Also arriving today for a double KO of pure shmup awesome, Zero Gunner 2 for Dreamcast:
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The little ship models are cool. Did they come with one of the sets?
Man I just watched a Youtube video and they person had the DLC Gamboy game. I'm salty.
No, they are from Yujin's Shooting Game Historica SP gashapon figure collection from 2008. :)
I haven't had too much time to play it yet but I've had a great time with the collection so far. I prefer Darius II but Darius 1 is such a striking game. Something about it reminds me of the shmups of the early 80s, but I don't mean that as an insult. Plus the three screens makes it feel monolithic in a very literal way.
Haha.
Darius 1 has a moodier and more ambient soundtrack, I enjoy it but the weapons always feel underpowered and your ship feels sluggish. Darius II is more balanced and playable IMO. But yeah, there's just something about the visuals, music and atmosphere of Darius 1.
Also noticed Darius 1 scanline options only seem to make the screen flicker a lot, not very pleasant to look at. Scanline options on the other games are ace though, awesome collection so far.
Is it easy to take and post some comparison shots? I'm curious to see real world results.
I'm away from my gaming PC and can't post screenshots at this moment, but this illustrates the difference between bilinear and integer-ratio scaling:Is it easy to take and post some comparison shots? I'm curious to see real world results.
I haven't had too much time to play it yet but I've had a great time with the collection so far. I prefer Darius II but Darius 1 is such a striking game. Something about it reminds me of the shmups of the early 80s, but I don't mean that as an insult. Plus the three screens makes it feel monolithic in a very literal way.
I've been thinking about Darius 1 compared to Gradius 1 from a year-ish prior, and I think that Gradius 1 represents the beginning of something new, whereas Darius 1 is the culmination of something that was ending. I think Epilexia said once that Gradius 1 is the Super Mario Bros. of shmups, and I think that's exactly it. Gradius 1 really seemed to introduce the idea of set pieces in order to establish a feel of space opera -- the stage gimmicks and set pieces seem to tease a story. Each stage has new gimmicks, and the moai stage even allows vertical and horizontal movement. Darius 1 on the other hand puts you in a sort of trance. It feels like you're skimming along the bottom of an endless and dangerous ocean. The 3 screens emphasize the vastness of the ocean (or space), but it also reinforces the idea that this is a horizontal shmup. You go left to right, and that's that. Darius 1 is content to iterate on the formula established on the very first stage in every subsequent stage, like a lot of early shmups, and that confidence in its own formula is well placed.
I've picked up this neat little helper yesterday:
But ChryZ, why would you need that? I own a bunch of SHMUPs which render internally at 720p or way lower than that. I'm looking at you, Japan. When you ask them to go full screen, they look like a blurry mess since Windows uses bilinear scaling. This is especially bad for low bit pixels art. Pixel based graphics look the best and sharpest, when integer-ratio scaled therefore lossless. You can read more about the science here: http://tanalin.com/en/articles/lossless-scaling/
There are a few other ways to get the similar result, like GeDoSaTo with nearest neighbor scaling and keeping an eye on the frame aspect ratio. Lossless Scaling is a lot more convenient and easier to use though. I tried a couple of games and it worked like a charm. You run the utility in the background, your game windowed at native res in the foreground, then you can toggle the lossless scaling via a hotkey combination. The game goes full screen with the correct integer-ratio and fills the remaining background frame black. Depending on the native base res it might as well will fill the whole screen, e.g. 720p 2x without any issue to 1440p, but remains 720p on a 1080p screen; 360p 3x completely fills a 1080p screen; 1080p 4x = 4K, etc etc
Devil Engine supports integer-ratio scaling out-of-the-box and since I've played the game a ton recently it was the perfect test candidate. I wasn't able to notice any input lag or frame pacing irregularities when switching from in-game to utility based scaling.
Here is a pretty good example, Supercharged Robot VULKAISERIs it easy to take and post some comparison shots? I'm curious to see real world results.
I somehow missed the non-native res scaling thing so this makes a lot more sense now. Thanks for the shots, seems like a solid utility.
