeed be crappy), they are doing so and posting the same message, asking bug reports to be sent to their support email, so they can take a look at it.

I admit it would probably be better to just have a separate Steam forum for bug reports (like many other games do), but with now 8 games in this series (and in the future, a total of 16 games), and from what I gather a single guy checking these, I somewhat understand what they are doing. Instead of having to check possibly several threads in 8 different forums (actually, double that, considering the games are also on GOG), I'm sure it's easier for him to just have an email address for this purpose, and have a centralized channel for bug tracking.

I remain hopeful about future improvements, especially since they keep applying fixes to all games (anything they add/fix as part of the work on the latest batch of titles, they also update the previous games).

This is almost certainly the reason. It does give off a certain impression, though, if you go there and see all of the threads locked, and I don't think it's a good one. If it was me, I'd leave them open, but still encourage everyone to submit by email. It isn't me, though, so that's how it is.

At this point, I would be somewhat more satisfied if they fixed the broken audio. I don't even know what to say about the audio. Youtube exists. Just go check some replays from basically anyone who has played these games on MAME after they got the sound emulation working and posted a replay. Even without that, I'm still pretty sure that without any experience playing the games at all, you'd still probably listen to some of them and figure out that they aren't working properly. The sound of the text on the title screen of Slap Fight after you put your coin in is... ear-rending torture. It's not supposed to be that way!

I think Slap Fight is a weird/special case, though. I have not played Slap Fight on MAME since I got the board and it seems that I no longer have some files needed to play Slap Fight on MAME, but I think I vaguely remember seeing some sort of warning in MAME that says the board isn't fully emulated properly. When I got the board, it sounded different from MAME and I thought that either it was broken somehow or my speakers were broken somehow, so I travelled like halfway across the country to have Joe check my board to make sure it was good (it is, and so are my speakers), but it turns out that Slap Fight has some pretty crunchy explosion sound effects and I don't think MAME renders those properly, at least as of MAME 0.236 or whatever version it was. Can't wait for M2 to get those super crunchy sound effects implemented perfectly.

The Steam reviews are also quite appalling. They generally seem very positive, but very few of them mention the broken sound.

These still need many fixes. Non-completely-fucked audio is a great place to start, as is the ability to have more than only one autofire rate, and also having the enemies in Twin Cobra actually spawn at all would be nice.

[The Coop]

... as is the ability to have more than only one autofire rate...

All the games I've played have nine different autofire rates in the "Assist" section (4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30).

[Steven]

... as is the ability to have more than only one autofire rate...

All the games I've played have nine different autofire rates in the "Assist" section (4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30).

And how many of those can you equip simultaneously? Only one.

[The Coop]

Then pick the one that works best for your play style and use it.

I have to ask, what shmup lets you change how fast your ship autofires on the fly? Every shmup I've played that offers autofire has a single shot button, and an autofire button with either a preset firing rate, or one that you can adjust in the options. I can't think of a shmup that lets you change it as you play (at least, not without pausing, changing it in the options menu, and then unpausing).

[Steven]

My autofire thing for my PCBs lets me do this. Most of the more recent ACA games let you do this. Literally everything on M2 ShotTriggers lets you do this, and this is what it looks like



There is absolutely no reason that I shouldn't be able to do something like this here. Absolutely no excuses.

[The Coop]

Interesting, but it seems like it would suck the challenge right out of the game to have so many buttons set to different autofire rates (I'm guessing to use against different areas/enemies along the way).

Hell, I'm just glad we have an autofire option to use so I don't have to worry about carpal tunnel

[Steven]

The coolest ones I have ever seen are the Battle Garegga cabinets in Mikado and Taito Hey, which have a rotating selector knob that you can use to change your rate of fire. This functionality was recreated for M2 ShotTriggers Battle Garegga, which lets you assign a button that does basically the same thing. This one is from Mikado



I normally play some Toaplan games without autofire anyway, so this isn't really even for me, but for others who want optimal settings for different autofire rates for stages and bosses or anything else they can think of.

