Incline Shoot'em up goodness (review and discuss)

[Great Deceiver]

Just a head's up to let you guys know that Guwange is running fine on the latest version of Xenia Canary (last few times I had tried it just gave me a black screen). It's a pretty good port of one of my favourite Cave games (afaik some slowdown is missing and it's harder than the PCB), definitely worth playing. Audio quality being much better than the PCB is a bonus.

 

[Nutmeg]

Interesting to hear that my impression that all Cave games have poor audio quality and ear rape music only applies to the PCBs (and by extension PCB emulation), not ports.

I always felt like Cave got popular in the Xbox 360 era. Certainly true outside of Japan, which explains why not many others share that impression.

Do the ports look OK? I'm a big fan of 240p displayed on a proper or well emulated CRT, can't imagine that's easy to do with Xenia.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Interesting to hear that my impression that all Cave games have poor audio quality and ear rape music only applies to the PCBs (and by extension PCB emulation), not ports.

I always felt like Cave got popular in the Xbox 360 era. Certainly true outside of Japan, which explains why not many others share that impression.

Do the ports look OK? I'm a big fan of 240p displayed on a proper or well emulated CRT, can't imagine that's easy to do with Xenia.

I'm also a big fan of proper 240p, but unfortunately the 360 ports all run upscaled in 720p, to varying degrees of success. Some of the 360 Cave ports had reworked sprites for 360 original modes (Mushi, Deathsmiles, Galuda 2), so those don't look as bad, but the arcade versions of the games look much worse than proper emulation, sadly. The Arika PS2 ports were superior in this regard (both DDP DOJ and Galuda 1 had native 240p modes in TATE).

However, this is made up by more accurate approximation of the original slowdown in some cases (definitely the case in Mushi Futari and Galuda 2). The Guwange port, being a limited XBLA release, is not very accurate and is missing a lot of slowdown. However, it's not one of Cave's more difficult games so it's definitely clearable even without slowdown.

 

[Matador]

Bought a free sync pro monitor.

Any tips aside from activate the free sync option in retroarch?

 

[Great Deceiver]

For general gaming systemwide, it's a good idea to limit the max framerate to around 3 fps below the refresh rate (whether in your gpu driver or through an external limiter like RTSS) and force vsync on in the control panel (yes, I know it sounds counterintuitive).

This is a good article and goes into some detail, but it's nVidia centred (most concepts still apply to Freesync ):

https://blurbusters.com/gsync/gsync101-input-lag-tests-and-settings

Other than that, enable "sync to exact content framerate" in Retroarch and enjoy the Raiden games in all their 54hz glory!

 

[Matador]

Managed to get to stage 4 boss without dying in Dodonpachi. My credit lasted until the boss of stage 5.

First time playing stage 5, crazy shit in the second half of the level! Have to practice that level and boss, but I feel like I have improved a lot last week and I will be able to beat the game at some point with 1 credit.

My average bomb usage:
- 1st level: 0 bombs
- 2nd level: 2 bombs (I can do with 1, but I don´t think is worth the lost reliability)
- 3rd level: 2-3 bombs
- 4th level: 2-3 bombs

I feel like that with this usage I will be able to have good resources in levels 5 and 6.

Also finished the game with 14 million points at 5th stage boss, so the second extend at 20 million will be sure.

 

[Morenatsu.]

You really should try to do stage 2 with only one bomb at most, before the extra bomb at the end. For the maximum bonus.

 

[Nutmeg]

Managed to get to stage 4 boss without dying in Dodonpachi. My credit lasted until the boss of stage 5.

First time playing stage 5, crazy shit in the second half of the level! Have to practice that level and boss, but I feel like I have improved a lot last week and I will be able to beat the game at some point with 1 credit.

My average bomb usage:
- 1st level: 0 bombs
- 2nd level: 2 bombs (I can do with 1, but I don´t think is worth the lost reliability)
- 3rd level: 2-3 bombs
- 4th level: 2-3 bombs

I feel like that with this usage I will be able to have good resources in levels 5 and 6.

Also finished the game with 14 million points at 5th stage boss, so the second extend at 20 million will be sure.

Nicely done. Stage 5 filtered me hard. I just couldn't "get it" and didn't want to autistically follow someone else's route.

I second what @Morenatsu says, no bombing stage 2 is a low hanging fruit and will give you a bit of lead way for the much harder other 2/3rds of the game.