The people behind exA-Arcadia (Shou) keeps hinting at talks with Cave in the shmups forum.
https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=61966&start=270
The talks could result in the first "new" Cave game since 2012 (exA stipulates some form of exclusive content in games on their platform). Doubt that Cave have much of a shmup division these days. Akai Katana Shin got a Nesica port which runs on PC hardware. Should be easy to port that, since exA is probably also PC hardware. Add a new ship or whatever and call it Black Label.
There's a code in the Saturn version that enables autofire. On the screen that has "Game Start" and "Option" on it press and hold B, and press Y, Right, Left, X, Z, L and R. You should hear an explosion sound if done correctly.I imagine Gaiden in the Cosmic Collection is really nice to play thanks to having autofire settings. Playing the Saturn version without an autofire pad/stick makes it so much harder!
There's a code in the Saturn version that enables autofire. On the screen that has "Game Start" and "Option" on it press and hold B, and press Y, Right, Left, X, Z, L and R. You should hear an explosion sound if done correctly.
For those of us on the Darius train, what have you all been focusing on? I only had much experience with Darius 1 beforehand so I've been focusing on Darius II which is insanely hard -- too hard for me, but I really want to get through at least one route somehow so I can appreciate the differences in Sagaia version 1 and 2. I've also been playing Gaiden which is just a delight. It's totally up my alley as a fan of true blue sci-fi shmups.
Just sitting here waiting on shipping. Glad I jumped on it when I did though..For those of us on the Darius train, what have you all been focusing on? I only had much experience with Darius 1 beforehand so I've been focusing on Darius II which is insanely hard -- too hard for me, but I really want to get through at least one route somehow so I can appreciate the differences in Sagaia version 1 and 2. I've also been playing Gaiden which is just a delight. It's totally up my alley as a fan of true blue sci-fi shmups.
That's a crazy story. Darius 1 is indeed a very special game. I think I'm beginning to prefer it to II.The first Darius will always have a special place in my heart. Back in 2004, a local game store I used to frequent had a Darius 1 cabinet set to free-play. After several attempts, I got a 1CC and even a One-Life clear. However, hurricane Charley hit later that same year. The game store was hit really badly. Thankfully the owner had insurance and was able to recover, but the Darius cabinet was completely demolished.
I've been hot and cold on Gaiden for the longest time, but I think I love it now. It has the most striking visuals of the entire series and its high accessibility makes it easy to jump into and enjoy. G. Darius is a deeper and more mechanically-refined game, but it's also damned tough and has a high learning curve. Sometimes I don't want to deal with all that, which is why Gaiden is so appealing.
Darius 2 though... I absolutely loathe Darius 2.
Grumble grumble. Garegga should still be number 1.Shmup forums did their annual top 25. Lots more info and breakdowns over there.
That Ketsui climb has been unstoppable. Happy to see ZeroRanger crack the list.
Deathsmiles remained on while Progear and Muchi Muchi Pork got the boot, if you really want to go down the path of injustice here.
The only Cave game I really like is Dangun Feveron so the whole list is pretty offensive to my palate to begin with.Deathsmiles remained on while Progear and Muchi Muchi Pork got the boot, if you really want to go down the path of injustice here.
I didn't feel worthy to vote this year since I only played neko navy, momoiro underground and a tiny bit of zero ranger (and progear/mmp of course).Deathsmiles remained on while Progear and Muchi Muchi Pork got the boot, if you really want to go down the path of injustice here.
Nice. Good entry for Zeroranger too!Shmup forums did their annual top 25. Lots more info and breakdowns over there.
That Ketsui climb has been unstoppable. Happy to see ZeroRanger crack the list.
The game is called 'Mars: Chaos Menace', and it's available on Switch, Steam, PS4 and Xbox One.
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But isn't "Very Hard" the default difficulty in the full game?I don't know about the demo, but the full version of Devil Engine is surprisingly tough on the default difficulty. It took me a surprising amount of attempts to simply no-continue through the first stage!
I'm also dumb/stubborn when it comes to defensive mechanics like the burst in this game, so I'm almost certainly under-using it and making things harder for myself.