[SeafoamGaming]

By this point I imagine most people have given up, but patches are here. Unfortunately, the patch notes don't mention anything about adding the best version of Out Zone or fixing the eternally broken audio.

They also started locking threads on the Steam forums that dare to mention anything that's broken. That's... promising.

Honestly bewildering they launched slap fight with horrible psg sound effect emulation. For the other games i can see newcomers or those not familiar with some games like me thinking stuff’s OK because the music is normal, but slap fight and flying shark i knew way better due to evercade and switch and SF’s just blatantly ear rapey. How the fuck did they not fix the sound effect pitch.

Once i noticed that the rest of the games save for Hellfire and Fire Shark became horrible to listen to. At least an “off” shot sound in those two is still close enough that i enjoyed those ports, but i’m way more disappointed in them now.

[Steven]

It's not really bewildering at all considering that every game they released previously had completely broken audio, especially at the launch of the previous batch, when the music couldn't even maintain tempo properly. Even now, some of the music still sounds really weird in places (pretty sure Against the Attack is missing a few instruments/sound channels). At least all of the music is actually in the game at launch this time, unlike in launch Out Zone and the absent enemies in Twin Cobra.

I pretty much have no desire to play these ever again or buy any more of them unless they

fix the audio
add more autofire options. Even just having a dedicated 30Hz button in addition to the current autofire button would be fine.
add the real normal version of Out Zone
fix the enemies that don't spawn properly in Twin Cobra. This shouldn't even be a problem because the enemies in Kyuukyoku Tiger spawn perfectly

Can't wait for the phone versions (lol) to be better than the PC versions. Can't play them because I don't have a smartphone, but I expect this to happen.

[MJR]

I'm kind on the fence of getting vol.2, I guess simply because it would be cool to have achievements for Hell Fire and Slap Fight. But those issues I've had so far have put me off a bit. So it's better version of the game on Mame vs. better CRT emulation & achievements & online highscores.

I don't care much for the audio of Slap Fight, but for Hell Fire it's a whole another story, since I own the 2P PCB anyway and will notice in an instant if anything is off.

I am still kinda rooting for Bitwave to make it right, and I appreciate them for even attempting this. I know it's not easy to please middle-aged shmupper curmudgeons who demand perfection while hating everything that moves. Still, it's our money so we are entitled to whine..

[SeafoamGaming]

It's not really bewildering at all considering that every game they released previously had completely broken audio, especially at the launch of the previous batch, when the music couldn't even maintain tempo properly. Even now, some of the music still sounds really weird in places (pretty sure Against the Attack is missing a few instruments/sound channels). At least all of the music is actually in the game at launch this time, unlike in launch Out Zone and the absent enemies in Twin Cobra.

I pretty much have no desire to play these ever again or buy any more of them unless they

fix the audio
add more autofire options. Even just having a dedicated 30Hz button in addition to the current autofire button would be fine.
add the real normal version of Out Zone
fix the enemies that don't spawn properly in Twin Cobra. This shouldn't even be a problem because the enemies in Kyuukyoku Tiger spawn perfectly

Can't wait for the phone versions (lol) to be better than the PC versions. Can't play them because I don't have a smartphone, but I expect this to happen.

IIRC at TGS that demo of the phone app had some performance issues, per a friend I know, and that sounds rather disappointing as I'd love to play Flying Shark anywhere and everywhere. Hopefully that gets ironed out.

But yeah like, while I get while some reviewers didn't notice much of the sound issues for stuff like Hellfire/Zero Wing/Fire Shark, especially if they were new to the game (Hell, going from the Astro V to the Outzone Steam port, I found it way better, until I realized months later about the SE issues), Slap Fight and Flying Shark have such horribad sound effect problems that I literally cannot fathom anyone who doesn't notice that Slap Fight's SEs are ear-piercing when they shouldn't, or how Flying Shark's death sound effect sounds like a sputtering fart. The latter was immediately noticeable to me due to me having access to a local cab, and sure enough Evercade/M2 did that game's SE without much issue.