 

[Morenatsu.]

I hate bombs. I feel like I can't play freely until they're all gone. Only the Garegga-likes have good bombs that don't piss me off.

 

[Matador]

I hate bombs. I feel like I can't play freely until they're all gone. Only the Garegga-likes have good bombs that don't piss me off.

I understand the sentiment. Yesterday I was without bombs on stage 4 and played very clutch, because is one less thing in the mental stack. You can just focus on dodging.

With bombs you have a large part of your brain dedicated to resource management process.

 

[Morenatsu.]

guise garegga just broke my controller

 

[Insect Hordes]

You need to strategically break controllers to manage rank. S'what all the Laotian superplayers do.

 

[Morenatsu.]

Mushihimesama Futari is overrated and for fags! The shot types all suck and the bullets are fucking boring! Mushi Original 4evaaa!!!!

Waifu Batsugun >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> danmakutard pandering

 

[Matador]

Practising Dodonpachi stage 5 and boss right now given than the boss is the furthest I have come in one credit. I managed to get in one life to 4th stage boss. I know how to do the glitch but I'm not consistent enough, so I died, but I can get to level 5 without dying and using 6-7 bombs in first 4 levels with some more consistency on 4th boss.

I feel that I require very precise routing or bombs to overcome some parts of the 5th level consistently, is a great step up in difficulty from level 4. for sure.

The boss I think is very easy with a good trick I saw from a good player. Maybe the easiest.

Hope I can be rocking up to level 6 soon enough in one credit.

 

[Morenatsu.]

I want to like DDP, but the presentation is strangely weak and the bosses are all really annoying bomb-bait.

 

[Insect Hordes]

1943 Kai on PC-Engine rules. Great addictive gameplay. Micro-dodging feels orgasmic. The laser with rapid-fire is just flat ass better. With options you are godly. That stupid fucking spread ball shot sucks. If you like the Deathtiny mode on Ketsui where you have a more room for recovery this is great. Always thought the 194X games were kinda blah, 19XX was leaning more towards Psikyo. '43 Kai has major fucking flavor. Was not expecting to be so blown away with the gameplay.

 

[Great Deceiver]

A new version of Akai Katana got released for Steam/PS4/5/Switch. Probably just a port of the 360 version:



I'm not a big fan of this game, and the Steam pricing is too high for my tastes. But cool to see nonetheless.

 

[Sukhāvatī]

Free game.

 

[Morenatsu.]

It seems like Cave gaems are much more appealing when I turn up the difficulty for faster bullets, especially Ketsui. Some later patterns are a bit screwy, but it's better this way. Fast bullets with fast ships, yes yes. All you defaulters out there, I pity you.


Also I'm a pussycat so I set extends to the easiest setting trolololo

 

[Matador]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/do...ottriggers-release-announced-for-2023.667852/

Dodonpachi DOJ M2 port to PS4

 

[Lutte]

A new version of Akai Katana got released for Steam/PS4/5/Switch. Probably just a port of the 360 version:



I'm not a big fan of this game, and the Steam pricing is too high for my tastes. But cool to see nonetheless.

Developer: CITY CONNECTION

Automatic do not buy. It's never cool to see these people gain access to an IP, unlike M2, who make good products.

 

[Great Deceiver]

City Connection has a pretty terrible track record, but the Steam release of Akai Katana only has like 3f of lag, pretty acceptable.

Speaking of M2...

They're releasing DDP DaiOuJou as part of their excellent ShotTriggers collection.

https://www.gematsu.com/2022/12/dodonpachi-blissful-death-m2-shottriggers-release-announced



This is super incline. I hope they don't make it Japan exclusive like some other games on the collection, like Mahou Daisakusen, which is pretty much my favourite shmup but I refuse to jump through hoops to make a Japanese PSN account to buy the port.

Ninja'd by Matador

 

[Nutmeg]

I love the aesthetics in DOJ except the mismatched pixel art style (hand drawn, not pre rendered like the rest of the game) with the cameo bosses from the first DDP on the last stage. Really triggers my autism.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Objectively I think DOJ might be Cave's very best game. I suck terribly at it but I love everything about it, the bosses, the patterns, and the music.

 

[Nutmeg]

All the tracks are tributes and named after classic shmup developers IIRC. Opening level track is my fav