I sorta suspect how they "Fixed" the music from the pre-launch Vol 1 state (I dunno if you beta tested/reviewed those, but having gotten those early, they ALL sounded worse than the SE due to very high pitches and felt like atgames renditions of the OST... They barely corrected the songs before launch) was by using some sort of OST rendition of the songs per stage and just having them play over the ports when they're meant to play, since I feel like with the sound effects being akin in pitch-wrongness to the pre-launch Vol 1 OST, that maybe the whole emulator/porting engine has a sound pitch problem? Why they haven't fixed it in eight months is beyond me though, and while I'm set to review Vol 3 whenever that launches, I'm definitely getting less and less satisfied with these ports as they release; Hellfire/Fire Shark were the only ones of this batch I legitimately enjoyed here, and even Fire Shark had off SE cues, but it didn't stab my eardrums like Slap Fight did.

[Steven]

Fuck it, I'm going to talk to Yuge-san and Uemura-san about it when I see them on Saturday. I didn't want to have to resort to this, but it's time. Probably long past time, actually.

[SeafoamGaming]

Fuck it, I'm going to talk to Yuge-san and Uemura-san about it when I see them on Saturday. I didn't want to have to resort to this, but it's time. Probably long past time, actually.

Please have em listen to slap fight in particular

That was the port that made me raise an eyebrow, and I’m a toaplan newcomer! It’s pretty unacceptable

[The Coop]

Fuck it, I'm going to talk to Yuge-san and Uemura-san about it when I see them on Saturday. I didn't want to have to resort to this, but it's time. Probably long past time, actually.

Who?

[Steven]

Fuck it, I'm going to talk to Yuge-san and Uemura-san about it when I see them on Saturday. I didn't want to have to resort to this, but it's time. Probably long past time, actually.

Please have em listen to slap fight in particular

That was the port that made me raise an eyebrow, and I’m a toaplan newcomer! It’s pretty unacceptable

Out Zone and Twin Cobra are in a far worse place than Slap Fight is right now. One of them doesn't even have the proper version of the game included.

Fuck it, I'm going to talk to Yuge-san and Uemura-san about it when I see them on Saturday. I didn't want to have to resort to this, but it's time. Probably long past time, actually.

Who?

Some cool old dudes who might be able to help.

[beer gas canister]

Can confirm re: Twin Cobra. The flying enemy spawns are completely messed up, either spawning in the wrong spot with wrong formations or not at all.

[MJR]

I gave in and bought vol.2, been enjoying Slap Fight. However I did find out why the difficulty in every game felt bit off, the reason was simpler than I could have imagined: the default framerate setting is set to 60fps. This makes all the games bit faster, and thus bit harder.
Change the fps setting to 'original' instead, and then the difficulty feels mostly spot on, at least on Out Zone, Hell Fire and Zero Wing (I didn't have the time to test others)

[Steven]

MAME says Slap Fight's refresh rate is 60Hz, so Slap Fight is actually running at the proper speed. Mostly, anyway; it still falls out of sync with the PCB if you run them side-by-side. I think Get Star and Tiger-Heli are also 60Hz.

[mycophobia]

mame can be wrong, and one should be very suspicious of any mame game set to 60hz flat (if that's what it is, i dont feel like downloading slap fight)

tiger heli is 57 something. the earlier toaplan games tend to be sub-60hz

[MJR]

Slap Fight does not even have the option to alter the fps between original and 60fps, so yeah, there was no need for such option.

I've spent lot of time with my Hell Fire PCB so I noticed immediately how the game speed was off, I could even hear it with music. But once the game speed was set to "original", it was fine. The same was with Truxton because I have the PCB for that as well.
In other games I couldn't notice anything because I didn't have the PCB to compare it with.

However, difficulty in Out Zone matched better with Mame once I had set the game speed to "original" as well (I've played Out Zone a LOT in Mame).
Zero Wing matched the M2 version once it was set to "original". It looks like M2 shottrigger versions don't have any "game speed" options, but M2 Hell Fire on Switch feels near perfect compared to my PCB right from the start.

[Steven]

Bitwave Hellfire and Hishouzame are also missing the (huge amounts of) slowdown that those PCBs have. M2 emulated the slowdown perfectly in both instances. Hard to tell if any of M2's games stay in perfect sync with the PCB because of how it pauses the emulation to upload your score after you game over, but if the stuff that they show on Youtube is true, they should remain in perfect sync aside from when the game pauses to upload your score.

None of Bitwave's stuff ever stays in sync with the PCBs, even with the speed set to original, though this is apparently extremely difficult to achieve and I don't really think it's a problem. MAME doesn't do it either from what I have seen.

mame can be wrong, and one should be very suspicious of any mame game set to 60hz flat (if that's what it is, i dont feel like downloading slap fight)

tiger heli is 57 something. the earlier toaplan games tend to be sub-60hz

I always wondered if MAME was accurate for those. Tiger-Heli is indeed 57.something. Don't have Get Star on MAME and am too lazy to download it.

M2 Hell Fire on Switch feels near perfect compared to my PCB right from the start.

Near perfect? What's different? I have spent very little time with Hellfire on PCB.

[MJR]

M2 Hell Fire on Switch feels near perfect compared to my PCB right from the start.

Near perfect? What's different? I have spent very little time with Hellfire on PCB.

You are reading too hard into my words; near perfect / perfect is just a matter of semantics when we talk about M2 level of accuracy. Hell Fire on M2 shot triggers is as perfect as I can imagine it to be, but it still won't 100% match my PCB experience because it just isn't possible.

Replicating the experience perfectly on switch -either on Switch small screen, or on my large OLED screen- is not possible, because having that exotic 57.something fps on modern displays just isn't possible AFAIK. Not to mention how the graphics look on old CRT tv. BItwave did a commendable job on trying to emulate the look of that, btw. How the M2 managed to match the speed and feel of the game so closely, I don't even know.

Also, there is a difference between tactile feel on controllers when you have microswitch joystick & buttons bolted on 100kg arcade cabinet. I do have RAP Hori joystick on my Switch / PC, and it's really good, but it's never 100% match. Only 100% match would be to plug Switch onto some HDMI-RGB scart converter and then other converter to plug it in arcade cab, but at that level the hassle just isn't worth it. You could just as well buy the PCB if you are that level of serious

In short, M2 are doing as good a job as they possibly can on modern consoles. I don't even know how they managed to do it so well and I doubt it could be done any better.

[tomwhite2004]

MAME says Slap Fight's refresh rate is 60Hz

Booting the game and going to the system information shows it's 57.23hz.

[FunktionJCB]

There's a new wave of patches for the Toaplan titles on Steam, mostly to improve/fix sound problems.

They also posted the following text:

«The Audio of Toaplan


The Toaplan games are known for their thrilling music that matches the intense shoot ‘em up gameplay. Taking off in Truxton and you immediately feel a level excitement as the music starts to play, it’s the start of an action-packed journey to furthest reaches of space. Or the dramatic straight into action upbeat tune of Hellfire. Add the sound effects of blazing shots and exploding bombs. It’s a soundscape that represents the best of the golden arcade era of pixelated shoot ‘em up games.

At Bitwave we have worked to constantly improving the audio representation. Coder Carl Henrik Skårstedt has listened (no pun intended) to feedback and received input from Tatsujin, the owner of the Toaplan games and run by original Toaplan staff including Masahiro Yuge and Tatsuya Uemura that composed several of the songs in the game.

To ensure proper emulation we listened to recorded arcade music and sound effects. It’s a challenge as the audio experience with an arcade cabinet can vary between cabinets with different speakers and resonance. The sound from earlier sound chips such as the PSG depends on the circuitry connecting it to the sound output signal making each game a little bit more unique and more challenging to get just right.

Throughout several different patches we have worked on the audio:

- Improved the sound to play at a consistent tempo.
- Included support for a wider range of audio drivers.
- Added audio filter: optional echo, reverb, low-pass and high-pass filters to allow players to customize to their best experience in emulating an arcade like sound.
- Fixed technical bugs that meant minor improvements in the generated audio.

In the latest update we’ve further adjusted the frequency based on feedback of the sound effects and the high pitch in games such as Slap Fight based on feedback. This is something that’ll also benefit future releases such as Tiger Heli, the first game created by Toaplan. We hope that this is satisfaction to your ears in the goal to deliver the arcade feeling home on your PC.

We’re humble as it’s not an easy task to emulate and faithfully recreate the amazing Toaplan audio with the weight of heritage it carries. We appreciate specific feedback on how and where we can improve. Our goal remains to deliver an arcade experience with minimal input lag for the controller to get that split-second action decisions as you dodge bullets, while you enjoy the beautiful pixel art with or without a CRT filter and feel the beat of the stunning digitized music.

We want to finish off by letting you know that the latest update also includes a fix for the capture video function. Previously we fixed the desync and in the new version we have turned off rewind when recording and replaying. At first the fix will be applied to Twin Cobra, Flying Shark, and Slap Fight. The fix will be rolled out to the other games in the future.

Other fixes in addition to the already mentioned:
● Music tempo correction (Twin Cobra, and Flying Shark)
● Wide screen mode: Pick-ups centered instead of to the left side (Twin Cobra)
● Centered the cursor in the high score entry (Slap Fight)»


https://steamcommunity.com/games/201190 ... 6665945540

[Bassa-Bassa]

Tiger Heli, the first game created by Toaplan.

Good luck to them, but that's a wrong bit of trivia, I'm afraid.

[Steven]

The audio still sounds like shit.

[SavagePencil]

The audio still sounds like shit.

...but does it sound like shit differently?

[Steven]

The audio still sounds like shit.

...but does it sound like shit differently?

As far as I can tell, the only thing that's different is that the music in the sound test now plays at the proper speed.

[SeafoamGaming]

The two worst offenders of the first two vols for me were Flying Shark and especially Slap Fight. hoped this update would bring them to standards of every other darn reissue put out so far.

Welp, slap fight is *a tiny bit better* but the shot sound is still funky and some of the explosions are off. Evercade/Egret II are still superior.

Flying Shark seems to maybe have music be a bit better? but the explosions are still wrong sounding and not what they are on PCB/Evercade/M2 Sets. They sputter still even if not as bad as before.

The other games were close enough that I could see small SE tweaks making those a lot better (since the music being ATGames tier was fixed public launch, with the SE being the things that are absolutely, grossly off-key like the music was in the Vol 1 preview build), but I still suspect what they did to fix that was replace the bad emulated audio with some sort of streamed from an OST source music track, and thus left the SE as is which is why they sound like ass and was even more apparent on a PSG game like Slap Fight. Fire Shark was the game from Vol 2 I had a lot more fun with at launch and the sound bothered me the least, but I still do not trust these guys to not botch Tiger Heli unless they're saving it for Vol 4 to absolutely perfect it. I still consider Slap Fight a pretty poor port and laughable we waited all this long yet they can't even match a PCB for the sound effects that are the most easy to tell if they're off because it's fucking beep boop PSG audio.

Not to mention with Embracer being Embracer I'm personally doubting Bitwave will even get to finish the whole set of volumes, tbh. I've seen almost no traction for any of their releases this year and the freemode thing Embracer made after buying Limited Run Games kinda became a wet fart since LRG's own compilations this year have been of pretty poor emulation quality, for a so called "Carbon Engine" that warranted Embracer buying the company and forming a retro division for (that they threw Bitwave into as well, hence the Toaplan/Gimmick ports)