Atariboy Posted July 22, 2019 Share Posted July 22, 2019 (edited) Another thread relevant to AtariAge. This one covered the range of golden age arcade classics that Sony released via the Playstation Minis lineup for the Playstation Portable and Playstation 3 (Many are also PSVita/PSTV compatible, with Vanguard a notable exception). Feel free to discuss these still available digital downloads, the various SNK compilations and digital release programs such as the ongoing ACA Neo Geo line of downloads or the recent SNK 40th Anniversary Collection, the Neo Geo Mini plug and play, etc. Click below to reveal the pre-AtariAge archive of this thread, reposted from the PSPMinis.com community forum. Spoiler onmode-kyMember The most recent PS+ post on the PS Blog reveals several SNK arcade games will be releasing as Minis soon. Here's what's coming, July 19th: Guerilla War*Athena*HAL 21*Ikari Warriors*Marvin's Maze*Sasuke vs. Commander*Ozma WarsVanguard The 6 titles with asterisks are games that were part of the recent, Japan/Asia-only SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 0. With 6 of the collection's 20 games being released as standalone Minis, I guess we aren't likely going to see Vol. 0 itself getting a release in the West. Of the 2 no-asterisk games, Ozma Wars is SNK's first game (and its Wikipedia entry also notes it's the first video game with disparate levels, as well as the first to use a life bar mechanic), and Vanguardis one of the first scrolling shooters (it scrolled both vertically and horizontally). The same Store update will add 2 SNK NeoGeo titles, Baseball Stars 2 and KoF '95, presumably to the NeoGeo sections of the Store--however, the blog post only notes what looks like a PS3 price, so I can't tell if the titles are coming to the NeoGeo section for the PSP. The SNK Minis will normally be priced at $3 each, but PS+ subscribers (such as those of us who activated our free 30 days late in the availability period!) will get Guerilla Wars as a subscription-time freebie and all the other titles at 20% off, a savings of 60 cents each. I'm already backlogged even just on Minis, but thanks to the PS+ discount bit, I think I'll be jumping on the shoot'em-ups in the set: Ozma Wars, HAL 21, Sasuke vs. Commander, and Vanguard. Maybe I'll get Athena, too. POSTED 8 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember My long wait for Vanguard is finally almost over! POSTED 8 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Saw that one coming from miles away. POSTED 8 YEARS AGO # pspgamer01Member is vaguard a hard game. Or is it more like a game where you have to invest a lot of time to memorize the levels and be able to proceed further in the game?? POSTED 8 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember The thing is, most of my experience with Vanguard is with the Atari 2600 version. I remember playing it in the arcade, but that was like 30 years ago. And uh, I can't remember a lot of things from college, much less way back in elementary school. But it wasn't crazy hard. And the nice thing was that you could continue by adding another quarter. I'm also hopeful that it will have save states, you know, where you can simply save a place in the game, then come back to it later. That way you can just keep saving until you die. Then start over from there. POSTED 8 YEARS AGO # pspgamer01Member but you need to hold your psp like the controls in the arcade to play it properly right. cuz with the psp buttons it's difficult to hold 3 buttons at the same time. POSTED 8 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember but you need to hold your psp like the controls in the arcade to play it properly right. cuz with the psp buttons it's difficult to hold 3 buttons at the same time. I'm not sure what you mean. This is what the Vanguard arcade cabinet's control panel looks like: You don't need to press 3 buttons at the same time, though I suppose you could. It would be awkward on both this control panel and on the PSP, though. POSTED 8 YEARS AGO # pspgamer01Member well nevermind than. POSTED 8 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Out of curiosity, were you thinking of a different game with a similar name? POSTED 8 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember The same Store update will add 2 SNK NeoGeo titles, Baseball Stars 2 and KoF '95, presumably to the NeoGeo sections of the Store--however, the blog post only notes what looks like a PS3 price, so I can't tell if the titles are coming to the NeoGeo section for the PSP. I just found a trailer uploaded today to the Asia PS Store indicating that these games are part of a slightly larger influx of new titles into the NEOGEO Station (so they should be for both PS3 and PSP). The other 4 games will be Metal Slug 2, World Heroes, KoF '96, and Shock Troopers. It's strange seeing a trailer with ESRB rating info at the beginning hit the Asia PS Store before it appears anywhere else (haven't even found it on the Web). I wonder if this also means that more SNK pre-NeoGeo games will be releasing as Minis after next week's initial batch, perhaps more from SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 0. POSTED 8 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember The G1M2 guy said on their Facebook page that more are on their way...though he just said titles they've developed, so it could be another Ancient Game Treasures: _____ game, I suppose. Anyway, Vanguard is even more awesome than I remembered. Little rusty, it took me three continues to get to the boss (where I died immediately). POSTED 8 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember JeremyR, can you ask G1M2 to clarify if they meant more SNK Minis? I got Vanguard, HAL 21, Ozma Wars, and Sasuke vs. Commander. Go, temporary PS+ subscription (it's saved me over $10 already!)! Of these games, I've so far played all but HAL 21, and I'm pleasantly surprised by all of them. Ozma Wars, being so early, I thought it would be sort of like Space Invaders in its simplicity, but Ozma has different kinds of enemy waves, with different forms of attack. At the farthest point I reached in the game, admittedly not that far, I had not yet seen any repeat wave. My complaint about the game, though, is that it seems to randomly speed up and slow down. Presumably, this is how the original actually played, but I don't know if it played that way by design or by hardware limitation. . . . Ozma was the only game of the bunch I got which had a (single-page) manual. I played this until I hit 10,000 points. I also played Sasuke vs. Commander until I hit 10,000 points. The basic gameplay is fairly standard, as it's sort of like Galaxian or Satan's Hollow, with moving enemies that try to get you, but the boss fights are actually rather different. You have a time limit within which to beat the boss, wherein the amount of time left results in (mucho) bonus points. The two bosses I beat had very different forms of attack, such that I'm really quite curious how subsequent bosses attack. Vanguard plays very well, and I'm not just saying that because I fear JeremyR's vengeful wrath. I'd only played it a few times once several years ago (MAME), back when this press release for a later-canceled product was announced (if it had been released, I could see JeremyR buying more than one). So, I had to continue a bunch of times to reach the boss, where I suddenly died. On my second try, I did better and somehow beat the boss upon arrival--not sure what happened, really. My score topped out at 33,800. The game has very varied level and enemy designs, much more so than Konami's Scramble, another very early scrolling shooter. Incidentally, the music in the original that was used without permission? It's still there in this. When these games get reviewed, I hope the reviewer makes use of the savestate capability and gets decently far into the games. The interface also allows for controls customization (curiously, they don't all use the same button for default coin insert) and editing game settings. Oh, I also played the PS+ freebie Guerrilla War to the end (infinite continues--which I really needed even to reach the first boss). Not my cup of tea, but an interesting thing about it was that the "stretch mode" for the display (all these games have it, allowing you to make the game fit the PSP screen height while retaining the aspect ratio) actually resulted in showing more of the screen than the normal mode; in normal mode, you're not able to see your score. POSTED 8 YEARS AGO # G1M2Member Thank you for the kind words about the work we have been doing on the Minis. It has not been announced, but there will be more Minis coming. I cannot mention specific titles, but we expect that you will be very happy (and no, we are not thinking that you are desperately waiting for the next Ancient Game Treasures title - although we are willing to take requests). I would recommend continuing to watch the ESRB website - as this seems to be the place where the first "official" announcement comes out... POSTED 8 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember G1M2, maybe you can answer this one: do you have any Minis releasing next week? I played more Ozma Wars and Sasuke vs. Commander, this time using the savestate functionality to get as far as possible. With Ozma, I got to just before the 4th docking, around 26,800 points, but it was essentially impossible to avoid getting hit by the enemy that then appeared. After each docking, the waves do more or less repeat, incidentally. With Sasuke, I think I got past the 8th boss, around 56,800 points, before throwing in the towel. There really is some interesting variety to the boss fights. One of the forms relies more on luck than skill, though. I've also tried out HAL 21 now, and it's probably the least interesting of the four I got. There is nothing really wrong with it, but it seems to play like a slightly easier version of Xevious, and that's all. It does have a temporary super gun you can get if you collect 5 'E' items, but that's the only mechanic that's any different from Xevious. Also, I can't figure out how you're supposed to actually kill any of the bosses. They've all just seemingly disassembled themselves after I've fought with them for a bit; is that me actually winning or not? If not, can the bosses only be killed when you have 2 players (which would be never, with these Minis versions)? And, lastly, does the game have an end? I kept continuing and continuing, and what looked like unfamiliar terrain kept scrolling down . . . so where does it end, or has it been looping (like Xevious) without me noticing? POSTED 8 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember Eek, I hope they don't have any more releasing next week. We're going to have a backlog as it is... You really weren't kidding -HAL 21 really is like Xevious. Ikari Warriors is really a lot like Taito's Front Line (only Viet Name instead of WW2). And while I wouldn't say they are alike, if you squint, Sasuke looks like Satan's Hollow. None of them are bad, but it's like going to a concert full of cover bands... POSTED 8 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember Ack, now that I've played it more, Sasuke is a lot like Satan's Hollow. Doesn't have that bridge building aspect, but the boss fights are just like it. Since this came first, I guess it must have inspired it? POSTED 8 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember HAL 21 does have very different enemy behaviors from Xevious, as well as a greater tendency to send them in droves, but it really does feel a lot like a 2-player (originally) version of Namco's game. Ikari Warriors (not that I've played it, only seen footage) reminded me more of Capcom's Commando than Front Line, but I have admittedly played very little of Front Line. It's been a while since I last played Satan's Hollow (it's in my Midway Arcade Treasures and the multicab), so I, uh, don't remember the boss fights. How similar are they? I think I encountered at least 4 different boss fight types during my savestate-backed run of Sasuke. POSTED 8 YEARS AGO # G1M2Member @onmode-ky: We do have more Minis coming out - but they will not be in the next few weeks. The publisher controls the release timing - and they want to release the titles in groups. For the Data East games and Ancient Game Treasures: Mill, we were the publisher, so we decided when to release them. SNK is the publisher of the classic SNK Minis. It is funny how everyone has their personal favorite games. Ikari was my favorite SNK classic arcade game from back in the day, but I am really enjoying Marvin's Maze... POSTED 8 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember Front Line was one of my favorite games on the Colecovision. I guess was pretty much the first game like Commando, predating it by several years, so I always think of games like that as Front Line clones, not Commando. Or Rambo games. Plays exactly the same, you have a little soldier, move him vertically to the top of the screen, rotate his gun with a dial (or two different buttons in case of console ports) another for grenades. And then after so far in the game, you get in a little tank, like Ikari Warriors (haven't played Commando much). The Colecovision version of Front Line used the Super controllers, so they played really well. You sort of held it like a gun, and could press 4 different buttons with one hand like triggers, while controlling the joystick on top with the other. And in Satan's Hollow, the boss was a big devil head and did figure 8 patterns on the screen, shooting a stream of fire that splashed at you. The first boss in Sasuke sort of reminded me of it, anyway. POSTED 8 YEARS AGO # Always_SerpicoMember I'm having a hard time figuring out the menu controls in Vanguard. Sometimes I end up starting a 2 player game, not sure how or why. I know it has something to do with the left shoulder button. Also, what are the coins for? I'm not a fan of SHMUPs, but since Vanguard is such an iconic game among the older crowd, I decided to give it a try. POSTED 8 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember For Vanguard, the L button is (in the default config) the coin insert button, and the R button is the 2-Player Start button (for when you have 2 or more coin credits available). If you're asking what the "COIN" text in the upper left corner of the screen means, that's the count of coin credits that are currently in the machine. That is, you can use the 2-Player Start button when that number is greater than or equal to 2. I don't know if you can pilot a tank in Commando. The best I've ever done in that game was the beginning of the third stage, and I don't recall having a tank available by then. However, I guess Ikari Warriors is still more like Front Line, considering Commando has you only firing in the direction of movement. Soooo . . . no one out there can answer my earlier questions about HAL 21? G1M2, maybe? POSTED 8 YEARS AGO # ChaosRandomMember I'm wanting to grab one of these, but dont know which one. Ofaliss? Options? POSTED 8 YEARS AGO # Always_SerpicoMember I honestly don't know bud. Sorry. I'm not an old school gamer, I only got Vanguard just to say I played an iconic game and I can live without that to be honest. It's ok, but it won't be on my PSP for much longer. I've already beaten the high score and in classic arcade cabinet style, I left ASS as the player name, so I've had my fun! onmode-ky and Jeremy are your best sources for old school games. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # ChaosRandomMember Yea, I like the old school, but I may pass on these. Good thing I'm not one of those guys where the money burns a hole in my PSN wallet. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Probably the best way to decide which of these is for you is to search YouTube for gameplay videos. Being early arcade games, they all have their gameplay up front, so you won't even have to watch any of them for a while to make your decision. For quick reference, though: Guerrilla War - top-down run-n-gunAthena - platformerHAL 21 - vertically scrolling shooter, a lot like XeviousIkari Warriors - top-down run-n-gunMarvin's Maze - maze game (i.e., descended from Pac-Man)Sasuke vs. Commander - vertical single-screen shooterOzma Wars - vertical single-screen shooterVanguard - side- and vertically scrolling shooter, in a sense like Salamander/Life Force (which came later) POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # ChaosRandomMember Oh my!!! I loved Life Force. Up up, down down, left right.....awww forget it, you know the rest. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember they had a review for Ozma Wars already, maybe i'll wait for the reviews and decide then. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # ChaosRandomMember Not a bad idea, but if I get one, I think I'm leaning toward Vanguard. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember The next barrage of SNK Minis may be around the corner. I say this because the first batch coincided with the arrival of two more NeoGeo Station games, and it looks like we're about to get another NeoGeo pair next week; the Asia PS Store just got World Heroes and Shock Troopers today. Let's hope JeremyR's had enough rest. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember I kinda hope they have some Neo Geo pocket games toom like say Last blade or Metal slug or other fun games like those. I'd buy it, after reviews to get a better idea of course. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Incidentally, I turned out to be wrong; the second batch of SNK Minis came a week after my prediction. I guess my timing is a little off. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # TakaoMember I'd buy some NeoGeo Pocket titles for sure. I'd love for Sony to get Wonderswan games on PSN. Even if they're in Japanese. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember that's what JP import section is for, assuming it's PSone JP. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember I'm assuming you misinterpreted Takao to mean that "Wonderswan" was a series of Japanese PS1 games. The Bandai WonderSwan was a family of Japan-only portable game systems roughly contemporary with the Neo Geo Pocket and Game Boy Color. Variants/enhancements through the family's lifetime included the WonderSwan Color and the SwanCrystal. It had some decent third-party support, notably from Square Enix (or maybe it was just Square at the time). I considered getting the FFI+FFII WonderSwan Color bundle myself a long time ago (years later, I ended up buying the PSP remakes instead). POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Once again, a PS Blog post for PS+ revealed weeks in advance that more SNK retro Minis are coming (of course, I'm well over a week late in discovering this). This time, we're getting a trio the week of 10/25: - Ikari Warriors III: The Rescue (1989) - Prehistoric Isle in 1930 (1989) - Safari Rally (1979) Of these, Safari Rally is not part of SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 0, similar to Ozma Wars and Vanguard. It looks like it's a driving game vaguely similar to Coconut Dodge. Ikari III is presumably similar to Ikari I, and Prehistoric Isle is a side-scrolling shooter which I'm rather likely to get. If anyone's curious, the Vol. 0 games we will still be missing after the 10/25 batch will be: - Psycho Soldier - Dogosoken (sequel to Ikari Warriors) - P.O.W. - Search and Rescue - Gold Medalist - Super Championship Baseball - Touchdown Fever - Bermuda Triangle POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # thumbbanditMember Prehistoric Isle In 1930... I think I remember watching that game being played on an old arcade machine in a sweet-shop back in the day. I hope I'm thinking of the same game... side scrolling shooter with world war 1 & 2 style planes vs dinosaurs? POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember Thanks! I'll do a story on this in a bit. Safari Rally seems to originally have been a B&W game from SNK, but as near as I can tell, Taito then made a colorized version of it. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Just saw the new blog post. My "eagle eyes" took 10 days to notice the "announcement"; it's just time dilation, I swear! I read that about Safari Rally as well, but the weird thing was that the YouTube clip I watched, though in color, still said "Shin Nihon Kikaku" (SNK) at the title screen. Couldn't figure what to make of it. I never saw Prehistoric Isle anywhere at all before, thumbbandit. When you saw the game, were you on a prehistoric isle? Har har. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember Maybe Taito just licensed it from SNK and just slapped a color overlay on the screen, like I think they did with Space Invaders? POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # FreelanceMember Any word on Prehistoric Isle 2? It looks great judging from the screenshots at this page http://www.neo-geo.com/reviews/neo-reviews/pi2/pi2.html POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember i just wish for Neo geo pocket games ported to PSP, i'd buy those. Last blade and KoFs, and maybe Metal slug. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember For some reason, none of these are listed in the "The Drop" for this week (PS Blog weekly post that lists what's releasing that week). Hmm. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # FreelanceMember Well that sucks. I had decided to go get a PSN card so I can take advantage of Open Emotion's bundle and if Prehistoric Isle is coming out tomorrow I'd go pick the card up on same day for the extra incentive but naturally PSN doesn't update til night so bah. I guess I should still go anyway and get it over with. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # FreelanceMember D'oh. Looks like they're not out this week. Already got the card too. Oh well. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # FreelanceMember Lame. Still not out yet. Just checked. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember where's them neogeo pocket games SNK???? just release them already so i can have me some last blade and stuff... POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember This week's "The Drop" PS Blog post still shows no SNK Minis (or any Minis at all, actually). Not a good sign. I think SNK Playmore may have canceled. Perhaps they expected sales to have been better for the previous releases. Anyone on Facebook willing to bug their NeoGeo Station page about it? That seems to be the only route through which they interact with the public. They've never responded to any e-mails from me before. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember i'll bug them but it might not help, still going to try though... *moments later* just started bugging them. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Uh, are you sure it went through? I don't see anything on their Wall asking about their Minis that were supposed to come out in October. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # FreelanceMember Very disappointed. Still no sign of those SNK minis, not to mention Open Emotion's bundle didn't come out either. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember onmode-ky, i merely made a suggestion instead, don't want to come off like some crazed fanboy... but you'll definitely see something regarding NGP minis and stuff POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Oh. Well, could you do me a favor and post a question about what happened to their Minis that were supposed to come out last month but didn't? They're the 3 listed in this PS Blog post about October PS+ stuff. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember sure, i'll bug them real soon about the minis that are missing in Oct. *few minutes later* done... bugged them! simply asked what happened to the minis for Oct that never showed up. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember No response on their Wall to sniper712\'s question, and no SNK Minis listed in this week\'s The Drop post on the PS Blog. I\'m 95% certain they\'ve just been canceled by SNK Playmore. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # FreelanceMember That sucks if it\'s true \'cause now I have $20 in my PSN wallet that I can\'t use. I wanted to kill dinos in a biplane and now it went up in smoke >:| POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Still no sign of Safari Rally, Prehistoric Isle in 1930, or Ikari Warriors III: The Rescue, but the PS Blog\'s \"The Drop\" post for this week shows we\'re getting Ikari Warriors II: Victory Road and Psycho Soldier. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # CecilMcW00tMember I did find it strange that they would release Ikari Warriors III before Ikari Warriors II. Maybe they made a mistake in the scheduling. Hopefully the others are still in the pipeline. I\'ve been saving some money in my PSN wallet for the next batch, so I\'ll definitely be scooping these two up. PSYCHO SOLDIER! Woo! POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember saying the same thing again... NGP games as minis or in other DL areas, dont care, just want it on PSN/PSP. last blade needs some attention! POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # CecilMcW00tMember NGP Last Blade is soooo good. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember the KoFs on NGP was also awesome, and i d rather not have to use emulator to play them. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # manslayer911Member Ikari Warriors II, now that\'s another game I remember playing for the nes back in the day. It was me & my sis, layin the smackdown on a whole load of enemies, rambo style, & we got pretty far on 1 playthrough too. As for ngpc games, I want snk vs capcom, & maybe even Rockman: Battle & Fighters. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Yeah, it did seem odd that Ikari III would release before Ikari II, so maybe it really was a scheduling SNAFU. sniper712, to be honest, I think the chances of NGP[C] games coming to any of the download services are just barely higher than those of WonderSwan games, though likely significantly higher than those of Game.com games. I\'d advise just using an emulator; it\'s not as if that would preclude you from getting the games later if they ever did appear for sale. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember sometimes its just nice to dream about things, even the chance of it happening is zitch at times. just trying to keep it alive, last blade is just too good to be forgotten like that, those sprites are burned into my mind for all eternity (not just last blade ones). POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # CecilMcW00tMember I remember when I was a munchkin, a girl I had a crush on came over and we played Ikari Warriors 2 for what seemed like forever... It was probably only 45 minutes, but still... =P I did not want to give that game back to my friend at school. XD POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember and now you can have it on the go real soon... only thing i was shooting at during the munchkin era is shooting aliens in contra and blowing up monsters with bomberman (remote bombs). POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember As noted by Jasper in the The Drop thread, we\'re [supposed to be] getting more SNK Minis this month, based again on PS+ monthly discount announcements: Prehistoric Isle – 20% off – 12/20 P.O.W. – Prisoners Of War- 20% off – 12/20 Something must have screwed up with SNK\'s release schedule, because the pair of SNK Minis released last month apparently don\'t get the standard SNK PS+ discount until the middle of this month. Anyway, sucks for anyone who was looking forward to Safari Rally or Ikari Warriors III since October, but at least the side-scrolling shooter is coming, along with a previously unannounced SNK Mini. If anyone\'s curious, the SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 0 games we will still be missing after this upcoming pair will be: - Ikari Warriors III: The Rescue - Search and Rescue - Gold Medalist - Super Championship Baseball - Touchdown Fever - Bermuda Triangle And previously announced non-Vol. 0 SNK arcade title Safari Rally will still be MIA as well. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember I sure hope Safari Rally makes it out. Never would\'ve guessed at that game making it out not so long ago. Would be ashame to see something more obscure like that get so close to release just to get scuttled just before it was due. Will be nice to get all of SNK Arcade Classics Volume 0 over here if they keep going (Hopefully along with a few more new games like the hopefully soon to be released Safari Rally and Alpha Mission, Ozma Wars, and Vanguard from earlier). About the only issue I\'ve had is how they handled the LS30 stick used in some of these games. They should\'ve used the 4 face buttons for aiming (Such as how Digital Eclipse handled Robotron 2084 on the William\'s collection on systems like the SuperNes and PSOne in the pre dual analog days). Instead, those games are all but ruined with the bizarre shoulder button aiming scheme they used. And I\'m not sure if Sony\'s policies allow it, but it would\'ve been nice if they had been able to detect if they were running on a PS3 so you could\'ve used the dual analog sticks in those games (Ala what they did on Data East Arcade Classics on the Wii for Heavy Barrel, another LS30 game). Toss in aiming that fires your primary weapons at the same time, along the lines of something like Robotron 2084 or the modern Geometry Wars (Cutting out when you use your secondary weapon that would still be mapped to a button), and it would\'ve been perfect. That was my main fault with Heavy Barrel on the Wii. Having to use a seperate button to fire in conjunction with the right analog for aiming, albeit accurate to the coinop that had a fire button, just didn\'t translate well to a GCN pad or Classic Controller. Instead things like these Ikari Warrior releases are a missed opportunity. I hope they\'ll consider bringing out a Wii compilation so we\'d get a physical copy of these and so the LS30 games would at least be playable. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember What\'s up with the apostropies at this forum? Noticed a typo and tried to edit and how it\'s tossing in \\\\\\\'s at every instance of it. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # Always_SerpicoMember Welcome new person! The \\\'s made it\'s debut almost 2 months ago. The more you edit your post, the more \\\'s there will be. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Say, are you the same Atariboy as the one I\'ve talked to over at AtariAge? If so, good to see you here as well! If not, welcome, impostor! They should\'ve used the 4 face buttons for aiming I did wonder why they didn\'t do that. I surmise that the inputs from the original arcade stick were read in such a way that it would have been difficult to properly implement them as 4 buttons. That is, if the only inputs the game code takes are \"rotate left\" and \"rotate right,\" how would you map those to 4 inputs intended to indicate directions?Robotron\'s easy to map because its aiming/shooting setup really is 4 inputs. it would\'ve been nice if they had been able to detect if they were running on a PS3 Unfortunately, I think the main barrier to this is that the PS3\'s PSP emulator likely purely pretends to be a PSP and has no way of passing any \"I\'m an emulator on a PS3\" identifier to the software it\'s running. I think the only way software might be able to \"figure out\" if it\'s on the PS3 would be to test an operation known to return different results on a PS3 vs. a PSP--i.e., look for a bug in the PS3\'s emulator. That, of course, would not be officially supported. By the way, Alpha Mission was a part of the Vol. 0 collection, under its Japanese \"A.S.O.\" name. About the apostrophes thing and post editing, there is a way around the proliferation (which you seem to be aware of already, come to think of it): remove all backslashes from your text when you edit. The extra backslashes (escape sequences) are coming from the forum adding escapes to the backslashes that it added to escape the apostrophes. I do wish the forum would run on different software, though (and properly spell \"separated\" at the bottom of topics). POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # manslayer911Member Greetings and welcome. The passages above have served to remind me of Midway Arcade Treasures which I owned for the Game Cube that also used the face-buttons for directional aiming for games like Robotron & Smash T.V. I agree that it would have been nice to see them used in these minis too, but as onmode pointed out, might have been a problem if these games used a different input system. Also concerning the backslash thing, I now try as much as possible not to use words that contain a \"\'\", unless I get carried away or something. From what u have stated, I presume that it is safe to assume that u have a copy of Data East Arcade Classics on the Wii? If so, how is it, & what kind of extras does it boast? Reason I am asking is because I was also thinking of picking up a copy but have since been on the fence. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember \\\"Say, are you the same Atariboy as the one I\\\'ve talked to over at AtariAge?\\\" That would be me. I thought about mentioning that since I recognized your username from AA (Always nice to find another AtariAge user at a different forum), but I wasn\'t sure you\'d recognize who I was. Been lurking here for a while now thanks to this thread you guys have going (If it wasn\\\'t for these SNK releases and the three Data East releases, I\'d only own 1 or 2 Minis). \"I did wonder why they didn\'t do that. I surmise that the inputs from the original arcade stick were read in such a way that it would have been difficult to properly implement them as 4 buttons. That is, if the only inputs the game code takes are \"rotate left\" and \"rotate right,\" how would you map those to 4 inputs intended to indicate directions? Robotron\'s easy to map because its aiming/shooting setup really is 4 inputs.\" That\'s an excellent point, but they were able to impliment an analog version of that on Data East Arcade Classics for the Wii for Heavy Barrel (Also by G1M2), a game that used the exact same joystick as the SNK games in question. What to shoot towards the top right of the screen in Heavy Barrel? All you had to do was point the analog stick in that direction and you were aiming there. \"Unfortunately, I think the main barrier to this is that the PS3\'s PSP emulator likely purely pretends to be a PSP and has no way of passing any \"I\'m an emulator on a PS3\" identifier to the software it\'s running. I think the only way software might be able to \"figure out\" if it\'s on the PS3 would be to test an operation known to return different results on a PS3 vs. a PSP--i.e., look for a bug in the PS3\'s emulator.\" Yeah, I\'m not sure if it\'s practical from a programming standpoint without Sony having planned for that contingency in their PSP Mini framework. And even if there was a way to accomplish it, like you said, it\'s safe to say Sony wouldn\'t officially support it. But I sure wish they could\'ve taken advantage of the right analog stick. \"By the way, Alpha Mission was a part of the Vol. 0 collection, under its Japanese \"A.S.O.\" name.\" I actually imported the PSP collection, but somehow, I guess I must\'ve never tried that game. I thought it was fresh content when I downloaded the Mini release. Oh well, being able to play it via my PS3 still made it worth the $2.99. Been buying all of these so far, despite most of them duplicating Volume 0\'s lineup. From what u have stated, I presume that it is safe to assume that u have a copy of Data East Arcade Classics on the Wii? If so, how is it, & what kind of extras does it boast? For bonuses, it has the standard fare. Sales flyers and the like. The game basically has an achievement system and each time you meet the requirements for one of them, you unlock the corresponding piece of bonus content. It\'s a well done collection. My biggest gripes are with the 4 games I primarily bought the collection for. The 4 early 1980\'s releases all have glaring audio issues (Bump \'n\' Jump/Burnin\' Rubber, Lock \'n\' Chase, Express Raider, and Burgertime). But thanks to their improved PSP Mini releases of the first three games, that problem isn\'t so significant now. There are other minor issues here and there (Magical Drop 3 had some minor issues mentioned by fans, as I recall), but short of being a diehard fan, you aren\'t likely to notice anything except the audio issues with the earliest games in the collection. The more recent games all seemed perfect to me, although I initially thought Heavy Barrel was off a bit after comparing it with YouTube videos where the game seemed faster. But apparantly MAME runs Heavy Barrel faster than the actual coinop hardware did. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember If it wasn\'t for these SNK releases and the three Data East releases, I\'d only own 1 or 2 Minis Are there any particular genres for which you\'d be interested in Minis recommendations? In the way of retro-feel side-scrolling shooters, for example, I can certainly recommend Flying Hamster and Ace Armstrong vs. the Alien Scumbags!. Also, we in this forum just recently gave out community-voted Minis awards (see earlier threads for the actual voting and nominations). That\'s an excellent point, but they were able to impliment an analog version of that on Data East Arcade Classics for the Wii for Heavy Barrel (Also by G1M2), a game that used the exact same joystick as the SNK games in question. You\'ve got me there. I\'d recommend contacting G1M2 through their website contact page, but they never responded to me that one time I used it myself for some other question. They don\'t seem to say much on their Facebook page, either, and their Twitter account is unused. I actually imported the PSP collection Which of the shooters in Vol. 0 would you say is the best one? But apparantly MAME runs Heavy Barrel faster than the actual coinop hardware did. Hmm, interesting. It\'s disappointing when an emulator, especially a widely used emulator, has noticeable inaccuracies, (the messed-up sound in AtGames\' Genesis plug-n-play emulators immediately comes to mind). Jeff Vavasour and his crew at Code Mystics (former Digital Eclipse staff) also had to trim some sound capabilities in their emulation of some Taito games on the recent Taito plug-n-play. At least in the case of MAME, it\'s continually updated, so the bugs may be fixed someday. That\'s also an advantage the SNK Minis would have over the Vol. 0UMD release--except that SNK Playmore would have to decide to spend money to do that. I\'m not sure they would (I\'m talking about the possibility of expanding the control options for games like Ikari Warriors). POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember I\'m pretty much a fan of every genre. About the only ones that don\'t particularly interest me are Japanese RPGs, online RPGs (Never played one, but I\'m confident they\'re not for me), puzzle games, sports (Although I enjoy the occasional game), and fighters such as Street Fighter II. I think all I\'ve played for original attempts on this service was that overhead GTA clone (I\'d of bought Pac-Man Championship Edition if I didn\'t own it for the 360 already, great game). As for my favorite shooter in this collection, that\'s a tough one. I haven\'t spent much time with Alpha Mission yet (I played the sequel a lot, but never saw the original in arcades) so my opinion might change as I spend more time with it (It seems impressive so far). But I really like both HAL 21 and Bermuda Triangle, with the latter holding the advantage. If the original Vanguard had been included (I\'m so glad that was released as a Mini), I\'d pick that one. I sure wish I could have decent controls so I could enjoy things like Guerrilla War and the Ikari Warriors trilogy. I love games like Commando, but having to use the shoulder buttons to aim kills these games for me. Guess I\'m left hoping for a console release (The Wii would be perfect with GCN and Classic Controller support like G1M2\'s Data East Collection had). There used to be a G1M2 employee that was a regular at GameFaqs (Went by the username SegaSwirl) that would often respond to questions and solicit feedback, but I haven\'t seen him post in months. As I recall, he didn\'t quite grasp what I was getting at for my suggestion on the implimentation of the controls for the LS30 games (Unless you played dual stick games like Robotron 2084 on a console like the SuperNes or PSOne, it\'s probably easy to not quite understand what the person is trying to get across when talking about using the 4 face buttons on the PSP or PS3 controller to aim with). Lastly, I wouldn\'t be surprised if Heavy Barrel was already fixed on MAME. Hopefully it stays fixed if that\'s the case (It almost seems at times like every step forward they take, they take two back, something I guess that is virtually unavoidable with scope of a program like MAME). POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Heh, that\'s actually a fair number of genres not played. Come to think of it, I think I\'ve said something similar before myself, \"I like a wide variety of kinds of games, but oh, I don\'t go for this, that, the other, that one, this one, too, . . . .\" Anyway, the award winners in the thread I referenced, along with the nominations, are a good place to start; refer to the site\'s reviews for what looks interesting. But I really like both HAL 21 and Bermuda Triangle, with the latter holding the advantage. And of course it would be the only one that is so far not released and not announced for release as a Mini. That\'s how it goes. having to use the shoulder buttons to aim kills these games for me. Have you tried remapping the rotation to other buttons? Sure, it\'s not the ideal solution, but maybe it would help somewhat. I was thinking Square and Triangle for rotation, with guns/grenades on the shoulder buttons. It almost seems at times like every step forward they take, they take two back It took me forever to find ROMs compatible with the current version of MAME to participate in an arcade high score club tournament at AtariAge (under the Coin-Op subforum) recently. Something about certain images having been removed from the base engine so that they now need to be in the individual title packages. I was amused last night to discover that Psycho Soldier had 16 straight 5-star user ratings in the PS Store, while Victory Road had 19 straight 5-star ratings. Those SNK fans are a like-minded bunch. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember I think I could learn to like fighters a lot more if I had a friend that also wasn\'t a big fan of fighters and I didn\'t have to fight the AI (Sadly, being an adult really limits those possibilities). And learning specific moves and such is just a pure turn-off. I\'ve had a few fun times over the years, such as with Sonic the Fighters with a friend on Sonic Gems Collection one day years ago, I enjoy beat em\' ups or brawlers or whatever you care to call them. Things like Streets of Rage seem much more tailored for a single player experience without a lot of committment like 20 years of evolution with Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat requires to get the most out of them. I can get into the occasional game, though. The Paper Mario series, for instance, is basically a JRPG, I believe. But yet, I love it. Someday I\'ll try to get into them (The Phantasy Star series and its reputation has always been where I thought I\'d try to start out, but I never get very far past the title screen when I\'ve tried them). And there have been several sports games over the years that drew me in. And a few puzzle games. But in general, they\'re my least favorite areas of gaming. If MAME ever reaches the level of something like modern NES emulation (Roms used to be patched and hacked to run on earlier NES emulators back in the 90\'s) and 2600 emulation, where the game code is unchanged and you don\'t ever need a new romset specific to a certain build of an emulator everytime MAME gets updated, it will be amazing. I\'ll try the button remapping. I might just have to get it stuck out of my craw and just try to enjoy them. I\'ll able to enjoy something like Marble Madness without a trackball, Tempest without a spinner, or Super Sprint without a free spinning wheel, even though a gamepad is the inferior way to play all three and doesn\'t allow me to be nearly as good as I am with the correct hardware. But so far, when I fire one up, I just think about how I\'d of rather seen it implimented. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Since we are well on our way to having the bulk of the pre NeoGeo SNK lineup available, has anyone thought about what games they would like to see released from what is left? Here is a listing of SNK arcade games (Note that NeoGeo content starts with the first release from 1990 in this list). The missing games, excluding Safari Rally and the rest of SNK Arcade Classics 0 that I believe we can be optimistic of making their way out eventually, are listed below (Hopefully nothing is missing from this list, were there any non NeoGeo releases after 1989?). Satan Of Saturn Lasso Joyful Road Mad Crasher Jumping Cross Gladiator Main Event World Wars Time Soliders Lee Trevino Fighting Golf (Licensing issues?) Chopper I Mechanized Attack Paddle Mania Touchdown Fever II Fighting Soccer Sky Soldiers The Next Space Sky Adventure The ones that intrigue me the most that I have never played would be Satan Of Saturn, Lasso, Gladiator, Time Soliders, and World Wars. Of the ones that I have played, I am hoping that Chopper I, Mechanized Attack (Will be hurt without the gun, but that cannot be helped), Sky Soldiers, and Sky Adventure get released. Of course, I am pulling for the unprecedented and I am hoping we will all be here a year from now amazed that their entire late 1970s and 1980s catalog of coinops has been made available. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # FreelanceMember YAY! Prehistoric Isle is coming this week! It\'s been confirmed in the Drop! Happpppy. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Atariboy, I have honestly never heard of any of the games in that list. Thinking back, I don\'t think I knew of any SNK arcade games back in the day at all until the NeoGeo machines became fairly common. Granted, I didn\'t hang out at arcades much. Still, I get the feeling those titles in the list would all fall under the \"obscure\" heading. Freelance, considering The Drop\'s less than stellar accuracy sometimes, I\'ll hold off on celebrating until I actually see it in the Store. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # FreelanceMember Nooo don\'t jinx it! I want it in time for Christmas and crap!!! POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember I agree 100% that they are obscure for the most part (Although NES gamers might recognize Mechanized Attack). When you get right down to it, most of their library was just that at the time beyond a few exceptions such as Vanguard (Partly remembered for the 2600/5200 ports) and the Ikari Warriors trilogy (Also helped by some popular console conversions). I should have linked each game to their KLOV entry and added a gameplay video of each so people could check out some of them and see what possibly might be in the pipeline for future releases. But with MAME emulation over the years (Where I have played most of their games) and their huge increase in popularity during the NeoGeo era, I bet quite a few classic gamers that have a fondness towards arcade gaming that also like SNK have done some digging to try out various games via emulation from their early years. Or at least I have. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember I picked up Prehistoric Isle in 1930 last night and played through to the end (thank you, infinite continues). Lots of fun! The gimmick in this one is the secondary weapon, the pod that can be positioned at any of 8 points around your ship (45 degrees between each), which fires differently depending on where it\'s stationed. The only real issue is that it can only be moved clockwise. The level design is pretty good, with the occasional vertical scrolling section, and the boss fights are interesting and varied (there is, unfortunately, one boss whose lethal grab maneuver is pretty much impossible to avoid if you have no speed-up power-ups--which is a very likely condition to be in while fighting him; as Freelance noted in the Drop thread, you lose all power-ups upon death). Beating the final boss gives you a million-point bonus, and since your score resets when you continue, I ended up with a million points exactly as my high score. . . . Overall, a fun side-scrolling shooter with unorthodox visuals for the genre. I wouldn\'t say it\'s near the league of the genre greats, but it stands on its own and distinguishes itself just fine. Among the SNK Minis, it\'s my favorite so far. Minor spoiler: I\'m not sure, but I think the game\'s ending shows you getting killed. So, your mission was a failure after all. Here\'s hoping Bermuda Triangle also gets Mini-fied! Strange that Prehistoric Isle also takes place in the Bermuda Triangle. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember gonna give POW a shot, reminds me of Contra, but this ones gonna have infinite continues... POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # FreelanceMember I oddly agree with all your modes, onmode-ky. The boss with instant grab is annoying. You\'re way too slow to avoid getting chomped on, and it\'s a 1 hit kill too. Being able to turn the pod counter-clockwise would\'ve been a big help, Spoilers Yes I too was confused at the ending. It may appear that you did die but there were two biplanes who went to the island so maybe the other plane crashed and not you specifically. If you did die, I can\'t think of many games in which you actually die. I can only name one other game at this point. End spoilers Those cavemen were annoying but luckily they\'re easily deposed of. Prehistoric Isle 2 looks even better but I doubt that will be a Mini. P.S. Never heard of Bermuda Triangle so I checked it and I want it now. I luvs vertical shooters. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # FreelanceMember $sniper712, P.O.W. is a beat-em-up ala Final Fight though, so it\'s nothing like Contra if you were looking for the same type of game. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember I oddly agree with all your modes Hmm. I\'m going to assume that was supposed to be \"notes.\" ###SPOILER ALERT### there were two biplanes who went to the island so maybe the other plane crashed and not you specifically Actually, both biplanes made it back to their mother plane. That guy then says his bit about having to report back to our country, and then we see the mother plane getting attacked and destroyed--but this is shown as an overlay where the background is still the view looking into the plane\'s window where the guy was saying his bit. Was that a second mother plane that blew up, reflected in the window? Or maybe this was just an animation error (i.e., they forgot to change the background image to blue sky before showing the mother plane blowing up). ###END SPOILER### Prehistoric Isle 2, if it gets released on PSN, will be part of NeoGeo Station (it\'s a NeoGeo game). Maybe the fact that Prehistoric Isle in 1930 was released without the \"in 1930\" part of its title is an indicator that SNK is planning to release the sequel, intending for it to be more obvious that it\'s a sequel to this game. As for Bermuda Triangle, I know just about zilch about it. There seems to be no good video footage online of the game. In the SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 0 trailer, it\'s just mentioned as [Japanese] text. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # G1M2Member Hi guys, Sorry that we have been below the radar / on the quiet side lately. We really appreciate all of your feedback and input and there will be more Minis coming to PSN. The list of obscure SNK titles is interesting - it would be cool to see more people\'s opinions on which games from that list would be the most appealing!!! POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Are you SegaSwirl from over at GameFaqs/GameSpot? If not, nice to see a small company like G1M2 having two employees interested enough in their work to interact with communities interested in their projects. I suspect the obvious answer to this question can be seen in the large gap since the last release, but any chance of some more Data East PSP Minis? Lots of nice games in G-Modes library that would make for nice Minis. Or is that a closed chapter for G1M2 at this time? I hope we will see all of your guys hard work on these SNK games be released on a disc for a console someday. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember I\'m late with this response, but G1M2, might you have any answer for our earlier discussions about implementing the aiming setup of games like Ikari Warriors using the PSP\'s four face buttons (i.e., along the lines of Everyday Shooter) rather than the current two-button rotation controls? As for Atariboy\'s earlier list of remaining SNK pre-NeoGeo arcade titles that haven\'t been Mini-fied, I\'m afraid I\'d have to get back to you after looking up each one. I really know nothing about any of those games right now. Scrolling shooters, though, would automatically catch my eye. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember I was bored, so here is that list updated with the release year, genre type, and a linked video included for each game. Also note that Safari Rally and the remaining games from SNK Arcade Classics Volume 0 are not listed here due to assuming that they are already planned for release. Satan of Saturn (1981) - Space (Looks fun)Lasso (1982) - Skill (Note that the video is incorrectly stretching a vertically oriented arcade game to 16:9. Looks like a fun game)Joyful Road (1983) - DrivingMad Crasher (1984) - RacingJumping Cross (1984) - RacingGladiator (1984) - Racing (Looks like a fun game)Main Event (1984) - BoxingWorld Wars (1987) - Shooter (I could not locate video of this game so I linked a screenshot instead)Time Soldiers (1987) - Overhead shooter (Note that this is a vertically oriented game but the video is incorrectly stretched to a 4:3 aspect ratio. Used an LS30 rotary joystick and looks to be fun. Unsure if this is SNK owned or if they just distributed it for Romstar, its KLOV entry is not clear on which of the two that actually owns it)Lee Trevino Fighting Golf (1988) - (Could not find video so I linked a screenshot. Recieved positive reception when ported to the NES. Also note that it might have potential licensing issues unless they excise the tie in with whoever Lee Trevino is)Chopper I (1988) - Vertically Scrooling Shooter (Great game that I would love to see come home)Mechanized Attack (1988) - Lightgun Shooter (Was ported to the NES. Fond memories of this game and would like to see it be included in this program even with the obvious control limitations that will be present)Paddle Mania (1988) - Sports (Could not locate video so linked the only screen image KLOV has. It contains various paddle games and I do not know much more than that)Touchdown Fever II (1988) - Football (Could not locate video, but linked a video of the first Touchdown Fever which is on SNK Arcade Classics Volume 0. Looks to be just a minor update of the original)Fighting Soccer (1988) - Soccer (Could not locate video, linked a screenshot)Sky Soldiers (1988) Vertically Scrooling Shooter (Great game)The Next Space (1989) - Vertically Scrooling Shooter (Never paid any attention to this until now, looks like fun)Sky Adventure (1989) - Vertically Scrooling Shooter (Good game) The games that I think you would personally be most interested in, onmode-ky, would be the 4 vertical shooters (Chopper I, Sky Soldiers, The Next Space, and Sky Adventure). POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember man... Atariboy has gone all out on enlightening us with so many SNK stuff, i m still keeping my fingers crossed for the day we get NGP games, and the recent additions are great as well, POW plays like a good beat em up. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember I see I screwed up and linked the KLOV entry for Sky Soldiers (Was using KLOV to locate release years) instead of the YouTube video I had planned to link. Too late to edit that in, so here is the video of Sky Soldiers. Probably one of the most interesting games from this group of candidates. Edit - Time Soldiers does belong to SNK. It was developed by Alpha Denshi, which is owned by SNK. Romstar was a North American arm of SNK and published some SNK arcade games here along with licensed arcade games from other companies. Gold Medalist was the same deal and has already appeared in SNK Arcade Classics Volume 0. And Sky Soldiers is also an Alpha Denshi developed game published by Romstar in North America. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AlfredMember Hello G1M2, I don\'t have any names. But i would like you to do more STG\'s (Japanese Shooting Games) please. Keep up the good work. Thank you. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember I think I am talking too much in this thread, so I will let some other people get a word in after this post :). But here are some better screenshots of World Wars. I had never played this nor had I ever seen video of it until tonight, although I was intrigued by the name so I listed it as a game I was interested in on the previous page. It is a nice vertically scrolling shooter running on the same hardware as Bermuda Triangle. Would be nice to see it get its day in the sun from G1M2. Here is a couple of screenshots from System 16 (The one I listed earlier from KLOV kind of stunk). They are of decent quality, although the aspect ratio is weird (It is like the person taking these screenshots was stretching the game sideways to fill their 16:10 monitor, making the game look like its 10:16 when rotated 90 degrees instead of 3:4 like it should be. And here is a magazine review of Bermuda Triangle from back in the day. Nice game that has sucked several hours of my life so far on SNK Arcade Classics Volume 0. http://www.solvalou.com/subpage/arcade_reviews/23/46/bermuda_triangle_review.html POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember Shooters really seem to hold up better than other old arcade games. Though I did like Marvin\'s Maze. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember I\'ll have to come back to this topic later to review all those resources, but thanks a bunch, Atariboy! I hope you didn\'t forget to eat while assembling all that data. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember It did not require much effort, perhaps 30 minutes at the most. I always enjoy looking at videos of 1980s arcade games, so it was a fun way to spend 30 minutes online gathering that information. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # raing3Member Just realized the ones which were previously unavailable on the Australian store are now there. I guess my feedback was heard, great work G1M2! EDIT: Athena, HAL 21, Marvin\'s Maze, Vanguard, Sasuke vs Commander are now available which is great. Ozma Wars and Ikari Warriors are still missing though which have been released in other EU region stores, maybe they can also be released on the Australian/other missed EU stores? POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Bermuda Triangle sure is a weird game. The weirdest thing is probably the scrolling forward, then backward, then forward again thing; seems like an obvious cost-saving method to lengthen the game without having to spend more resources on art assets. Also, like Prehistoric Isle in 1930, it runs noticeably faster on the PS3 versus on the PSP (in this case, not quite as much of a difference, but if you start both games simultaneously, you can easily see the PS3 runs the game more quickly). I\'m a little surprised that the PSP actually has a bit of a hard time running these 80s arcade games. Are their chips/code really that CPU-intensive to emulate? Another reason Bermuda Triangle is more properly played on a PS3 rather than a PSP: the screen\'s aspect ratio is extremely tall. I didn\'t really look that closely, but it might be a rotated standard widescreen, i.e., 9:16, but maybe even skinnier. You almost have to play the game with the screen in \"stretched\" mode (to fit the whole screen onto the PSP screen), because the normal, pixel-to-pixel match mode cuts huge chunks off the top and bottom of the playfield. This is definitely a game that would have benefited from being able to be played with the PSP held vertically, game screen rotated 90 degrees. However, scrunching the playfield to fit into the top and bottom of the PSP screen is the only option you get here, and it results in really tiny graphics. The effect is somewhat mitigated if you use a PS3 and a TV, though it\'s still distorted due to being an upscale of already scrunched graphics. Anyway, kind of fun, but I can\'t get very far into the game; losing your last life ends the game with no Continue option. Sure, there is save-state capability in this emulation, but with the amount of damage you\'re constantly taking as the game progresses, it kind of doesn\'t help a whole lot. Atariboy, how well do you do in this game? You said it was your favorite of the SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 0 shooters. On Normal difficulty with 3 lives, my best run got to just before the second stage boss. Oh, fun bit of trivia: the little \"shield\" planes you assemble around your ship are SYD fighters, presumably the same craft as the player ship in SNK\'s earlier vertically scrolling shooter Alpha Mission/A.S.O. (also a Mini). POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # FreelanceMember Yes the game is weird but you can \'add\' credits the same way like in Prehistoric isle and get more lives. Maybe that\'s why I did so poorly in the game with lots of screen chunks being taken out. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Yes the game is weird but you can \'add\' credits the same way like in Prehistoric isle and get more lives. I\'m not sure what you mean. When I played the game last night, putting in more virtual coins did not result in a continued game with a fresh set of lives, just a new game starting from the beginning. Is that not what you\'re talking about? I tried the game again on the PS3, Easy difficulty, 5 lives at start--and got to the second stage boss but couldn\'t kill him. I don\'t know how you\'re supposed to avoid those spreads of bombs he shoots out. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # FreelanceMember I just tested it and you\'re right. What\'s the point of letting you add more credits then? POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Bermuda Triangle is a vertically oriented game which means it should be 3:4. Anyways, so I fired up World Wars again in MAME last night only to discover it was the same game as Bermuda Triangle. Perhaps it was the Japanese name for the game? Taking a close look at the screenshots I posted earlier clearly shows that they also belong to Bermuda Triangle. I wonder what game I loaded up by mistake apparantly in MAME a while back then since I was having fun with it. I assume this release allows you to put more credits in since there is no reason not to let you. Even games that did not let you continue where you left off typically would recognize that you inserted another quarter giving you another credit so you can just hit the start button when your current game ends. No reason to disable that function of the game just because you cannot start off where your last game ended. Remember that this is a emulation of arcade code. I believe my best run was up to the 3rd boss, which I believe would be my 9th trip through (You go through the level three times to reach the boss as I recall). Have never been particularly great at vertical or horizontal shooters even though I love them (Although I can finish River Raid on the 2600, but usually my skills are mediocre which is one reason I never got into most modern efforts in todays bullet hell era of shooters). I suspect you should be able to surpass that with a bit more time with it. Kind of disappointed you did not like it more since I played it up a bit earlier in this thread. Hope it grows on you some. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember According to System16, World Wars and Bermuda Triangle are the same game. If the former is the Japanese name, then I\'m not sure how to reconcile the fact that the SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 0 trailer wrote the title as \"Bermuda Triangle\" in katakana. Perhaps a usable ROM image of the World Wars version of the game could not be found, so they went with the Western version? Which, of course, only has the Western name in it. Also, based on the screen caps at the System16 page, the game screen aspect ratio is 224:384, which is slightly less skinny than 9:16. Man, if 224 x 384 is the actual resolution of the game, that means the emulation in Normal display mode cuts off 56 lines from each of the top and bottom of the screen to show 272 lines on the PSP, nearly 30% cut out. Rotating the screen would have let it fit entirely. I\'ll see if I can use a save state to figure out how to survive the second stage boss. Maybe I should try reassigning the turret rotation buttons, too. I do have a hard time turning that turret, as it seems like you have to hold the button down for longer than just a tap in order for it to register--but not too long, or then it turns way too much. The \"auto aim\" mode (shoots in your direction of movement) is not so helpful, too. I started a topic for this title in the High Scores subforum, by the way. If you\'ve reached the third boss, I\'m sure your top score beats my current high. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Maybe World Wars was a European name? Many of the screenshots at that website are terribly off in regards to the aspect ratio. I suspect someone was playing the game in MAME in TATE mode full screen on a 16:10 monitor, giving the screenshot a 10:16 appearance when rotated 90 degrees (The screenshots at KLOV are the same way). The monitor is a standard 4:3 monitor rotated 90 degrees when you see pictures of the cabinet or check documentation for the game (And the KLOV entry states it is a standard vertical raster monitor). Not even sure they were building raster monitors with a different aspect ratio back then. Here is video of the game with its correct 3:4 AR. Interestingly, according to the manual, you can insert credits for more ships (Called Zigs) up to 10 credits worth (30 ships). Guess G1M2 must have selected DIP switch settings that did not allow that. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember Well, going by the screenshots that SNK released for Bermuda Triangle, the playing field has a ratio of 1.76, which is pretty close to 9:16\'s 1.7777. I get stuck at that boss, too. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember I have a new theory regarding the aspect ratio of the game. While trying to determine whether 224 x 384 were a common arcade aspect ratio, I discovered that Capcom\'s 1941 was a 224 x 384 game. However, when played \"normally,\" that game doesn\'t look 9:16, or anywhere close. Might it be possible that 1941 and Bermuda Triangleare both 224 x 384 games where the pixels on their original raster displays are not squares? Thus, Bermuda Triangleisn\'t supposed to look super-tall, but it does on the PSP because the PSP uses square pixels. Does MAME account for original pixel shape in displaying games? That is, does it rescale the screen image dimensions to fit the proper aspect ratio--come to think of it, it must, because I think it always displays full screen (with appropriate sidebars or letterboxing) even for games whose native resolution is much smaller than a PC display. I guess that\'s not part of G1M2\'s emulation engine. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember Hmmm, looking at the screenshot of the game in that magazine review, it certainly seems to be more normal looking, with a ratio of 1.4 or so. Maybe more than 3:4, but not much. http://www.solvalou.com/subpage/arcade_reviews/23/46/bermuda_triangle_review.html POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Pasting the shot of Bermuda Triangle from that scan into MS Paint and checking coordinates and doing the math shows that screen to be 3:4 (.75) just like God and SNK intended 25 years ago. Doing some searches just now makes me think that onmodes theories are likely correct in regards to the pixel proportions of a PSP screen causing issues here. And emulators using pixel perfect settings (1:1) will distort a 224 x 384 arcade game since they were intended to be displayed stretched to fill a standard 4:3 arcade monitor oriented vertically. I have little doubt this SNK game is in the same situation. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember I wonder if G1M2 not rescaling the image for original aspect ratio was a design choice or an oversight. Since the game can be played rescaled to fit into the confines of the PSP screen (and unfortunately maintaining square-pixel aspect ratio), I\'d guess the latter, rather than some performance impact consideration. I went back and retried Bermuda Triangle on my PS3 (Easy/5 lives), putting a save state at the start of the second stage boss fight. After repeatedly dying and reloading, I eventually figured out that if you\'re moving away from the boss as the spread bombs approach, they won\'t actually hit you. Instead, they\'ll stop where you were, wait for a half second or so, and then detonate with a small radius of splash damage. So, it seems that the key here is to move toward and away from the boss in rhythm with the launching of these bombs. Continuing with the save state stuff, I managed to reach the fifth stage before I simply couldn\'t go any further. The Stage 3 and 4 bosses are both easier to deal with than the Stage 2 boss, strangely enough. After that Game Over, I played through again without using the save state, and lo and behold, I made it to the start of Stage 4 (and a score just over 150,000) before losing my last life. Kind of anticlimactic that my last ship died from little bullets shot by tiny little WW2 fighter planes, though. Incidentally, the latest NA PS Blog post for PS+, discussing February\'s perks, says Gold Medalist will be free for PS+ alongside Laughing Jackal\'s Hungry Giraffe on February 7th. Then, S.A.R - Search and Rescue will be coming, with a 20%-off PS+ discount, on February 21st. Looks like Safari Rally is still MIA. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember I suspected you would surpass my performance pretty quick. I wonder what the deal is with Safari Rally. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Well, I got that far with the starting lives count set to 5. I\'d assumed the progress you were talking about was with the initial game settings--which I haven\'t actually tried, Easy and 3 lives. I\'ve done Normal and 3 for \"tournament play\" (i.e., for the High Scores topic), and I\'ve done Easy and 5 for just trying to get as far as possible. I hate the end of Stage 3\'s backward scrolling. It seems like there\'s no way to avoid getting shot by that stupid fortress thing waiting at the bottom of the screen, and then by his buddy who later comes in from the top of the screen. This was where my best run at Normal and 3 lives ended. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Atariboy, in case you don\'t check the main blog, JeremyR\'s review of Bermuda Triangle is up now. I\'ve made some minor edits and added a comment. I just watched part of that YouTube video of Sky Soldiers gameplay. I don\'t get that guy\'s playing style. Why does he keep ceasing fire? He\'d get a lot more kills, as well as far fewer enemy bullets on screen to avoid, if he would simply continuously fire. The way he was playing, enemies were appearing, spreading out, and throwing lots of bullets at him before he got them, if he got them. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Hate it when I misspell something and then repeat it multiple times when I copy/paste, only to discover it weeks later after everyone has probably noticed it and it is too late to fix it (I see on that list of games on the previous page that I spelled scrolling as scrooling multiple times as I listed the genre for each game). Anyways, nice to see the news that Search and Rescue has been rated by the ESRB. This thread was getting too quiet. And Touchdown Fever was recently released. If I am not mistaken, this will leave just Ikari III and Super Champion Baseball unreleased for games that were on SNK Arcade Classics 0. Once we get Ikari III, I suspect most people will be pleased and satisfied (I doubt very many get excited over old arcade sports games). So I hope they have a few more surprises up their sleeves like Ozma Wars and Vanguard down the road. Since these seem to have been released in pairs after the initial batch (Unless a sports game, in which case they seem to recognize fewer are interested so they try to not divert away what little attention there is by releasing a second game alongside it), I wonder if the already reviewed Safari Rally will finally make its way out along with it. Importing SNK Arcade Classics 0 is just about a moot point at this stage for those that are on the fence on importing it eventually. Even for the gamer that prefers physical releases (Such as myself), the cross compatibility with the PS3 that these Minis feature makes it an easy decision I would think. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember I see on that list of games on the previous page that I spelled scrolling as scrooling multiple times as I listed the genre for each game I thought maybe you were just *ahem* scrooling around. If I am not mistaken, this will leave just Ikari III and Super Champion Baseball unreleased for games that were on SNK Arcade Classics 0. Hehe, I said pretty much the same thing when I commented in the post about SAR on the main blog. Guess I was right--unless we both miscounted. I wonder if the already reviewed Safari Rally will finally make its way out along with it. Not sure what you mean here. Safari Rally has not been reviewed and has also not been rated by the ESRB. Importing SNK Arcade Classics 0 is just about a moot point at this stage I had decided not to import it long ago because it just cost too much for a collection of games I was mostly not very interested in. Retro arcade collections typically do catch my eye, but I\'m not familiar with much of SNK\'s catalog. If the collection had come out on North American PSN for $20, I\'d have gotten it; at this point, though, since I\'ve bought all the games that I would have wanted, and for less than $20 total, I\'m quite satisfied with the Minis release. The PS3 playability is certainly a bonus, too, particularly for those games that play too slowly on the PSP. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Sorry about that, I just assumed it had been rated by the ESRB since it seemed so close to release a while back. My theory was wrong anyways after checking just now (They released Street Smart by itself without it being a sports game and Gold Medalist released alongside Bermuda Triangle). Have you bothered with any of the sports games? Having imported the PSP collection and not being a big sports fan to start with, I passed on buying these. I just cannot get into games like these old SNK sports releases (Or similar games like Street Hoop on Data East Arcade Classics on the Wii). Nice to see any old arcade game see a rerelease, but I skipped these examples just the same (Have purchased all the other SNK Minis though). I usually can be counted on buying it if it is an arcade game from the 1970s or 1980s. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember I actually have next to no interest at all in sports games, so I didn\'t even consider getting any of the SNK sports releases. The only SNK Minis I bought were the shooters, not including the run \'n guns. Many years ago, I would have said I\'d buy any retro game collection, but I eventually drew the line at games I really didn\'t think were my kind of game (e.g., Sonic collections, Mega Man collections). I once bought Konami\'s PC set of NES Castlevania and Contra games and pretty much never played it after trying it out once. After that, I never considered the Tecmo and Data East collections because they had very little of interest to me (I also didn\'t own those consoles), and the many SNK collections mostly contained fighters, so I only got the Metal Slug one. I guess I don\'t have a true collector mentality about these things after all. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember better to play what you like than suffer through games that dont work for ya. hope for some last blade cause we really need it. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Forgot to say that I skipped over Street Smart as well (In addition to the sports games). Only bought the other games. Some old sports games I cannot even figure out when I try (I am clueless with Sensible World of Soccer, for instance, wish I had skipped that on XBLA). I bought the various Sonic and Mega Man collections, although I must admit that I am still not that huge of a Mega Man fan (And much prefer the Mario line of platformers to Sonic). Hoping someday to start investing a lot of time into Mega Man Anniversary Collection and Mega Man X Collection and hopefully have it click finally (Also have Mega Man 9 and 10 on my Wii that have largely been untouched). The only classic compilations I have passed on in the console world have been that horrible Sega produced Genesis collection of Atari coinops (Believe it had Missile Command, Centipede, and Pong), Activision Classics and Intellivision Classics on the PSOne since I heard the emulation was very poor, and the various Capcom and SNK fighter compilations (Only bought the two Capcom Classics Collections and SNK Arcade Classics 0 & 1 and Metal Slug Anthology, no interest in old fighters). I believe I have pretty much everything else, including some Japanese and European exclusives like the Saturn collection of MSX games that Japan got and Space Invaders Anniversary Collection that Europe got for the PS2. And most of handheld compilations. Just a few PC collections though (Got Activision ones for the C64 and Colecovision from Telegames, the Intellivision collections, and Atari 80 Games in One which became Atari Anthology when released on consoles). Tecmo Classic Arcade was pretty barebones and I think was $10 more than other compilations at the time, but I enjoyed several of the games like Solomons Key so I was glad in the end to get it even if it was pretty thin on games for the money compared to things like Atari Anthology and Midway Arcade Treasures. And Data East Arcade Classics on the Wii has a lot of great games I thought, including Heavy Barrel which is a lot like the Ikari Warriors games and may of be interest to some of you (Although I bought it for Bump n Jump primarily). Sort of surprised you skipped that one since it seemed to have good variety (Although nothing I can recall for vertical or horizontal shooters, which was a shame). About the only arcade rereleases I have skipped on have been many of the downloadable ones in recent years. Much of the content of interest was stuff I already have in physical form in earlier compilations or was material that was of no interest to me (The rereleases of the Konami X-Men and Simpsons games, most of the Neo Geo downloads, etc). POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember All my retro game compilations are for PC, PS2, or PSP, except for Sonic\'s Ultimate Genesis Collection and, if it counts, Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection on PS3 (interestingly enough, I also have the PS2 equivalents of both those titles). So yes, this means I don\'t have any of the Namco Museum volumes that have the more obscure titles, i.e., the PS1 volumes. Space Invaders Anniversary Collection that Europe got for the PS2 What\'s in that, just all the Space Invaders arcade releases? I\'ve often wondered why Taito never released a just-Darius compilation. Sure, the first 2 games were triple-wide or double-wide, but they had single-screen ports anyway. PC collections I have Atari: 80 Classic Games in One! as well and really liked it, but I returned my purchase of Activision Anthologybefore even opening it. As I recall, the game had some requirement I didn\'t think my system fulfilled at the time, maybe some Direct3D something-or-other (ironic that that would make me unable to play games that originally ran on 128 bytes of RAM). There was also the fact that I decided I wasn\'t a big enough 2600 fan. . . . For Intellivision, I have a 25-game PC set (not Intellivision Lives or Rocks, but rather Greatest Hits). Playing all of those led me to the conclusion that I would not have been a big Intellivision fan, either. I think the game I enjoyed the most was B-17 Bomber. Tecmo Classic Arcade was pretty barebones and I think was $10 more than other compilations at the time Hehe, yes, I remember it being priced at $30 on release while having fewer games (not to mention fewer \"marquis\" games) than every other contemporary retro compilation. It was almost as bizarre a marketing decision as that time in 2004 when Majesco released a Frogger-only plug-n-play system as well as a 6-game Konami plug-n-play compilation that included Frogger--at the same time and for the same price! Sort of surprised you skipped that one Well, keep in mind that I don\'t have a Wii, anyway. I do have a small handful of Wii games (parents and sister have Wiis I can use when visiting), but not having my own system does factor into purchase decisions. The Data East set also had almost nothing I recognized except Burgertime, which I\'ve still never played before. Those two factors added together to result in a non-purchase decision. I almost bought a new PS2 copy of SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 1 for $5 once, but I decided that Last Resort, the only game in the whole set that had my interest, was not worth it for me to have to reorganize my entire PS2 collection (those shelves are all full). Probably my most \"unique\" compilation is Galaxy Fraulein Yuna Collection for the PSP, one of Hudson\'s \"PC Engine Best Collection\" series. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember SNK Arcade Classics Volume 1 had some pretty serious emulation issues on the PS2. They were not so obvious to me since I was never a huge Neo Geo fan, but they became obvious when I bought the Wii version after hearing it was much better done. So you did not miss much, especially if you have memories of how that game was supposed to run. If you own Taito Legends 1 and 2 on the PS2 (Have to imagine you have both of those), there is little reason to get it. It has a few more options for Space Invaders and Part II (Cocktail and upright modes, for instance), but is not worth bothering to import it over. Only own it since it was a few Euros at a GameStop over there and it was a classic compilation, so I could not resist bringing it home with me. I love B-17 Bomber. That game, the biplanes mode on Triple Action, and Thin Ice (Would have made an excellent arcade game) are my favorite original Mattel efforts. My favorite Intellivision games tended to not be the original efforts from Mattel, but rather things like licensed games from the arcade like Donkey Kong Junior, Burgertime, and Bump n Jump, 3rd party releases from companies like Imagic, etc. Their original games tended to not age well. They are often slow, unituitive, and plain. Hard to imagine anyone getting into their range of sports games these days that were once so popular, for instance. Even basic things like Checkers were often that way. In that game, you have to press two different buttons on the keypad of all things to select a piece and then drop it. Every other version of checkers over the past 30+ years that I have played has used a single action button for both functions. If you happen to be curious about it, two of the best golden era games from Data East that are present on the Wii collection (And also made for great Intellivision games back in the day) are part of this Minis program from the same developer as these SNK games. They are Lock n Chase and Bump n Jump (Released as Burnin Rubber, I think Midway owned the rights to the other name). In fact they run even better as Minis since they had some serious audio issues along with Burgertime on the Wii compilation that were largely fixed here. Between all these Minis from G1M2, those two and Vanguard are easily my favorites of the bunch. Ashame that Burgertime never made it out as a PSP Mini so you could finally give it a go for $3. It is a very good game, although I am not as huge of a fan of it as a lot of people seem to be. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember So you did not miss much, especially if you have memories of how that game was supposed to run. Heh, no such memories; I was interested in the game because it was a side-scrolling shooter I\'d never played before that had a good reputation. What kind of emulation issues were in that PS2 version? Mai Shiranui missing her clothes might be considered by some to be a feature rather than a bug. If you own Taito Legends 1 and 2 on the PS2 (Have to imagine you have both of those) More or less, yes; I have TL2 for the PS2 but TL1 for the PC (TL2 was PS2-exclusive in the US, as I recall--and besides, its exclusive games were more attractive to me than the other versions\' exclusive games). That recent Burgertime topic at AA did seem to conclude that most people liked the Intellivision version the best. I guess I could always try an emulator. I considered getting Lock \'n Chase and Burnin\' Rubber (and Express Raider) when they released as Minis but ultimately decided they weren\'t titles I wanted to play all that much. My favorite of the SNK Minis would have to be Prehistoric Isle in 1930, thanks to the level design variety and the versatile pod. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # ChaosRandomMember @onmode I\'ve been real curious about Prehistoric Isle. Is it that good. I do love me some shooters too. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember One issue stands out in particular for the PS2 version. Shock Troopers, one of the most interesting games of the bunch (For me at least), had horrible slowdown. I would say it was only running at about half speed which is extremely poor. And it would momentarily freeze with alarming frequency. Despite having never played the game, it was obvious even to me that something was terribly off. Many other games had less significant slowdown issues and audio issues were common throughout (Audio not being in synch with the game, missing audio, and audio not sounding correct). And some strange loading issues were present. Seems like I can recall 2 minute load times midgame in Top Hunter, for instance. Thankfully, Shock Troopers at least runs much better on the Wii version and seems to run perfect on PSN (Alpha Mission II as well seems fine, the other Neo Geo PSN download I own). As must be obvious from this thread, my love of arcade games mostly revolves around an earlier era and I clearly have little affection for fighters, so I am far from an expert where the Neo Geo is concerned. But I suspect a Neo Geo fan would be able to come up with dozens of issues related to this collection beyond what I identified. Terminal Reality has an extremely poor reputation and this effort seems par for the course for them (Unlike G1M2 whose NeoGeo compilations, sadly usually focusing on fighters which I have no interest in, have been much better recieved). Makes me surprised that I enjoy their Metal Slug Anthology PS2 effort as much as I do (I hear it was far from perfect, but it was satisfactory enough for me). POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember ChaosRandom, of the shooters in the SNK Minis set, Prehistoric Isle is the one that\'s the most \"developed.\" That is, it has distinctively different levels and memorable, unique boss fights, on top of its particular gameplay gimmick (the multi-position weapon pod that gives you different kinds of fire). The other shooters in the set are \"older school\" in design; even if they are games with an ending, there is a greater feeling of succeeding levels being more difficult versions of previous levels, rather than being markedly different experiences. Of course, there\'s nothing wrong with that, and I still enjoy that style of design, but Isle just feels like more of a fleshed-out experience to me. I would say it was only running at about half speed Prehistoric Isle runs much more slowly on the PSP than the PS3, possibly by that degree. The NeoGeo Station games that you have, which system are they for, PS3 or PSP? With each title being so pricey (in my judgment, anyway), I went for the cheaper, ad-hoc-only PSP version of Alpha Mission II. At the time, I didn\'t think I\'d ever meet anyone with whom I could play PS3 online co-op anyway. There\'s at least one other forum member here with Alpha Mission II--also a PSP copy, so yep, still no possibility for online co-op. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember I bought them on the PS3. I thought they were the same download for each platform (Like a Mini)? Sad to hear that since I was planning to put both of these on a Vita eventually. Was there an option to spend a bit more to have it playable on both a PS3 and a PSP? If so, I hope that was the way I went. Are the TurboGrafx-16 games that are available for both platforms the same way? Bought one of the pinball games (Alien Crush, I believe) and planned to stick that on a Vita eventually as well. Speaking of the TG16, I sure wish they would release more games (They stopped almost immediately after starting). That is one system I have never owned. Between that game and what I have bought off the Virtual Console (Which I tried to purchase as little as I could since they are tied to a single console), I sure missed out I think. And I have barely touched the shooters, a genre it was particularly well known for. I doubt I ever played Prehistoric Isle in arcades. Have you? If not, I wonder if the PS3 is running it twice as fast instead of the PSP only running it at half speed. After all, these were coded for the PSP and are running through a PSP emulator on the PS3 that, last I knew, was not capable enough to be able to even play a couple of the more advanced PSP Minis. So it seems surprising to me if the PS3 is actually running it more faithfully than the PSP. Hopefully you are right though since I have spent most of my time with these on my PS3 instead of my 3000. So if something has to be off on one platform, I would rather it be on the PSP. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember No, NeoGeo Station has separate releases for PS3 and PSP, $9 per game for the former and $7 for the latter. If they had some offer to get both versions of one game for a discount, they never told anyone about it. The PCE/TG16 games are not the same way; one purchase gets you the game playable on both PS3 and PSP. However, their save files are not cross-compatible (technically, the same is true of PS1 Classics downloads, but in that case, the PS3 has the capability to do the format conversion for you). Multiplayer in Alpha Mission II might have been able to help me get further into the game than I\'ve ever been able, but I\'ll never know. I don\'t have high hopes for further TG16 releases on PSN. Now that Hudson Soft is completely shut down (as of yesterday, I might add), it\'s all in Konami\'s hands what they do with those properties. They haven\'t even commented about the shutdown at all, so that\'s not a good sign. Interestingly enough, the other Alpha Mission II owner in this forum besides us (Freelance) is also the only other forum member I know who has a TG16 download--and all 3 of us have Alien Crush and only Alien Crush. What\'s going on? However, both Freelance and I do also have Soldier Collection, the Japanese UMD release that\'s part of Hudson\'s \"PC Engine Best Collecton\" series. That\'s a compilation of 4 PC Engine Star Soldier-series titles, and I have another 3 PC Engine games thanks to one of the other UMDs in that Best series, Galaxy Fraulein Yuna Collection. I\'d never even heard of Prehistoric Isle until it was announced as part of SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 0. However, I think the PS3 is running it at proper speed because the MAME footage I\'ve seen of the game on YouTube runs it at that speed, and I assume that\'s correct. Besides, the game on the PSP does seem slower than it \"should\"--sort of like how you can tell when you\'re watching slow motion footage of a bird flapping its wings. Just doesn\'t look right. a PSP emulator on the PS3 that, last I knew, was not capable enough to be able to even play a couple of the more advanced PSP Minis Eh? The PS3\'s PSP emulator can play all Minis except a small set, and those in that set are most certainly not among the more advanced Minis. They\'re Tetris, Top Gun, Days of Thunder (the preceding 3 being PSP-only because there are separate PS3-native versions), and Sony Japan\'s half-hearted offerings, which are PSP-only for no good reason; they\'re actually PS3-playable in their EU release. Though the PS3\'s PSP emulator may not support certain PSP features and therefore is restricted to playing only Minis, it\'s still running on a much faster system than the PSP, so certain CPU speed bottlenecks on actual PSP hardware may be nothing at all in the emulator. There is, however, a bottleneck on the PS3 that doesn\'t exist on the PSP: when playing The 2D Adventures of Rotating Octopus Character on the PS3, the game will seem to freeze for a few seconds upon completing a level, which does not happen on the PSP. Based on the Memory Stick access light flashing on the PSP at the time his happens in the game, I think the game code is doing some sort of write operation. So, I think it\'s slower on the PS3 because writing to a hard drive has greater latency than to a flash drive--still, it really shouldn\'t be THAT long, so there\'s probably something messy going on there. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember I assumed (Made that mistake again) that the PSP Minis that could not be played on the PS3 were due to the emulator not being up to the task at hand. Figured that was also why other PSP downloads could not be played on a PS3, which seems like something they would impliment if the emulator was fully up to the task (Wish they would do). I actually would of bought a few more of the handful of TG16 games they released, but I already owned the other ones that interested me on the Wii (Victory Run, an average game at best but I enjoy old sprite scaling racers, Neutopia, and the two shooters). Bought Devils Crush on a whim a while back on the VC, enjoyed it a lot, and then bought Alien Crush on PSN since it was available at that point. I prefer the Sony DRM scheme and the emulator seems a bit better here, so I wish I could have been buying them here all along instead of on the Wii. Do any of you guys own Strikers 1945 Plus on the PSP? Only PSP arcade download I have purchased. Highly recommend it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYFA7mZHPoo POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember I do wonder whether the \"no overclocking\" restriction on Minis is related to the PS3\'s PSP emulator. What\'s better about the PlayStation TG16 emulators compared to the Wii one? Can you compare the NeoGeo emulators, too? I have Strikers 1945 Plus on the PSP. My conclusion after playing it extensively: I should not have spent that $12 that PM Studios charged. The game is on my PC but not on my Memory Stick. Thank goodness I didn\'t spend the fortune to import the UMD. The game just really rubbed me the wrong way. I didn\'t enjoy the gameplay and could not stand the way it randomized the stage order. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember The Virtual Console TG16 emulator seems to produce a soft or fuzzy image via component to my Trinitron (Which beats the washed out colors of the NES VC emulator, at least). The PS3 counterpart seems sharper and clearer in comparison, although I am not sure I ever compared it directly to a VC download on the same tv (I may of only played Alien Crush on my HDTV). So I suppose what I experienced might be a result of some upscaling and other post processing effects the PS3 is doing rather than a superiority of the PS3 TG16 emulator, or maybe Alien Crush just looks particularly nice. Never bought a NeoGeo download off the Virtual Console, although I briefly considered giving Ironclad a go until I watched some videos and developed some doubts. Maybe someday I will give it a try. Ever played the first two Strikers 1945 titles? Not really sure why, but I liked those much more than this (Perhaps because I actually played them in the arcade). Probably the newest shooter series that I actually count myself a fan of. Not a fan of these generic bullet hell shooters, Radiant Silvergun styled shooters, shooters where you are not even piloting something like a airplane or spaceship, and 3D polygonal shooters in general (I much more prefer beautful 2D sprites for this genre like the Raiden Fighters series had). POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember I\'ve probably played one or both of the first two Strikers 1945 titles on the actual cabinets, but I can\'t remember for sure. shooters where you are not even piloting something like a airplane or spaceship Hehe, the Castle of Shikigami and Sengoku Ace series come to mind. In Shikigami (which is a bullet hell series), what I actually enjoy the most is not the gameplay but the bizarre dialogue between the characters (mind you, this only really applies to the third game, as I\'ve never played the first game and the second had a seriously butchered North American release that was funny for all the wrong reasons). The CoS3 first stage boss, Yukari Horiguchi, breaks the fourth wall a ton (\"I thought this was one-player mode; why are there two of you?\" \"I was the fourth-stage boss in the last game!\"). One of the other bosses sometimes says upon death, \"My social security!\" 3D polygonal shooters in general I definitely disagree with you on this point. Some of my favorites fall into this category, like Gradius V, G-Darius, and DariusBurst. All awesome in distinctive ways! I won\'t claim that I prefer this look, though if done well, it really looks good. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember There are certainly exceptions in that last category even for me. Gradius V like you mentioned, for starters. I also enjoy the two modern Raiden games (Although they do not hold a handle to Raiden 1, 2, and DX), Xevious 3DG, R-Type Final, 1942: Joint Strike, RayStorm, and I am sure quite a few others if I were to start checking my collection to recall names. Never heard of DariusBurst until just now, something else to add to my want list. But even then, I almost always prefer beautiful 2D graphics for my shooters. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember I have Raiden III (on disc) but didn\'t like it a whole lot (have never played any other Raiden game). That\'s the game that made me think, \"You know, I think I actually like side-scrollers more than vertical scrollers, in general.\" 1942: Joint Strike was somewhat disappointing to me as well. R-Type Final is a unique sort of fun, and I enjoy it, but I can\'t get far into it, same as with every other R-Type game. And I enjoyed RayStorm\'s weird lock-on gameplay, too. DariusBurst is one of my favorite PSP games. It\'s not as good as G-Darius and Gradius V in terms of overall content (the Arcade Mode, at least, which is fairly short; it does have other modes, though), but it plays very well, has memorable bosses, and looks and sounds absolutely stunning. It single-handedly revived Darius from a 12-year drought of new games (the GBA and phone games in the interim were remakes/rearrangements); the year after it came out, an arcade expansion, DariusBurst Another Chronicle (DBAC) was released, and a semi-port/expansion of that was just released on iPhone a few weeks ago, DariusBurst Second Prologue. DBAC is something I really want to play. Double-widescreen (32:9) HD graphics, subwoofer seating, 4-player co-op capability, new game mechanics and playable ships, a new, very-long-term Chronicle Mode campaign for all players to participate in. The game is supposedly available in the US now, but I don\'t know where to find one. Do you know Shaggy the Atarian over at AtariAge? He runs the ArcadeHeroes.com blog, and his arcade in Utah location-tested the American release of DBAC. Apparently, a movie theater a reasonable drive\'s distance from me performed location testing just before him . . . but I didn\'t find out until after the cabinet had moved to Shaggy\'s place. ? I enjoyed DariusBurst enough to buy merchandise related to it. I have the soundtrack CD, the soundtrack remix 2-CD set, the special CD from the remix\'s mail-in offer (mailed by Taito from Japan!), and the DBAC soundtrack CD. The plastic model kit of the Silverhawk fighter, okay, I don\'t have that, but I do have the miniature of it from the Shooting Game Historica trading figure series (I have most of those figures, actually). Way off the thread\'s original topic now, huh? POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Never played any other Raiden game? You need to go out and buy The Raiden Project for the PSOne immediately. Has arcade perfect ports of Raiden 1 and Raiden 2, two of the best arcade vertical shooters of all time. Runs great on the PS3 emulator as well. Raiden III is garbage in comparison to those two classics. And I will certainly have to add DariusBurst to my PSP import collection. I have 4 Japanese releases in my collection, this SNK compilation, Parodius Portable Collection, Salamander Portable, and TwinBee Portable (along with some non shooter European imports). Hoped those last three would join Gradius Collection over here, but they never did so I took the plunge and imported. Raiden III is certainly a bit plain although I got my $30 worth out of it (Somewhat rectified with Raiden IV which seems far less generic although it was priced a tad bit high at $40). I actually enjoy vertical shooters more than horizontal (Just as long as they are not bullet hell shooters or have crazy scoring mechanisms that are way too complicated for their own good). Have had a long love affair with them since River Raid on the 2600 (Which I think is still my favorite vertical shooter despite 30 years of advancements). Joint Strike was a plain vanilla release, but it was good enough and brought back enough nostalgia that I can genuinely say I enjoyed it (Although probably not worth the $10 I believe it cost me). Commando 3 was the same way on XBLA/PSN (Assault Heroes 1 & 2 are actually far better Commando styled games than the actual Capcom release). Since there is not much hope for some on topic discussion in here until SAR or something else gets released, did you ever play the horizontal shooter Eco Fighters? Was on Capcom Classics Collection 2 (And Reloaded on the PSP). Never even heard of it until I bought the Xbox collection. Really underrated game that I ended up enjoying quite a bit. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Maybe Raiden Project will be released as a PS1 Classic someday (of course, given the general dearth of PS1 scrolling shooters on PSN, that could be a looong way off--and that's even before considering the licensing mess of a non-Sony Japanese game published by SCEA). Until then, though, I think I'll have to go without; I really don't like buying used games (hence not being a collector), and new copies of this look like they're rare and expensive. I have those 3 Gradius-spinoff collections, too. Even if their games-to-cost ratio is terrible compared to something like Taito Legends 2, they're nicely packaged/presented compilations. I kind of would like to see similar compilations for other series, like R-Type and Darius, one and only one series but with [nearly] every game so far in that series. Ideally, I'd like to see this sort of product packaged (separately from the game, in hard copies) with series art and sound assets along with in-universe background and real-world production notes; it would make a great product for the serious fan. But I guess there aren't enough such consumers, especially in this age of increasing interest in digital-only distribution. As for other PSP scrolling shooters, I missed out on or skipped several. The Star Soldier remake, Sengoku Cannon, and Cho Aniki Zero come to mind. I did get NeoGeo Heroes: Ultimate Shooting in its North American download-only release, though (hey, sort of back on topic). It's all right, though I should note that it's also a bullet hell shooter. That game actually has a link to the Alpha Mission/A.S.O. series, by the way: the player ship in Alpha Mission is the SYD fighter craft (also appears as the little escort planes in Bermuda Triangle), and the prototype SYD III is a playable ship in NHUS, though the game itself does not follow Alpha Mission mechanics. crazy scoring mechanisms that are way too complicated for their own good FYI, the score multiplier in DariusBurst increases slowly as you kill enemies without taking damage, up to 16x. If you get hit while shielded, it drops by 1, though I can't remember if it resets to 1x if you get shot unshielded (killed). The key to big points is to kill the bosses with a counterburst while at a high multiplier. There's no boss life gauge, though, so this is rather difficult to time on the longer boss fights. Castle of Shikigami games, at least the second and third, tie the multiplier to how close you are to enemies and/or their bullets. Would you believe I only have River Raid on the FB2? I've played Eco Fighters before, in CCC2 for the PS2, but I didn't spend a lot of time with it. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember I ran through Eco Fighters once using lots of credits and liked what I saw. Plan to invest more time into it one of these days. R-Type has a sort of a compilation on the PSOne, but it was just the arcade versions of 1 and 2 (XBLA has a similar thing, but passed on it due to having the PSOne disc). If we ever get a true compilation, I hope it covers a broad range of things including home conversions and even things like R-Type DX for the GBC (Like some of the PS2 Sega Ages compilations did). That PSOne compilation is available on PSN I believe (As is R-Type Delta) if you did not know. Ever play either of the R-Type Tactics games (Edit - I guess the second one was another victim of the troubles over at Irem and never got outside of Japan)? Ignored them completely due to not being shooters. Sadly who knows if we ever will get a proper compilation with the slow implosion that has been happening over at Irem for the past couple of years (Which also killed off their next disaster game for the PS3 and killed any plans of localizing and releasing the PSP entry in the series, which still bugs me after enjoying Disaster Report and Raw Danger, flaws and all, on the PS2). At least the Flashback 2 does justice to River Raid. Nice joysticks, actual 2600 hardware, and a nice composite output. Not a bad way to enjoy River Raid (And beats playing it on Activision Anthology for the PS2, the Dual Shock d-pad and analog sticks are horrible for some reason for River Raid). POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember I actually already have R-Types and R-Type Delta from the PS Store, but I was indeed referring to a compilation that would include all of the games in the series across all the platforms it's appeared on. I've never played either R-Type Tactics title, though I've had the demo for the first on my Memory Stick for years . . . never got through it. I got confused as to what I was supposed to do when I did try it out and exited because I had to do something else. Never did get back to it. R-Type Tactics II was actually rated by the ESRB (as R-Type Command II, with Irem as publisher), but as with DariusBurst and SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 0, the game was never released. However, I think that was a while before things really started going south for Irem, so it may not be related. I'm not really sure if Irem is even still in video games. I know some of its staff left the firm to form a new gaming company, Granzella, which so far has produced several PlayStation Home spaces (these were the people who created Irem's several Home spaces, which are now no more). Hopefully, Granzella can pick up the pieces, though I don't know if Irem would be willing to give up the R-Type IP even if they can't make games anymore. Maybe they'd let someone license the name? POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Looks like there is a nice PC compilation from them called IREM Arcade Hits from a year or two ago. Usually ignore PC compilations (Never quite feel like I am getting enough value for the money when I can download emulators that usually run better for free), but might make an exception here. Has the following games (Most of which are unknown to me, but I see at least two good shooters in Air Duel and R-Type Leo and have heard good things about In the Hunt and odds are that several other games are worth playing). Air Duel Battle Chopper Blade Master Cosmic Cop Dragon Breed Gunforce Gunforce2 Hammerin' Harry Image Fight In the Hunt Kung-Fu Master Legend of Hero Tonma Mystic Riders Ninja Spirit R-Type Leo Superior Soldiers Undercover Cops Vigilante POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Hehe, I have that already, and I think Freelance has it, too. It's actually not by Irem directly but rather DotEmu, licensing the games (sort of like the Taito Legends compilations being released by Empire Interactive and Sega). It released toward the end of 2010, as I recall, and I bought it early 2011. The two titles I was most interested in were R-Type Leo (because it has "R-Type" in the title, basically) and Image Fight, which is considered part of the R-Typeuniverse. The fighter in Image Fight, the Daedalus, appears in R-Type Final (if it's playable, I haven't unlocked it yet myself, but it's definitely also in the opening title cinematic). Image Fight is really tough, but the shooting mechanics are unique and engaging. Also, having recently enjoyed the PSP game Hammerin' Hero at the time, I looked forward to trying out its arcade predecessor, Hammerin' Harry. It was okay, but Hero (released in the US by Atlus) was much more fun. By the way, a long time ago, I posted my library of shooting games, if you're interested in seeing what I have (and here is the update post I just made). The list of which compilations provided most of those games is slightly later in the thread. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember finally!!! someone mentioned Hammerin Harry!!! there was 2 GB versions, one that never made it here, and i hope to see it again one of these days, it was an awesome game... ^_^ POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember sniper712, have you played Hammerin' Hero? I liked it a lot. It's the only case of me buying a download version of a game, playing it, and then buying it again on UMD because I wanted a "real" copy. Granted, I don't have a whole lot of PS Store purchases that are also available on UMD anyway. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember only the GB ones, it was hell of a lot fun... ^_^ too bad the sequel was JP only...T_T guess it'd be a good time to try the PSP one. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember SAR is reportedly releasing this week in North America (according to the PS Blog). POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Although I am not as big of a fan of it as many people (Outside of a handful of other games like Ikari Warriors, SAR seems to be one of the bigger hits out of all of these), I still enjoy it. So I am glad to hear it will be released soon. Just too bad that their strange LS30 implimentation will really limit the fun. Why they did not do the obvious and take advantage of the 4 face buttons, I still do not understand. Map upwards aiming to triangle, hold down two buttons at a time to trigger a diagonal, etc. And when you are aiming, have it automatically also fire your primary weapon at the same time by mapping the fire button to the same buttons you aim with. Granted, it is no arcade accurate, but having a separate fire button does not make sense on a gamepad or handheld and dragged down Heavy Barrel on their Wii Data East compilation (which also used a SNK LS30 rotary joystick in the arcades, although that collection supported using the right analog of a Classic Controller or GCN pad for aiming in that instance in a similar manner to what I am suggesting they do here with the 4 face buttons). Then you would only ever need to press a shoulder button to fire your secondary weapons in all these games. The person that dreamt up using the shoulder buttons to rotate your aim with in all these SNK releases really missed the boat in my opinion. It does not work very well in practice although I suspect they thought they were being faithful to how you would rotate the stick to aim with in the arcade. Got a feeling that with the possible exception of Safari Rally (Although I believe they realized late with that game that they actually do not own it, it looks like SNK developed it for Taito), we will not be getting anymore games that were not on their PSP collection. They are concentrating too heavily on those games I think if they had intentions to release other games as well. If they had plans for more releases like Ozma Wars and Vanguard were, I would think they would be sprinkling them in here more than they have been. Hope I am wrong and we can expect more releases after Ikari III and Super Champion Baseball (And maybe Safari Rally). POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # G1M2Member SAR will not be the last PSN Minis title... POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Will it go beyond Ikari 3 and Super Champion Baseball though is the question I have on my mind (The last two games yet to become Minis that were on your Japanese PSP collection). Hope that means yes to more games like Vanguard and Ozma Wars (The two SNK Minis you have released so far that were not already on that PSP compilation). SNK had several nice looking early 80s classics (A game where you rope cattle was one that caught my eye a while back and reminded me of Midway games like Tapper and Timber a bit) and some late 80s vertical shooters that I would love to see given some attention. Really hope you guys will be able to someday compile all of this and release it on a console in physical form ala Data East Arcade Classics. Hope someone there is occasionally hinting at how they would like to do that when you talk to SNK. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Heh, Tapper and Timber certainly were oddly themed games (speaking of which, my nephew thinks Timber's animations are hilarious). I was going to add Bubbles, but it seems that one was actually Williams, not Midway. G1M2, I too would like to know if more SNK Minis not part of SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 0 will be coming. However, unlike Atariboy, I won't recognize any of them. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember hope they continue this on the Vita at least, love to see more awesome SNK games!!! even if not Minis POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember I'd really like to see that Satan of Saturn game. I'm sure it doesn't play like them, but the colors remind me of Phoenixor Pleiades, two of my favorites. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # FreelanceMember Man, I wouldn't mind Tapper on my PSP or 3DS. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Tapper is on Midway Arcade Treasures: Extended Play for the PSP. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # G1M2Member Sorry to be vague, but more Minis are coming, some of the games you mentioned that are outside of Volume 0 are planned, and we have been in talks with other companies to join the Minis fun... POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Enough details there to please me. Thanks POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember I know some of our reviews can be a bit harsh, but I really have enjoyed them as a whole. I own just about every retro collection for the PS2-Xbox. Moon Patrol would be the holy grail for me. I imagine it's a rights mess though, since Irem developed it and Williams published it... Tapper is on Midway Arcade Treasures: Extended Play for the PSP. You sure about that? Wikipedia says it doesn't have it. I know it's on the PS2 version of MAT, but the PSP was a bit different... POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember I never played it so I am not sure (I stuck with the console releases). According to the list of included games at GameFaqs, it includes Tapper. But upon closer inspection, I think they just screwed up and listed the contents of Midway Arcade Treasures for last generation consoles by mistake (Which is ashame since I was reconsidering it when I looked it up earlier and saw the lineup). If Wikipedia is correct, it includes Wizard of Wor. I would love to know how well it performs if anyone owns this. That is a classic but sadly was all screwed up on Midway Arcade Treasures 2. Problems varied between the Xbox and GCN, but I recall sound effects being matched to the wrong action and the game running twice as fast as it should have. I never played the PS2 build for MAT2, but I have no doubt Wizard of Wor is significantly screwed up on that version as well. But Extended Play came out a year later so perhaps the problems are ironed out for Wizard of Wor. Anyone know? Old arcade licensing agreements are usually no problem it seems, having long ago expired. I imagine if Irem were to rerelease it that they would be free to. If these distribution agreements ran decades, Namco would be paying Warner which owns most of the remains of Midway these days and Atari a lot of money since those two distributed most of the Namco classics over here that Namco rereleases multiple times every generation it seems. So I doubt that a 30 year old licensing agreement would be in force today or we would not have things like dozens of different Namco Museum releases. That said, if you are interested, Midway licensed Moon Patrol over a decade ago and included it on Midways Greatest Arcade Hits Volume 2 for the Dreamcast and Arcades Greatest Hits: The Midway Collection 2 on the PSOne. The PSOne collection also includes a second licensed game that Midway distributed in arcades back in the day, Burgertime. Only time until the G1M2 Data East compilation on the Wii that the arcade version of Burgertime has been released on a home console. Just be sure to play it on a PSOne or PS3 since I recall many Digital Eclipse PSOne compilations having issues when played on a PS2 (Several of the few PSOne games that were not compatible with PS2s were Digital Eclipse products, although I am not sure if it includes this particular title). POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember In contrast to JeremyR, I am not a fan of Phoenix and Pleiades. I agree that rereleasing Moon Patrol, a game which I know solely by title, incidentally, would most likely be just a matter for Irem to deal with. Licenses do expire and are typically specific regarding release formats (as opposed to saying, "You can do whatever you want with our IP in your territory," which, heh, did seem to be what Midway thought of their Namco licenses). If G1M2 actually managed to convince Irem to stop giving up on video games and join the Minis party, I think that would be quite a win. By the way, Atariboy, going back to late 80s vertically scrolling shooters, the AtariAge arcade/MAME high score club game this week is Dragon Spirit. I don't know how this is, but I'm currently at the top of the leaderboard and have been since Monday. Surely someone will take down my score by Sunday, a score which I accomplished from only ~45 minutes of tries. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # FreelanceMember Whether Tapper is on that Midway game or not, I'd rather have it as a DLable title as opposed to a cartridge/disc. I think Pick Up and Play type games are best suited digitally since you can load them up anytime you like. I'd like to see Rampage as well. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember I actually have Moon Patrol on the Gameboy Color (which I play on the Gameboy Advance), but I would love to have it on the PSP. Gorf is another great game I'd love to see, though likely even more beset with license problems, since they kind of borrowed Galaxian for one of its stages... POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember To borrow your phrase from earlier about Moon Patrol, Gorf is most certainly a rights mess. The game was developed and owned by Midway which is now defunct. And the public lacks details on who owns what after Midway was sold up. I suspect it is owned by Warner Brothers which seems to have acquired the bulk of the library (Although it is known that Hydro Thunder went to Microsoft), but that is a strike right there for someone like G1M2 that might be interested in licensing it for rerelease since you have no way off hand to know who to even contact to start even a preliminary discussion about it. And of course there is the Galaxian based level that requires a Namco license like you already mentioned. But on top of that, there is also a Space Invaders inspired level that would also require dealing with Taito. And sadly it lacks the cult status of things like those licensed Konami brawlers that they have been rereleased digitally recently which makes it all the more doubtful that anyone would go to the bother and expense to have Gorf see the light of day again. Was pirated by a homebrewer on the Jaguar CD a few years ago and was pretty faithful to the original outside of some bugs. But it is rare since he quickly removed it from sale (He naively thought he had full legal rights to it when he got the blessings of the original programmer and was even getting aggressive towards people that were playing it in MAME since he thought he actually legally controlled it, so people had to take steps to educate him so he took his ball and went home). Although the Jaguar CD has so little worthwhile content and is so expensive these days that I doubt anyone would invest in one just to be able to play Gorf even if the game was cheap and easy to find (Although the cartridge library has several gems and is a worthwhile purchase). I think Tapper and some other Midway classics from the early 80s were just released digitally for mobile devices in the past few days. While I cannot see anyone enjoying things like Defender with a touch screen (Or why someone ever thought such a thing was a good idea to start with), hopefully it is a sign that Warner has now taken stock of what they own and is considering ways to now finally take advantage of those assets. So maybe Tapper will see the light of day again on something like the Vita or 3DS. Glad I own it on XBLA since that was the best home version to date of it and was delisted when Midway imploded (Earlier Digital Eclipse releases struggled a bit with some sound effects, but the XBLA version was perfect and even replicated the tap control of the arcade cabinet with the right analog stick). POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Freelance, Midway Arcade Treasures: Extended Play is in the NA PlayStation Store for $10. Rampage is in it, but not Tapper and also not Rampage World Tour, according to Wikipedia. Speaking of games with elements of other properties stuck in them, I am rather curious how Vanguard managed to keep its musical cues intact in the Minis release. There's no sign of licensing, as far as I know. Hydro Thunder . . . I'd sure like to see a console release of its spiritual sequel, 2009's H2Overdrive. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Surprised that is still available since all their arcade games on Xbox Live and PSN were delisted when Midway went down the drain. Might buy the UMD someday to see if Wizard of Wor runs better. I would love to see H2Overdrive as well. Looks great in screenshots and videos (And better than what we got for a sequel on XBLA). Someone at a forum I frequent emailed them a while back about it and they seemed to be more open to the idea of a console release than they were a few years ago (They originally wanted it to remain an arcade exclusive, they felt like a home port would reduce the earning ability of the coinop and make it less attractive to operators). So maybe we will see it come to home consoles eventually. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # Always_SerpicoMember I was just wondering what happened to Midway the other day. I was at a buddies house and he has a copy of Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition. I noticed it wasn't published by Midway and started wondering why not. But I soon forgot about it. My Walmart has a H2Overdive cabinet in its "arcade". I never played it though. I have Hydro Thunder Hurricane on the 360. I actually really love how the guy says, HHHHHURICAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANE! But not too fond of the game itself. It was okay for the first day, but it quickly got old. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Looks like Extended Play was put up on PSN a year or so after the Midway games on XBLA were pulled and several months after the Midway arcade games on PSN disappeared (Which for some reason lasted longer than the comparable XBLA releases). Must be Warner Brothers that submitted it and got it put up after the dust had settled. Glad I bought what I wanted of their arcade games long before they disappeared (None of the PSN games, but I downloaded several of the XBLA releases). POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember Just to add to my list: Venture from Exidy (remember them? Probably not). It was sort of an action-RPG (very loosely). You had a little pumpkin looking guy with a bow and arrow and explored a dungeon. Looping Never saw this in the arcades, but had it for the Colecovision. Sort of like Minisquadron (the iOS game and also a Mini) in a lot of ways, only you went through a pipe maze for some reason. Berzerk Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert! I don't think Stern made many other arcade games, mostly pinball. Death Race The first controversial video game. And there was this game I used to play but I can't remember the name of. You had a long, narrow spaceship and you were going to the Moon, and you had to shoot your way there through asteroids. I don't think Konami has released a retro collection for the PSP. At least in the West. They do have a few separate games up on XBLA - I have Gyruss, which is one of my favorites. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # FreelanceMember Ugh $10 just for 1 game I wanted to play, and apparently it's not a very good title as people complained some games are actually stretched horribly or shrink to a postage stamp, and there's long load times (although it may be faster now since it's digital). Rampage would be ideal as a Mini...and probably cheaper too. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember H2Overdrive at your local Wal-Mart? I don't really like going to Wal-Marts, but that would probably still be more socially acceptable than the place I go to to get my occasional H2Overdrive fix: a Chuck E. Cheese. There's that pinball machine they have, too. At the least, though, the Cheese lets you play any game for just a quarter, so that much is awesome. My jaw dropped when I realized a single round of Pac-Man Battle Royale at Dave & Buster cost me something like $2. I've never played Hydro Thunder Hurricane, but the gameplay videos when it was announced made it seem much more sedate than a Hydro Thunder ought to be. H2Overdrive has that feel (makes sense, since it's pretty much the same guys who made the original Hydro Thunder), crazy action with vivid colors on rolling waters. That game was also my first experience keeping my own user profile on an arcade cabinet. It was kind of cool leveling up and unlocking new things on an arcade machine over multiple sessions. I have several Exidy games, including Venture, on my arcade cabinet. I've never gotten far in that game, but it was rather fun, as I recall. Most of my Exidy stuff is early light gun shooters, though. But, on Venture, maybe this would interest you. I've never actually played Berzerk. The current Stern Pinball, FYI, is not the same Stern as the old days, but it's descended from the same Stern surname. I don't think Konami has released a retro collection for the PSP. At least in the West. It's called "Gradius Collection"! No, Konami never released a more general arcade collection for the PSP, but a well executed Gradius-and-only-Gradius compilation made a PSP owner out of me. Konami did release an arcade collection for the DS, and I think that's where TwinBee made its Western debut, but I believe it had some issues. Maybe people didn't like the game selection. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # FreelanceMember I wish Konami could get off their asses and bring us a Contra compilation already. I really want one....I dunno why they haven't already. Maybe it's because Gradius Collection did very poorly here so they thought other compilations would do just as bad ? Imagine Contra, Super C, Contra 3, Operation C, Hard Corps, and if possible, Shattered Soldier on one disc/cartridge. I'd be in heaven. SS doesn't work anymore on my PS2 and I'd like to play it again. Contra 3 is my favourite Contra game and I'd really like to play it again (and don't say 'emulators.' I'd rather play it on an actual console) POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # manslayer911Member Nice to hear that more retro games r coming from g1m2. As for the Midway Arcade Treasures Extended Play on psn, I don't think I'd throw down more than $5 on that. As a fighting game junky, I'd only pick it up for MK1-3 to begin with. Speaking of fighters, we definitely need more of em in the minis program, & some good ones too. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember I would certainly love to see a Exidy collection (Mouse Trap and Pepper II are two other classics from Exidy that come immediately to mind) and a Stern collection. And a Rock Ola collection and a Venture Line collection (I think they did Looping) would be nice although neither had as many successes as Stern and Exidy did. Several great classics from these companies from the mid 70s up to the early 80s. Nothing I ever thought stood a chance in compilation form (Although I thought similarly about the chances of a pre NeoGeo SNK collection and at the chances of a Data East compilation), but as PSP Minis, I think there would be a lot of potential there. The Konami DS collection is excellent. Missing Frogger (Was on their GBA compilation), Gradius, and a game or two from their nice PSOne era compilation (No Super Cobra for instance. But it is very well done and adds several games not seen on either of those compilations like Gradius, the already mentioned TwinBee, and Contra. Wasted a lot of time on it just a few weeks ago in fact. No glaring issues as I can recall. Even managed to have some fun with Track and Field, a odd choice for a handheld collection but I still enjoyed myself despite the DS not being ideal for such a game. Probably the biggest issues are just the fact that the vast majority of these games relied on a vertically oriented monitor. But playing them pillarboxed was fine and for those that view the option as actually usable, you can rotate them and hold the DS sideways. One thing that really hurts Hydro Thunder Hurricane is the environments. Far too much of the time in that game it looks more like a level that belongs in Half-Life 2 than a Hydro Thunder game. Almost gone are the beautiful environments that made up the bulk of the original. Contra 3 was reissued by Majesco in the late 90s and as a result should be dirt cheap to purchase. Why not just buy it? I have to imagine a loose copy can be had with ease for under $10. Toss in a new $30 RetroDuo (Has almost perfect SuperNes compatibility) and maybe $10 for something like a ASCII Fighter Stick or a Super Advantage stick and you would be all set to go with Contra 3 for about fifty dollars. Or if you own a Wii, just buy the thing for $8 off the Virtual Console. How would you really enjoy a fighter? Do Minis ever even support wirelessly linking up two PSPs? And I imagine both PSPs would require owning a copy (Never heard of a Mini that could be temporarily shared with a friend). And many people mostly play these things on their PS3 and would not even have that choice open to them. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # manslayer911Member Man, I remember the day I bought Konami's Greatest Hits for the DS like it was yesterday. I was so excited for it & played it a lot during my spare time on the college campus. Though there were some games that I wished were there, like Gyruss for example, it was still quite enjoyable. I especially liked how they went almost all out with the multiplayer options, coming just short of supporting online play. I mean seriously! I could give anyone of my buddies a temporary copy of an arcade classic, & sure as hell I did too. Wish I could say the same about recent retro compilations today. As for the fighters, though it is true that many people play them for the multiplayer aspect, I'm 1 of those guys who can still get a good kick out of them alone. I think that a truly good fighter is worth as much played alone as it is played with others. Like the BlazBlue series for instance, & even the Dissidia series. I spent weeks & weeks unending glued to my psp with only those games to keep me company. I only wish that minis developers were willing to create some decent fighters that aren't ports of an i-phone game or a arcade classic. And if they wanted to do some multiplayer action, just look at what Photo Dojo did on the DSi & learn from it. I know that a psp doesn't have a camera capable of doing what the DSi's does built into it, but I still firmly believe that a good fighter is still possible for the minis platform for so many reasons, some of which include a less restrictive memory size than that of the DSi, & a more powerful piece of hardware. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # FreelanceMember I want to play Contra on the go though :3 Besides, Contra 3 is hard to play on the Wii without the classic controller and I don't have that. I'm not going to buy a controller just for one game. Don't forget that I am poor right now too. $50 is a lot. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember I mention Gradius as a missing game up above compared to earlier Konami compilations. The game I meant to name as being removed was Gyruss. Gradius is a new addition here compared to their earlier PSOne and GBA collections. One thing I enjoyed with their DS compilation were the replay videos the developers put on there (including a no hit run through Gradius). Those were fun to watch and I learned a few things at the same time. Probably my biggest disappointment with the DS collection was Time Pilot. After playing it so much on the Xbox 360, I have trouble playing it with a d-pad now on their GBA and DS compilation for some reason. It never supported analog control of course, but for some reason the analog thumb sticks on the 360 still seems to be the best way to control the game now for me and I have difficulty with the handheld versions. The game is intact and seems fine, but I just do not like using a d-pad to play it at all. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # Always_SerpicoMember Freelance, you can get a Classic Controller on Amazon for around $15. Same for a Classic Controller Pro. The Pro version doesn't vibrate though. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Neither does a regular Classic Controller. I imagine a Contra compilation would run $20 at least. A Classic Controller and $8 spent downloading it on the Wii seems like a semi reasonable price if you really want to play Contra III again (The best game in the series, hands down). POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # FreelanceMember Well here's another thing. My sister is always in the bedroom where the Wii is so even if I got a controller I wouldn't be able to play much. If I have to play at a console, I'd rather do so on m PS3 since it's actually beside me at the PC. Besides which, Amazon.com isn't selling any controller. It's all from third parties and I don't trust third parties on Amazon. Some don't even ship to Canada. That said, Amazon.ca is selling the Pro controllers and they cost $25. Despite what I just said, I'd actually would rather pay $20 and get several Contra games as opposed to one. Contra III may be the best game, but the others are awesome too and I'd love to play them on the go. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # manslayer911Member @ Atariboy: Those videos were awesome on that collection! I liked making them too, especially one in Yie Er Kung fu wherein I kept landing a blow to the groin of the first opponent. lol Anyway, might be of interest for u to know that the 3DS supports the use of the circle pad on all ds games. It definitely would help out in fighters that require complex control movement. And in the case of Time Pilot, I think it'd make a fine substitution for the d-pad. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Mouse Trap and Pepper II are two other classics from Exidy that come immediately to mind I have both of them in my cabinet as well. FYI, my cab is one of the Awesome Arcade models that Curt Vendel sold a few years ago. One thing that really hurts Hydro Thunder Hurricane is the environments. Yeah, I remember from the gameplay videos I saw that the settings really looked kind of boring, visually, more realistic instead of outlandish. The waves didn't look right, either. H2Overdrive, in contrast, has style in spades. And it gets really wild when you start hull-crushing other boats and such. Ofaliss, I recommend you give that Wal-Mart machine a go at least once. Make sure to make up a PIN for yourself and punch it in the keypad, so that in case you do enjoy the game, you'll be able to continue your profile next time you play. And definitely watch the attract screen before playing, so you'll know how to jump the boat and such. Do Minis ever even support wirelessly linking up two PSPs? No, wireless functionality is not available in the Minis program. It's one of the restrictions, along with the 100 MB size limit and no overclocking. One thing I enjoyed with their DS compilation were the replay videos the developers put on there (including a no hit run through Gradius). On Hudson Soft's Soldier Collection (UMD compilation of 4 PC Engine Star Soldier titles), nearly every game is accompanied by a superplay video that has commentary and introduction from Takahashi Meijin himself. I think they're only for the "Caravan" time-limit versions of the games, but they're still really cool to watch for all the point-milking tactics. Anyone want to speculate on what other companies G1M2 is trying to woo to Minis? Likely candidates? I think Midway, Atari, Capcom, and Taito are doubtful, due to them all already having retro arcade compilations for the PSP. Of course, it's not like all of their libraries were in those compilations. Exidy maybe, but they're so obscure nowadays, no? I'd never even heard of them when I got my arcade cabinet with a bunch of their games. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember I think several Exidy games are on par with popularity to much of the SNK Minis lineup. And some of the more obscure ones are nice enough where they have become attractive to collectors years later despite not making much of a splash originally. Cheyenne for example is fun enough where it is in many collections despite being a game that does not have much recognition (Although that one is a lightgun shooter so it would not be very well suited to becoming a Mini). I don't think a Exidy compilation would have much chance (As you noted, the name is largely forgotten), but I think several of their games would stand a good chance if digitally rereleased as standalone games. They were big enough 30 years ago where Coleco viewed it as quite a coup to secure a licensing agreement with them when the bigger companies like Midway, Taito, and Namco already had active licensing agreements with Atari. They were second best, but still a big enough name where it was a big deal for Coleco. Many people that were console gamers back then will remember games like Mouse Trap from the arcade or their home consoles. My guess would be to see them follow their present trends. Hunt down the somewhat more obscure companies and games that had a decent amount of popularity rather than the biggest companies that had numerous hits that have heavily rereleased many of their most popular games over the years. Like what they have done with the Data East library and the pre NeoGeo SNK lineup. I think Stern would be a particularly good candidate. Got a brand name that many people remember to this day due to pinball, a big hit in the form of Berzerk that is fondly remembered by many (One of the biggest hits from the Golden Age of arcade gaming that has yet to be rereleased at home), a great sequel in the form of Frenzy, and several other nice games like Dark Planet that do not have much name recognition but are good enough where many dedicated machines exist in people's collections. And all their games are in color (A selling point I suppose), I believe all used single digital sticks and buttons (So they will adapt well to the controls available as a Mini), the majority used a horizontally oriented monitor (Better suited for the PSP than a vertically oriented game), and all their games were released within a short time of each other (So likely will reduce the work needed to emulate them since I assume many shared common hardware). I got to think the licensing cost for the entire library of 15 or so original games from Stern (Excluding their Laserdisc games that would be too big to become a Mini and their licensed Konami games) would be about on par with what it would cost just to license someone like Ms. Pac-Man from Namco unless the rights holders are very confused about the worth of their assets. At the very least, going after them just for Berzerk and Frenzy would be worthwhile (Although many of their other games like Rescue are fun and rate some attention). UPL would be another good candidate. Fondly remembered for games like Carnival, Task Force Harrier, Depthcharge, Frogs, Blockade, and Actobat Mission. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember $#!%, I hate the copy-protected save file policy of Namco Museum Essentials. When I was actively playing the game, it was not on the same PS3 I primarily use now. However, I figured that I could at least still see my online leaderboard scores/ranks for the games even with a new save file, so I started up the program. Sure enough, my old scores and ranks were displayed on the online leaderboard despite not being on the local machine, and I discovered that my Dragon Spirit high score was much lower than what I recently achieved at AtariAge. So, I set out to do better, and I handily did (the PS3 high score challenge setup is much easier than the AtariAge one, 3 hits per life instead of 2, and that version also supports extremely fast autofire, as opposed to none). Well, guess what? Putting up a new score on the online leaderboards for Dragon Spirit completely blanked out all my online scores/ranks in the other games in the collection. My excellent Xevious and Xevious Resurrection ranks, gone. Thanks a ton, Namco. If you had just let me copy over the damned original save file, this wouldn't have happened. Would you believe even my Trophies for Namco Museum Essentials got blanked for a bit, until I ran a Trophy synch? UPL would be another good candidate. UPL . . . I've heard of UPS, but I get the feeling they're not quite the same. Who owns the Stern IP library now? I don't think it's Stern Pinball, since that's not the same company (sort of like how Atari Inc. does not own any Atari Games games). POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember UPL is certainly an obscure name even when it was a going concern (I didn't know who did Carnival myself until looking it up, I actually thought it was Exidy since Coleco did ports of it for the Colecovision and various other consoles). But several fun games including several well known ones came out of the company. Carnival for early 1980's was very popular and Task Force Harrier for late 80's (A nice vertical shooter many people have at least heard of) are two good examples. No clue who owns the Stern IP. From what I can recall reading over at AtariAge, I believe you're right. Edit - According to a post from AtariAge, the videogame properties were sold off in the 1980's. But I suspect the current Stern Pinball company would at least be able to point an interested party in the right direction. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Jaleco would be a possibility. The name seemed to have a bit of recognition back in the day and they have a decent sized library including some well liked games. And nothing much has ever been done with their back catalog. Probably a bit too advanced for this program, but I always loved Cisco Heat from 1990. A fun sprite scaling racer that didn't get much attention. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember I just learned last week that "Jaleco" stood for "Japan Leisure Company," an abbreviation with the same structure as "Connecticut Leather Company" and "Aluminum Company of America." That was during my search for what UPL stood for ("Universal Play Land"). Incidentally, this site covering UPL history is apparently run by a couple of former UPL employees, Mitsuo "Yoshi" Yoshioka and Minoru "Tomi" Tomizawa. "Cisco Heat" . . . seemingly not about cooling problems with your router. I'm familiar with the Jaleco name, but if you asked me a month ago to name even one game they made, I couldn't do it. Say, Atariboy, I can't log into AtariAge right now without getting an authentication certificate error (unknown issuer, I think it was) from Firefox. Do you get that, too? POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember AtariAge is working fine for me right now. Only troubles I've had are the same minor ones I've had since they changed the software a while back. Some of the popup menus disappear into the background at the top and don't allow me to access things like my profile to edit them. I don't think the forum software likes the low resolution I run at or maybe I need to update my browser software. Digital Press on the other hand, if you ever visit there, seems to have been hacked again just like a week or two ago (Just got a popup by my antivirus software about a exploit being blocked as I browsed there, just like what went on when they had to pull the forum down when it got hacked). So if you ever visit there, I would skip it for a few days. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Thought I'd mention this game since I brought it up earlier. Rescue by Stern is what I sort of expected from the latest Mini before I played the game for the first time a few years ago. SAR: Search and Rescue to me sounded like a game where you'd fly a helicopter, rescue people at sea, recover pilots downed in enemy territory while evading enemy fire, etc. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsysWpaCzSI If they ever did take a look at the Stern library, I'd hope they'd consider this one. Fun little game and in many years it's the precursor to Choplifter. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # FreelanceMember That game has some pretty neat '3D.' Game looks hard though. Those enemy choppers are persistent. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember AtariAge is acting up now. Doesn't want to load properly. Hope it hasn't been hacked into like Digital Press was last night. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember AtariAge stopped giving me that certificate error, and I was able to log in like normal. I've seen the Digital Press problems topic at AtariAge, and though I keep a tab open on the site, I haven't actually read it in a long time. It's more a forum for collectors than, well, other games-related discussion, so it usually doesn't talk about stuff that interests me. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Yeah, not much discussion about games themselves. Much of the reason I visit is out of habit actually. AtariAge seems fine. Must've just been a fluke in the middle of the night. Was getting errors about it not being able to access the database and such. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Since everyone seems to enjoy discussing classic arcade games in here and not much news on G1M2 Minis to discuss at the moment, I'd thought I'd mention the good news that the classic arcade racer Super Hang-On will be arriving on XBLA and PSN in the coming weeks (Not the choppy Genesis port). One of several classic Sega games (The others are console releases) that were announced for digital release and rated by the ESRB a year ago. Finally due out after a long wait and will be released with two companion games instead of being a standalone release like they've done in the past. Alex Kidd in Miracle World, a SMS release, and Revenge of Shinobi, a Genesis release, will accompany it for $10. Also a Monster World collection releasing alongside with three games including one that apparantly never made it out of Japan before for those that enjoy that series (Don't think I've ever tried a single one). POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember The only news sources I can find about this only report these games as planned to be available on Japanese PSN (a 600-yen price is cited per game, and they're sold separately) and XBLA (bundled). I can't find any mention of Western PSN release plans. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Seen several places post an article about this in the past few days. Here's one example. So hopefully it's more than just rumors and there is some truth to everything (And Sega has mentioned all of these games being slated for digital release in their next lineup of digital releases over a year ago and they've been rated by the ESRB for ages). Guess we'll know if June rolls around and nothing shows up since it's supposed slated for a spring release (In other words, anytime now). Edit - And going to the source they used shows this information came from a now removed marketplace page at Xbox.com. Here's a cache of it from before MS removed it when it was discovered. And so sign of the Sega Ages name anywhere (Read a link that said these would be branded as such, but that doesn't appear to be the case and they're maintaining the Sega Vintage Collection branding they've been using). And judging by Sega's usual actions, a comparable PSN release is all but assured (Although I'll be going with the Xbox 360 download I think). Not sure Sega has ever released something on XBLA and not PSN. I think PSN even eventually got their initial lineup of classics from years ago that were XBLA exclusives when originally released (Golden Axe, Sonic, etc.) a year or two ago. So I imagine if this happens, PSN owners won't be left out (Although I just remembered Outrun Online Arcade in North America, so I guess there's at least one example where PSN owners got left out). POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # Always_SerpicoMember I think I'm going to have to start visiting Segabits. Any site that has a Dreamcast in the banner and Bayonetta's butt (even if it isn't the focal point) anywhere near it, is a site I want to visit! To go even further off topic, what is Japan's obsession with Fly Me to the Moon!? POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Not sure Sega has ever released something on XBLA and not PSN. Actually, what I meant was that I couldn't determine whether the Western PSN release would be packaged like the XBLA release or like the Japanese PSN release (i.e., bundles or standalones). At least one site reported the news as if the games would be sold for $7.25 each, mirroring the Japanese PSN model--but that's just presumptuous journalists converting 600 yen directly, not any actual announcement from Sega. I think I might go for a Wonder Boy/Monster World bundle, as I've never played any games in the series and have heard they all play differently (reminiscent of the Shining series, eh?). POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Sorry about that, I understand now. My guess is that the domestic PSN release would be done similarly to the XBLA release. But after Outrun Online Arcade (Not much of an issue for me since I also own a 360), such a move by Sega wouldn't exactly shock me to give PSN users a worse deal than XBLA users. Hopefully they at least get standalone releases rather than nothing like Outrun fans got a few years back. Speaking of Outrun, any fans here? When it comes to Sega and also the entire genre of arcade racers, that series is at the top for me. Just bought a new PS2 (Wanted a spare and it was the first one I've seen at a retailer for several months and quite possibly the last I'll see) and broke it in with a few hours of Outrun Coast to Coast to make sure it works correctly. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Ikari III: The Rescue is out now in both EU and NA, oddly enough first in EU. Just Super Champion Baseball is left of the Vol. 0 set. What comes next? Who knows? Maybe Safari Rally will surface for real. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember didn't they release Shocktroopers already??? maybe just a little longer... POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember I'm skipping this one and SAR. Don't like how these LS30 games control with this control setup they've used (SAR, the Ikari Warriors trilogy, T.N.K III, and Guerrilla War). Only one I've found much fun with so far has been T.N.K. III. Shock Troopers is a NeoGeo game and was never going to be a Mini. This Mini program is dealing with SNK's pre NeoGeo arcade lineup. Plus, Shock Troopers has been out on PSN's NeoGeo Station for PS3 and PSP owners for the better part of a year now. So if you were expecting it to become a Mini, you're in for a long wait. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember No hints yet on the ESRB site for upcoming additions. If they're going to continue like they say they are after releasing Super Champion Baseball (Which I'm sure will be the next game), I wish they'd toss some hints out to satisfy my curiousity. In the meantime, any thoughts on Impossible Mission from anyone here? It's a remake of a classic game and also includes a classic mode. Never given much attention to this game in the past. Is it worth it for the classic gaming fan? POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Looks like what you read is going to be the case for these Sega releases in North America as well, onmode-ky. They'll be released on PSN as single game downloads for $5 a pop compared to getting three games for $10 on XBLA. Coming out next week on XBLA and PSN. Then the week after will see the Streets of Rage and Golden Axe releases become available. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # manslayer911Member What I wouldn't give to have 16-bit console games released on the 3DS's virtual console. I wanna play Super Punch-out legitimately on the go. Same goes for Streets Of Rage series, & the Golden Axe series. Make them available, so people don't have to resort to unconventional means. PS: I'm the 200th poster on this thread. Woohoo! POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember They'll be released on PSN as single game downloads for $5 a pop compared to getting three games for $10 on XBLA. Well, gee, that sucks for me. $10 for 2 games instead of 3 games? I was kind of interested in checking out the Monster World series, but now I'm thinking it would be better to wait and see if Sega offers a different pricing scheme later. Either that or take "advantage" of the granular availability and choose only one. Coming out next week on XBLA and PSN. Then the week after will see the Streets of Rage and Golden Axe releases become available. The way the Sega blog post is presented, it looks like those are only for XBLA. I know at least some of those games are already available individually on PSN. Going back to SNK Minis, there's something unusual about them compared to other Minis (aside from their being emulations). Typically, Minis released more recently get numerically higher game ID numbers than Minis released earlier. For example, the recently released Floating Cloud God Saves the Pilgrims is NPUZ00299 in North America, while mid-2010's Freekscape: Escape from Hell is NPUZ00013. However, all the SNK Minis, a series with release dates spanning from July 2011 through now, have numbers all in a small block of values. My 8 SNK Minis range from NPUZ00133 (Alpha Mission) through NPUZ00162 (Prehistoric Isle in 1930). All numbers that I have between them are also SNK Minis (and several of them are in alphabetic order, not release date order). The release dates for these start from July 2011 and run through January 2012. However, directly before and after this block of numbers in my collection are NPUZ00131 (Coconut Dodge, from summer 2010) and NPUZ00180 (Family Games, from early 2011). The SNK dates really don't line up at all. This seems to mean that SNK set up to be part of the Minis program a loooong time before any actual releases, and all of their Minis were decided upon at one time (well, given that they're not all in alphabetic order, maybe more than once, but very close together). Poking around on the Web, one finds that all NPUZ numbers from 133 through 174 are SNK Minis (lots of holes in that range, mind you--for now, anyway). Judging from the number of times we see things in alphabetic order, the assignments might have been done in either 2 or 3 batches (Touchdown Fever, NPUZ00166, comes before a couple of 'S' titles, so either that was an error or the actual end of the second batch). If Super Champion Baseball comes out, it should be either NPUZ00173 (if it's part of a post-Touchdown Fever batch #3), NPUZ00164, or NPUZ00165 (there is no numbering hole in the first batch that it could fit in). Safari Rally, if it comes out, has as its possibilities NPUZ00164, NPUZ00165, or, if it's in the hypothetical batch #3, one of NPUZ00167-169. So what's my point? Basically, everything SNK has put out in Minis up through now has been part of a plan from what looks like 2010 or early 2011 (before the release of the SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 0 UMD in Japan), while actual releases started in the latter half of 2011. So . . . SNK is pretty slow. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Come to think of it, I haven't seen anything about PSN releases for Streets of Rage 1/3 or Golden Axe 2/3. Of course the arcade Golden Axe (Released individually years ago on PSN/XBLA and the game that will represent the original in this upcoming mini XBLA compilation) and Streets of Rage 2 (Already seen a standalone release on both services) wouldn't be coming since they're already out. But it seems like they'd bring the other 2/3's of both packages to PSN since they're not already present. Seems to be how they're handling things on the Virtual Console at least (Has recieved the arcade version of Super Hang-On, the newly translated Monster World IV for the Genesis, and the arcade version of Monster Land in recent weeks... the content from these XBLA mini compilations that weren't already available on the service). Of course unless someone is interested in the online functions (Multiplayer and leaderboards) or is dying for trophy hunting, it makes far more sense to buy the retail compilation that included these 4 games. Probably easily had for under $20 these days with far more content than buying these games for $5 a pop. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Atariboy, did you get any/all of the Wonder/Monster games? Any particular recommendations? POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Not yet, I bought 4 XBLA releases last week so those are keeping me busy (Sega Rally Online Arcade, Daytona USA, Afterburner Climax, and the new Alex Kidd & Co release). It's certainly on my list though of things I intend to pick up down the road. But no recommendations right now. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Just as I had given up hope at G-Mode releasing more content, two surprises got announced. I've never even heard of Gang Wars before. Neither looks to be my thing but it's still nice to see (I'd grab Time Soldiers, but as I've said numerous times before, I just don't like the way they handled the LS30 stick on the PSP). POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # HuichoMember Any word on Vita compatibility for Time Soldiers and Gang Wars? I won't be surprised if it's a no. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember Well, according to the Beatshapers guy, when Minis are released now in Europe, they immediately work on the Vita. So I would guess yes, at least in Europe. But when will they come out in Europe? And in NA? Hahahahahahahahahahhahaha. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember Hmmm, clearly I've neglected the PEGI site. They have some more listed. Chopper 1 and The Next Space Chopper 1 is a vertical scrolling shooter from 1988 and looks good at least. The Next Space is apparently a Japan only game and is a space shooter from 1989. Looks like something onmode-ky will enjoy. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Used the wrong name up there, I meant to say G1M2 rather than G-Mode (Which is the company that owns much of the IP of Data East and has nothing to do with these SNK Mini's). Count me in for both Chopper I and The Next Space. Shooters and a few of their quirky early 80's games like Lasso are what I want to see most. Wish all these Ikari Warriors type games had better control setups since I love that genre. But they play about as well as something like Kaboom on the Activision compilation does on the PSP... POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember Maybe it's just because I grew up playing a lot of Front Line on the Colecovision, but I haven't had any problem playing the Ikari Warrior type games with buttons and not a dial or second stick. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # FreelanceMember PSP has sooooooooo many SHMUPS! I dunno if I should get anymore. I already have enough SHMUPs on the handheld to last a lifetime, and Bermuda Triangle left a bad taste in my mouth. POSTED 7 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember Well, I did give Bermuda Triangle a 5. My conscience is clean POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # HuichoMember Okay, I have been tempted to buy another SNK Mini. Any suggestions? I already have Vanguard. Great game! I am surprised it got a 8.5, I think it deserves a higher score. Oh well. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember I probably should have given Vanguard a 9, but since it's been one of my favorite games for almost 30 years now , I was afraid of overrating it. And to a certain extent, I don't like rating the SNK stuff as high as new, original titles, even if they are really good. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember I'm not honestly sure I would recommend buying any besides Vanguard. Alpha Mission and Prehistoric Isle in 1930are excellent, but tough. The ones I enjoyed the most besides Vanguard are Search & Rescue and Ikari Warriors, but some people don't like the aiming scheme. Also like Marvin's Maze a lot, but that's probably just me. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # Always_SerpicoMember You can't go wrong with Psycho Soldier. You can with Athena though, that game is hard as week old dog crap! The music in Psycho Soldier is great, the gameplay is a little repetitive though. But you may not want to take my word for it, I generally have no interest in the SNK games. I got Vanguard because it's a notable game in the genre, didn't care much for it. I got Athena because I had cash left over from buying Psycho Soldier, and figured I may as well get the game it was a sequel to. I really hate that $5 funding minimum that PSN has. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember I already have enough SHMUPs on the handheld to last a lifetime I bet you'd never say that about pinball. Whether I snag this new pair of scrolling shooters largely depends on how good they are. Not an auto-buy this time. I'll have to search for gameplay footage. Note that I skipped out on Sonic Wings Special because I didn't like the footage I saw of it. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember we can use some SNK fighters or something... i can use some Last blade...and still dreaming of NGP games...perhaps they can find their way on Vita... should look nice...nostalgia just hit home... POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # HuichoMember 5 you said Jeremy are the ones I am looking at. I will only spend 20 dollars on these so I will get those. Is Street Smart good? I kind of want it. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # manslayer911Member Ah, what I wouldn't do to have me another copy of SNK VS Capcom: Match Of The Millennium on a portable console today. Seriously! Today's handhelds r in dire need of that kind of old school brawling goodness. Let's not even get me started on all the other fighters I missed out on while I still had me an NGPC. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Neo Geo games are made available by a different company on PSN. Doesn't have anything to do with PSP Minis and G1M2. Don't see there ever being enough NGPC demand and enough titles to reach a critical mass necessary in order to code an emulator for it but I think it'd be neat if they did. I'd rather get 1980's arcade games though... For G1M2 Mini's, I'd argue the best releases besides Vanguard aren't even SNK games. Burnin' Rubber/Bump 'n' Jump and Lock 'n' Chase are classics that I love. These three are easily be most played Mini's at the very least. I could pretty easily do without all the others even though I'm glad I don't have to. Didn't G1M2 say that they were working on something to do with another arcade backcatalog of some other company? Looking forward to getting some details on that. And when they're done with SNK, I really hope they release a retail compilation of this stuff on a console. Dual analog controls would be a dream for a lot of these games with independent aiming (Ala what they did with Heavy Barrel, which used the same joystick, on their Data East Wii compilation). And to make it even better, map the primary fire button to the aiming stick so all you have to do is aim to fire your primary weapons (Repeatedly hitting a shoulder button to fire in Heavy Barrel while using both analog sticks at the same time wasn't ideal on the Wii collection and quickly killed your right hand). Then the only button you'd ever need to press would be a shoulder button for your secondary weapons (Usually grenades in these games). Still puzzled why they're not using the PSP's 4 face buttons for aiming. You'd get 8 directions of fire, independent aiming, and you could map your primary fire to the same buttons so aiming also fires your weapons with the shoulder buttons just handling firing your secondary weapon. Has worked fine in games in the past (Robotron 2084 and Smash TV on the Super Nintendo come to mind). POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # FreelanceMember I bet you'd never say that about pinball. If that were the case, I would've bought Marvel Pinball on the 3DS but yeah, I'd typically want more pinball than SHMUPs POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Neo Geo games are made available by a different company on PSN. Well, publishing for both NeoGeo Station and the SNK Minis is handled by SNK Playmore, so it's still the same set of (deaf) ears to which to appeal. I don't think anyone was going to try to approach G1M2 about anything, seeing as how quiet they've been of late and how little say they seem to have when it comes to SNKP's release scheduling. Didn't G1M2 say that they were working on something to do with another arcade backcatalog of some other company? I wonder if they were talking about the just-released Alpha Denshi stuff. Technically, since it's now owned by SNK, that shouldn't qualify as another company, though. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember seems like Gang wars may be a decent beat'em up...plus the guy looks a lot like Jackie Chan... pretty neat brawler considering how old it is POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # manslayer911Member I do hope these games r bundled up eventually, both physically and digitally across a variety of platforms. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember I don't see them standing a chance of being bundled digitally when they can ask $2.99 a pop for them. But a retail compilation for $30 or so doesn't seem like it would be out of the realm of possibilities. Both the PS3 and the 360 are at that point in their lifespans where we've typically been starting to get lots of nice classic compilations in past console generations. And G1M2 and SNK certainly both have lots of experience where such releases are concerned. Hopefully there's been some thought to taking advantage of these beyond as PSP Minis. I know I could sure use a nice classic compilation about now. Seems like it has been ages since things like Raiden Fighters Aces and Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection came out. "I wonder if they were talking about the just-released Alpha Denshi stuff. Technically, since it's now owned by SNK, that shouldn't qualify as another company, though." I hope not I think Alpha Mission was also Alpha Denshi, so if they are, that's a bit misleading on their part since I think that game came out in the 1st round of these things a couple of years ago. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember Unfortunately, I think the days of retail retro collections are over. And I think the only reason we are seeing these games in the first place is the relatively lax policy that Sony has towards Minis - basically anything a company wants to publish, they can. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember And as to controls, I think in part because the games are emulated and there are only so many buttons on the PSP. You need a button to insert coins, another to select players, another to pause and access emulator options. On Vanguard, which uses 4 buttons to shoot, all the other buttons are still used for that other stuff. Yet other games have buttons for things like dodging or throwing a grenade, or getting into a tank. Since those were mostly co-op, you'd gain one button back by not needing a 2 player button, but still, you'd be a button short. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember "SNK PLAYMORE is proud to announce the worldwide release of “BLAZING STAR”, the legendary NEOGEO 2D action shooting masterpiece, on iPhone & Android devices from today, July 26th, 2012. Shoot down enemies with your powerful options and various weapons!" too bad the Neo Geo games don't sell that well on PSN, or we have another awesome shooter to mess with...i like this one...fitting of its name POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Blazing Star looks fun. Hope it at least comes out on the Virtual Console (North American has gotten three VC Neo Geo releases this month, so it certainly stands a chance). Looks slated for a Japanese Virtual Console release. Its prequal, Pulstar, also looks like it deserves a release (And came out on Japan's VC a few weeks back). "Unfortunately, I think the days of retail retro collections are over." I disagree It looked to be the case during the early days of the PS3 and XBLA. But original releases have largely driven out the classic game rereleases from both services for the most part. And since being given up for dead back in 2005/2006, consoles have seen multiple excellent compilations. Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection, Raiden Fighters Aces, Namco Museum Vintage Arcade, and Data East Arcade Classics (Granted it's a Wii release but it rates a mention). I don't think the classic compilation is dead just yet (although I also don't believe it will ever return to the way it was before, sadly). POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # FreelanceMember Blazing Star looks cool. I'd prefer to have it on the Vita and its huge screeeeen. I wish Blazing Lasers came out though on PSN. Sucks I can't play my UMD SHMUPs on the Vita though. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AlfredMember Hello G1M2, Can i ask a question?. Can you please update Bermuda Triangle with portrait mode?. It's pretty difficult to play on my PSP 1003, I know i should get a PS3. Do Sony let you update your mini games for free like Microsoft let's devs on XBLIG?. Would you and SNK consider bringing SNK games to XBLIG. Xbox Live Indie Games can have online leaderboards and online multiplayer and you don't need to buy a dev kit or pay any money to get games age rated and unlike PS mini XBLIG are available in Japan. Maximum file size is 500mb for XBLIG. But you must keep it 150mb or under if you want to sell at 80 MSP. All XBLIG have game demo/trial and you can change the price of a game every 7 days. Microsoft gets 30%. (I think) XNA membership is $99 a year. Fortress craft has almost sold one million copies. There is a large STG and Arcade community on Xbox 360. Maybe you and SNK could try to get all these amazing Arcade games on Gameroom (It's not dead, It's taking a rest). G1M2 you and SNK should contact Microsoft. Thank you for the great games. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Emulation isn't an easy thing. I wonder if the 360's Indie games section would have the necessary power for a developer to enable porting their emulator to it (I don't think an Indie game has full access to the 360's capabilities)? Especially if they don't utilize a development kit (Although I'm sure G1M2 probably has several). Personally, I'd rather see them if they want to bring this stuff to the 360 and it isn't via a retail compilation, I'd like to see them create SNK Arcade Classics Volume 0 and put it up on Games on Demand or XBLA. Bundle everything together and going this route you'd also have online access with the necessary license. Going the Indie games route, these games are dead the second Xbox Live support ends someday since a constant connection to Xbox Live is mandatory for some reason for this game category. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember I'm with JeremyR on the retail retro collections thing. For SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 0 to have gotten canceled in North America, it must have been that SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 1 didn't sell well enough for SNK Playmore. I note that that title is one I often see in bargain bins and closeout stores. Certain, more popular IP may still get retail compilations, like yet another Sonic-branded bundle of content or Namco Museum, but the less mainstream stuff, I think that won't get the investment of physical manufacturing and distribution anymore. bringing SNK games to XBLIG I kind of think that ports of classic-era arcade games wouldn't be allowed on XBLIG, for the simple reason that they aren't indie games. unlike PS mini XBLIG are available in Japan Actually, even though Japan has no Minis program, nothing prevents Minis from being sold on the Japanese PS Store as non-Minis. FuturLab's been working on getting Coconut Dodge there for a while. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember "Bundle everything together and going this route you'd also have online access with the necessary license." Just for the record, I meant to say offline access. "For SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 0 to have gotten canceled in North America, it must have been that SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 1 didn't sell well enough for SNK Playmore." I imagine SNK Arcade Classics Volume 1 couldn't of been too much of a failure. It was ported within a few months to the Wii with a significant amount of polishing work done to it during the time between the PS2 release and the launch of the Wii build (Which means the PS2 port must've been successful enough to at least warrant continued work on the Wii build). And then well over a year later, the ESRB rated SNK Arcade Classics Volume 0. Not a step they'd take I would think if the first one was a failure (From what I hear, an ESRB rating for a retail release doesn't come cheap). I suspect the declining health of the North American PSP and PS2 market was what kept it away after a long gestation period (The time between news first hitting about it including the ESRB rating and finally coming out in Japan was very long and was in the neighborhood of 18 months... and a lot can and did happen to the PSP and PS2 marketplace during that time). I think an early 2011 release did it in. How many niche releases were hitting the store shelves for the PSP and PS2 here at that time? And I'm not talking something like a JRPG with a strong fanbase that is a guaranteed buyer for everything from that franchise and sometimes every release from a specific publisher in some extreme instances like with Working Designs fans... I'm talking the types of games where the diehard fans can be counted in the dozens to a few hundred with the majority of sales falling upon more casual purchasers like someone seeing a game they liked on the artwork as they notice it in a store and buying it as a result. "Certain, more popular IP may still get retail compilations, like yet another Sonic-branded bundle of content or Namco Museum, but the less mainstream stuff, I think that won't get the investment of physical manufacturing and distribution anymore." That aspect was always there though. That's why we don't have things like Exidy compilations and such. It's almost always with few exceptions been the heavy hitters getting rereleases. Rereleases of classics that were never very popular or fell out of the limelight long ago has always been very much the exception rather than the rule while things like Pac-Man and Defender got rereleased constantly. And what little there is usually is padding to fill out rosters on releases headlined by games like Defender and Pac-Man... Still, I have no doubt that digital distribution has altered the landscape so I don't disagree. But just the same, I think retail compilations still have a place and I think the outlook is brighter than back around 2005 when it looked like the future was $5 downloads of a single game with only the most popular of classics seeing rereleases. That's because they've seemed to have rebounded slightly since the early days of this generation (I cite things like the dominance original releases have on XBLA/PSN now that has driven out the 80's classics and retail compilations like Raiden Fighters Aces and Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection as proof of that; about the only classic rereleases being done during the first couple years of the PS3/360 was on XBLA and PSN). And with the rumors of things like requiring a persistent internet connection, it all could be a moot point anyways where the PS4 and Xbox 720 are concerned. A game on a disc without the freedom to do things like play offline isn't any more desirable than a download is to me. Heck, it's less desirable since if I have to put up with such severe limitations, I might as well have the convenience benefit of not changing discs. Hoping I'm right and that we can expect the occasional classic compilation release for at least a few more years. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Anyone tried the Monster World games on PSN/XBLA/VC? Wondering if that release is worth $10. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember I've decided that my next PS Store purchase will include Monster World IV and the Mini Where is my Heart?, but I've delayed making the buy until I finish the UMD I'm working on, the Japanese "kinetic novel" Planetarian (the going is kind of slow because I come across lots of vocabulary I don't know and have to look up). I did some research before coming to my decision; Monster World IV just looks like it might be the most fun one. Of course, if you're getting it on XBLA, you don't have to choose and can just get all 3 games for a better overall price. If I were in your position, I'd get the pack just because I've never played any of them before and am curious about the series . . . but then, that's partly because I'm not one of the AtariAgers who have classic consoles and game collections on hand and have been playing them for decades. Going back to the classic compilations topic, you make some good points, but what keeps me on the "I think they may not be coming back" side of the fence is things like Sega and SNK Playmore recently migrating to the singleton, download-only releases model with Genesis and Neo Geo games, away from the anthology releases they previously did. Maybe it will just be a firm-by-firm affair, with some companies choosing download-only individual releases, while other firms choose to do more retail collections. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember I'm pretty well set on buying it, but was hoping some would have some thoughts on it. Sega was releasing standalone Genesis releases on the Virtual Console, XBLA, and PSN well before Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection. So I'm not sure we can intepret things like these Monster World releases as an indication that they're finished with retail console compilations. And SNK's digital releases seemed to have died out as quickly as they started on PSN and XBLA. So hopefully that's also a good sign that the digital model isn't quite what it's made out to be where classic rereleases are concerned and that they'd be open to the idea of a retail compilation again someday. The sad part of it all is it probably doesn't even matter. Like I already said, it seems likely that the Xbox 720 and PS4 will have stringent limitations placed on physical media to combat used game sales. So unless a potential retail compilation comes to the Wii U which hopefully will have more of the freedom we've traditionally expected over retail releases, it may as well be a download as far as I'm concerned... POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Sega was releasing standalone Genesis releases on the Virtual Console, XBLA, and PSN well before Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection. Are you sure about that? I could have sworn no Genesis games were in the PS Store before the collection. Virtual Console, yes, Sega was there from the beginning--and they've never released a retail compilation on the Wii. If you end up buying Monster World before me, let me know what you think of it. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember I can't swear about PSN (I think the first batch or two actually arrived on PSN significantly later than they did on XBLA). But I'm 100% sure that XBLA was recieving standalone Genesis releases before Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection arrived. A quick check of the date stamps for some of my achievements shows me as having earned achievements for Ecco the Dolphin, arcade Golden Axe (Technically not a Genesis game), Sonic 1, Sonic 2, and Streets of Rage 2 way back in 2007. Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection, according to Wikipedia, was released in February 2009. Edit - Also according to Wikipedia, PSN didn't start recieving Genesis classics until mid 2011. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember I looked up Chopper I and The Next Space footage on YouTube. Chopper I looks like it might be one to buy for me, but The Next Space, as far as I could tell, seemed to be one of those games where they just randomly toss enemies at you. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Chopper I is fun. As I recall, I like the special attack in that game. Instead of something strange like in most shooters (Such as a magical bomb that somehow magically explodes everything in sight except you), you get several jets that carpet bombs the area. Fits the game well. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember I got Monster World IV yesterday. Fun game! . . . as evidenced by the multiple hours that mysteriously disappeared on me when I started playing. There's a little more platforming than I would like, but it has very charming graphics and sound, as well as lots of enjoyable world exploration. I did get hung up right at the start for a while, though, not realizing that doors could exist within areas accessed by doors. The translation appears solid--incidentally, the Japanese version comes with the game (save states are not cross-playable). Additional elements aside from the game include 3 trials ("get through X region within a target time") with leaderboards--not a whole lot of people appear to have played these, and seriously, it asks for 5 minutes through that lava level that took me hours?--and a music player that can mix tracks from all the titles in the Sega Vintage Collection. The framework appears to be similar to how the Neo Geo Station does things, with a separate save file for the overall collection. In terms of the emulator, it allows you to customize the controls, which I should probably do given how often I pressed the wrong buttons, and there are numerous scaling options for the display. I chose "Fine," which seems to be the best balance between preserving the original aspect ratio (which had differently shaped pixels) and keeping as close to integer multipliers as possible. You can also add scanlines and blurring smoothing if you want. To fill out the empty space surrounding the game screen, there are 3 cute wallpaper options, as well as the cold, empty nothing option. When running the game, there is a software manual you can access from the pause menu, which also lets you save/load states at any time independently from the original in-game save system. Overall, good stuff for my $5, even better for your $10 with 2 additional games. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Sounds very promising Thanks for posting your impressions. It'll be going to the front of my list the next time I buy a points card. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember not realizing that doors could exist within areas accessed by doors To clarify, I didn't recognize a background element as a door. Thought it was just a decoration on a wall. 3 trials ("get through X region within a target time") with leaderboards--not a whole lot of people appear to have played these, and seriously, it asks for 5 minutes through that lava level that took me hours? I've actually successfully completed two of the trials now, including that lava one I complained about above. The lava trial is only the last part of that level; my best run was around 2 minutes, maybe 3, so it's really not that bad. The Tower of Silence trial was only a little longer. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Woohoo! I've beaten Monster World IV and also gotten all the Trophies. It was a lot of fun--well, except for the Castle in the Sky portion. That was filled with the bane of my gaming existence, platforming. Somehow, I managed to get through it (and the rest of the game, too!) only making save states at actual save points in the game. Well, I made save states at important landmarks, too (like dialogue and boss fights), but those were not used for continuing if I died (which never happened) or reset, just for later viewing to get to the good parts quickly. I played the game as if I were playing it on a Genesis/Mega Drive, which really did lead to worrying about Game Over at certain points. I managed to kill the ice boss with only 1 hit remaining of my life (though I did have a full-life refill available if it came to that). And, I beat the final boss having used up my full-life refill during the fight. Still, I never did have to escape back to town and redo any of the dungeons, which is pretty good for a first-timer, especially one who filled up his inventory with gold bars and thus forced himself to run back and forth in the ice dungeon, through all those enemies and environmental hazards, multiple times to get things done with the few inventory slots left. ### BEGIN SPOILER ### About that final dungeon, though, I took things "the hard way" and went through it in one go. This dungeon features several mini-bosses, some of which hurt me quite a bit, before the final boss. I discovered later, though, that if you exit the dungeon back to town and then return to the dungeon, any mini-bosses you've already beaten will not be there when you come back, which REALLY helps preserve your life. Now, how did I discover this? After beating the game, I reloaded my not-for-continues save state right before the final boss and exited the dungeon, back to town. The reason for that was that I had read that the best sword and shield in the game become available if you do that, so I wanted to see what that was like. Sort of like a New Game+, if you will, though only on the final dungeon. Coming back into the dungeon with the best equipment AND not having to deal with the mini-bosses, that made things so much easier that I went into the final boss fight with full life and a full-life refill still in my inventory. ### END SPOILER ### After beating the game, I gave the third (of three) time trial a go, which is a run through the final dungeon (not including the final boss). They give you a target of 30 minutes, but I did it in ~8 minutes, for rank 25 out of less than 60 on the leaderboard; yay, top half finish! I was just outside the top half for the lava trial. Worth the $5, definitely. Even with all those missed jumps in the Castle in the Sky. I guess we should go back to SNK Minis discussion now. . . . POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember One can still dream for Last blade....at least it's on Wii VC, and real cheap... POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember sniper712, it seems the PS1 version of The Last Blade is available in the Japanese PS Store (has been for over 5 years). Make a Japanese PSN account, and it could be yours. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember The Last Blade is available in the Japanese PS Store (has been for over 5 years). i hate you so much right now Japan.... Wii VC it is... POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Is Blazing Star for the Neo Geo supposed to become a PSP Mini? Supposedly it was announced as such the same time as Gang Wars was. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember I think that's just some confusion, from two SNK press releases being announced close together. If you look at SNK's press release history, they announced Gang Wars and Time Soldiers for Minis on July 24th, followed by Blazing Starfor iOS/Android on the 26th. The only non-secondhand source I can find for Blazing Star being released as a Mini is a Sacramento TV station's website, oddly enough, on July 24th. Other sources point to this article, which, by the way, misstates Blazing Star's original release year as 1989. It's from 1998, pretty far into the Neo Geo's life. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # HuichoMember i hate you so much right now Japan.... Wii VC it is... Just do the system I made up (I think), make a Japanese PSN account and get a Japanese code. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Publishers were starting to make me second guess myself, but we have another decent retail compilation coming home. It's titled Midway Arcade Origins and will release in November for $30 on the PS3 and 360. Hopefully a Vita port will happen since the Vita seems like it could do these justice with good controls and the Vita's nice hires screen (Plus mentioning it means someone now can't post that this is off-topic since it has nothing to do with the PSP or its successor, lol). http://www.examiner.com/article/master-30-golden-age-arcade-classics-midway-arcade-origins Not too happy with the gamelist. Lots of games from the Midway Arcade Treasures trilogy are missing (Timber :was a favorite but is absent here), none of the licensed games (Midway used to relicense games they published in the arcades back in the 80's for compilations on occasion... that's how they did Atari compilations and that's how Moon Patrol and Burgertime showed up in their compilations), and only one of the many missing classics that have yet to appear in compilation form is here (The rare expanded version of Vindicators). AWOL still are things like Domino Man and Solar Fox joining many others in their lineup yet to be included in a compilation. But it's still an arcade compilation, will be coming on a physical disc, it has 30 games (Many of which are great and have stood the test of time well), it has online leaderboards, has trophies/achievements, gives them a chance to fix past issues (Wizard of Wor in particular was emulated poorly on last gen consoles), and it should look nice on HD sets if their earlier XBLA/PSN standalone releases are any indication. So at a buck a game, they can count me in even if they don't have me quite foaming at the mouth at the prospects of getting this (Which better coverage of their past compilations, another 8-12 games new to their compilations, and some goodies like wheel support for games like Roadblasters and Hard Drivin' and mouse support on the PS3 for games like Marble Madness, would've probably of accomplished). Appears set to be a solid collection despite not really treading new ground. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # FreelanceMember Root Beer Tapper and RAMPAGE!!! Will get if it comes to Vita! I will be very sad if they don't!!! As for the other games, I either hated (ex. Joust), never heard of before (ex. Robotron 2084), or remember playing them on the NES (ex. Super Off Road, assuming it's the same game as this one.) you'd think ppl would agree that arcade games are best played in short bursts and therefore are perfect for handhelds but nooooooooooooooo. I've always wanted to play Rampage on the go on a big Vita screen POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember I either hated (ex. Joust), What?! never heard of before (ex. Robotron 2084) WHAT???! Robotron is typically credited with being the first twin-stick shooter. I'm not sure if it's really the first or if it's just the first to do it and become really popular, but it's well known among classic arcade titles. Eugene Jarvis, designer of the game (and currently founder/head of arcade developer Raw Thrills--I met him in 2005, by the way), used two sticks because he had injured his hand in a car accident and needed a control method he could use while wearing a cast. Anyway, Robotron is quite fun but, for mere mortals like me, quite difficult. Simply passing the first brain stage is a good run for me. It's one of the games on my arcade cabinet (actually, a bunch of the titles in this new Midway collection are on my cabinet, since the cabinet includes most of the PC compilations Midway Arcade Treasures and Midway Arcade Treasures: Deluxe Edition--which themselves are essentially equivalent to MAT1, MAT2, and MAT3 on the consoles, but with the addition of the original Mortal Kombat). I'm not sure yet if I'm going to get this new compilation. As Atariboy noted, it's kind of a step back, with less content than its MAT-series predecessors and almost nothing new. It makes me wonder . . . maybe the titles not part of the collection aren't there because they're not owned by Warner now. Warner bought most of Midway's properties when it collapsed, yes, but as we know from the Hydro Thunder example, not all. Perhaps what's in this collection is all they've got (Mortal Kombat excepted)? Incidentally, this is being developed by Backbone Entertainment, but their emulation specialists were in the Digital Eclipse Vancouver studio, which has been closed for several years (some of the members are now at Code Mystics, founded by former DE Vancouver head Jeff Vavasour). Thus, it's a bit hard to say whether their work on this will be up to snuff with their earlier emulation collections. Then again, Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection was done by Backbone without DE Vancouver, and that went well, I believe. To put this back on topic . . . SNK, this is the kind of thing we'd like to see, please. And DO include the rotated-screen mode for your vertically oriented games, even with being on home consoles. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Except for Space Harrier. The emulation on that unlockable coinop was botched completely on Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection. Pretty much complaint free otherwise except for the lack of manual scans like various 2600 compilations have seen (Which is pretty darn good for such a large compilation to have so little issues). Oh and not including Sonic 3 + Knuckles was an underhanded way to get those that bought this disc to double dip with the digital releases. I fear though about most of their emulation team being gone these days like you said where this release is concerned. Wizard of Wor for instance was far off the mark on MAT2. So I'm worried we're merely getting ports of past work and that such issues won't be addressed here. Will be easy when this releases to tell simply by firing up that game. If it's still running at twice the speed it's supposed to (Not to mention numerous audio issues), it will tell us the true nature of this release. As for the missing games, perhaps, but we're also not getting the original Vindicators in this compilation (Like we got before) but rather a Championship Sprint type deal that only a few hundred were produced of shortly afterwards (Both of which were basically rereleases with some things removed and some stuff added, but otherwise the same game more or less and all but indistinguishable at a glance). So it doesn't seem like they'd own this but not own the other in this case (To me, both falling under different ownership almost would be like the B&W version of It's a Wonderful Life being owned by one company and a colorized version by another... just doesn't make sense). So going off Vindicators and what's basically Vindicators 1.1, I suspect many of these missing games are under their ownership but that they made some decision for one reason or another to not include them here and instead cherry picked just 30 games from their library to release here. At least that's what I'm hoping. Would be ashame if some classic properties are more or less in limbo if the trustee wasn't able to lineup a buyer or if they went to someone that isn't going to take advantage of them. Need a certain critical mass to do a compilation or a digital rerelease program and if some oldies were sold off in small numbers, it all but guarantees that they're going to remain hidden in the future. So I hope most of the coinop library remains in common ownership barring a big name property that can stand on its own feet like Hydro Thunder. Sadly we all know how common compilations are these days so I'll refrain from saying that perhaps they held things back like Paperboy for a potential sequel since chances are it won't get one. Maybe the contract just called for a 30 game collection from the former Digital Eclipse studio and these were the ones that simply just made the cut when they created a roster. Worth getting here just to satisfy my curiousity. But hopefully things like Wizard of Wor run better, the audio in Root Beer Tapper will be perfect (Only is in the XBLA release, it's off for certain sounds in every compilation so it would be nice to get a perfect version in physical form), and the problem free games like Defender will remain problem free so this will be useful for actually enjoying the included games. Edit - Being concise and to the point was never my strong suit. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember The emulation on that unlockable coinop was botched completely on Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection. What was wrong with it? I remember playing the collection's Space Harrier and not thinking anything might be off with it. So going off Vindicators and what's basically Vindicators 1.1, I suspect many of these missing games are under their ownership but that they made some decision for one reason or another to not include them here and instead cherry picked just 30 games from their library to release here. Well, you could also view it in the sense that, since the two Vindicators are nearly identical, there wasn't any point in including both if the later one was like a "final version" of the first. So I hope most of the coinop library remains in common ownership barring a big name property that can stand on its own feet like Hydro Thunder. I'm kind of curious whether Microsoft got Hydro Thunder alone or the entire Thunder series. Mildly interested in Arctic Thunder, since it's the last of the series. Of course, I'm still gunning for a home version of Specular Interactive's H2Overdrive. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember "What was wrong with it? I remember playing the collection's Space Harrier and not thinking anything might be off with it." The audio is really screwed up in it. Fire it up and them compare it with videos of the arcade game or to the accurate ports of it on the 32X and Saturn (I assume it's also accurate in the Japanese budget Space Harrier collection for the PS2). You won't have any trouble telling that it's far off the mark. It's still very playable though and the audio isn't off in the grating way that some emulation programs are (Like that Genesis collection Sega released for the Dreamcast... was painful just to listen to it). "Well, you could also view it in the sense that, since the two Vindicators are nearly identical, there wasn't any point in including both if the later one was like a "final version" of the first." It isn't though. It's basically a stripped down version of it that was sold as a conversion kit for Gauntlet machines. Only 10 of the 14 levels from the original are there, the voice work was changed from a robotic voice to a more human voice, a few powerups were added, and the ability to fire multiple shots was added. Otherwise it's the same game, the same levels (The one's that they kept, at least), the same graphics, the same music, the same sound, etc. If one is superior to the other, I'm thinking it's probably the original unless they added new levels to Part II to compensate for those levels that were stripped out of it (I've never played Part II, just going off what I'm reading at KLOV and Wikipedia). I suspect your theory is why Cyberball isn't here and the tournament edition is though. Has everything the original has while having several enhancements. But the Vindicators situation seems more akin to a deal like Super Sprint and Championship Sprint, both of which are included here. "I'm kind of curious whether Microsoft got Hydro Thunder alone or the entire Thunder series. Mildly interested in Arctic Thunder, since it's the last of the series. Of course, I'm still gunning for a home version of Specular Interactive's H2Overdrive." Same here on both counts. In fact I loved H20verdrive so much that Hydro Thunder Hurricane, Microsoft's take on a sequel, left me rather disappointed. Hope Raw Thrills (Aren't they the publisher? I'm guessing Specular must've been the developer?) considers bringing it home eventually. I don't think it's of any use for you since I don't think you delve into older consoles much, but Arctic Thunder at least got a last gen home port on a couple of consoles. The PS2 version had a poor frame rate that disappointed me but I hear the Xbox version does justice to it (At least as much as a home port could without the fan blowing air on you, the sitdown cabinet, the arcade atmosphere, etc.). POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Hope Raw Thrills (Aren't they the publisher? I'm guessing Specular must've been the developer?) considers bringing it home eventually. Yes, Raw Thrills produced and distributed the cabinets. Not sure who actually owns the IP, come to think of it. Specular was assembled just to create H2Overdrive; Jarvis got several of the original Hydro Thunder team to come together and start a new development studio after he received multiple requests from his clients for something akin to Hydro Thunder. After H2Overdrive, Specular has gone on to make a land-based racer, Dirty Drivin' (named in homage to the Hard Drivin' series, maybe?), as well as a secret current project. I did look up the Arctic Thunder home versions, but since the PS2 version got poor reviews and I am not inclined to get an Xbox, I wasn't motivated to acquire either. Besides, there's also the fact that history seems to record Hydro Thunder as being the highlight of the series. At least, I've almost never seen discussions about it even refer to the other Thunder games. Sooo . . . those SNK Minis . . . I wonder why we never got the first 20 HALs, eh? POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember I think Arctic Thunder was pretty well recieved. I used to see them almost as often as Hydro Thunder (Which was pretty frequently), although the continued loss of places that actually have arcade game and the progress of time means it has been 3 or 4 years since I've seen either on location anywhere. So I imagine that's a sign that customers were putting in a fair share of quarters into them. And of course it saw standalone home ports just like Hydro Thunder did which can be interpreted as a sign that it was well liked. Either way, I liked it at least in multiplayer. I never even saw a Offroad Thunder machine, although thanks to Midway Arcade Treasures 3, I've at least played it. Not a big loss since it's very average so I understand why I never saw one on location. I think the other two are exceptional arcade racers though when played with a friend. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Picked up 4 Wheel Thunder for the Dreamcast after talking about the series in this thread... Disappointing game that borrows the branding to help sell itself despite having little in common with the other games beyond being a racing game and having boost that you can pick up. The physics, tracks, and the overall feel and atmosphere is nothing like something like Hydro Thunder. Seems like a solid but average game. But it fails horribly at being a Midway 'Thunder' release... POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember Looks like Backbone, which is developing that Midway compilation, might be going under http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/10/09/death-jr-dev-faces-closure POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Oh well They're produced very little of interest to me since shuttering the Digital Eclipse studio. So what would've been a sad farewell at one time instead just elicits thoughts about putting them out of their misery. And since then what they have released that has been of interest to me has still been emulation based which makes it even more difficult to dredge up some sympathy about a company that was once growing so nicely years ago that voluntarily killed its own heart in a mistaken attempt to try to enter mainstream game development and publishing instead of focusing on its core strengths. I just hope Midway Arcade Origins is uneffected since I'm sure it's not finished yet. Classic compilations always seem to just squeek by under the wire and we're still over a month away from scheduled release. So I'm sure they're busy doing some last minute touches and probably haven't even gone through their own QA process yet with MS certification and actual manufacturing probably being due late this month. Warner can just go to Code Mystics if they want to create Midway Arcade Evolved for Fall 2013. Their presence, which is composed of the heart of the old Digital Eclipse team, is still going strong as an independent operation. They'd of been my first choice for this project as well if it had been up to me (I picture Backbone simply just porting past work that Digital Eclipse did from source code files instead of actually doing things like addressing numerous issues that existed on the MAT trilogy that need fixing). So the possible absence of Backbone in 2013 shouldn't be a roadblock if they want to program a 'Midway Arcade Evolved' release as a sequel. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Any word on more SNK Minis? Midway Arcade Origins comes out next Tuesday for those that may be interested. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember No, not a word. Bu I saw that iOS is getting a Vectrex collection. Supposedly will eventually have all 29 original games, which is curious since many were licensed IPs. Grr, why can't Playstation Mobile get that? POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # FreelanceMember I'm an old timer and I never heard of the Vectrex before. Vector graphics are always neat though. Why can't handhelds get this? POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember What about the Microvision? I had a friend with one of those. The games weren't so great, though. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember I'm an old timer and I never heard of the Vectrex before. Oh, then you should definitely check out the Vectrex pictures I posted about a while back. That was some very nice-looking rare stuff in that collection. As for SNK Minis, though, the silence on the front is almost eerie. There's been nothing for a good while, and much of what has been released most recently still hasn't made it to Europe, I believe. Will that final Vol. 0 title ever be released? POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # FreelanceMember Never heard of the Microvision either. I knew about Atari and Commodore but not these things. Neat Vetrex kiosk by the way. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember I've been playing Ikari Warriors on the Vita and it works pretty well. You just map the second stick to the face buttons, and then have square and O rotate left and right. Still not direction aiming, but you can spin your guy around just by pressing and holding, rather than having to tap the buttons POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember It does sound significantly better than buttons. When I get a Vita, I don't think it will change my mind on the bulk of the LS30 games. But I'll definitely be giving TNK III a go on it. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Been three months now since the last game was released. I have a feeling that's it at least as far as PSP Minis are concerned. I suppose we can't complain when G1M2/SNK seemingly outlasted pretty much every other Minis publisher out there while perhaps being the most prolific one as well. Hopefully they pop up elsewhere and continue to bring us arcade classics in our homes. Vanguard, Bump 'n' Jump, and Lock 'n' Chase all have been receiving regular play since release and many of the other's have been enjoyed as well. So I'm very grateful for what we've had the opportunity to download over the past two and a half years. It has been a good run. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember I'm grateful (and amazed) just getting Vanguard, which was a favorite since I was a kid. Some other interesting games, too, like Ozma Wars and Marvin's Maze. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember I thought that some of the audio in Vanguard would keep that one away forever (Especially when Vanguard 2 appeared in SNK Arcade Classics 0 without the original). Was sure nice to get the arcade version of that at home and fully intact. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember One made it into the 2600 version, so I figured Queen didn't care (heck, there's a whole video game series based on one of their albums and using names and places from their albums), but probably a good thing Gene Roddenberry never got wind of the other. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember If the SNK Minis really are over, then it's kind of odd that they released everything that was in SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 0 except one, and then released a few things that weren't in that. Then again, maybe they had planned to release that remaining title at some later date but eventually changed their minds, based on Minis sales declining. Or maybe they simply never believed that particular game would sell (perhaps it sucks?). POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember I wonder what happened to Safari Rally. Not that I was dying to play it, mind you, but still, it was announced. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember I suppose they might not be done. But after semi regular updates all year, it seems strange now that we're in the midst of the Christmas shopping season to not have some new Minis releasing for people to consider spending their gift cards on after purchasing points with or points cards that they may receive as gifts. Posting from my 360 so it isn't handy to go check, but didn't Taito release a B&W game just like Safari Rally? Seems like some of us speculated that SNK might've decided at the last minute that it wasn't actually clear to release. I got a feeling from what Onmode pointed out that they had more stuff lined up. I doubt they just had that one game left on the table when they apparently decided to pull the plug. If SNK or G1M2 reads this, think retail console compilation. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Posting from my 360 so it isn't handy to go check, but didn't Taito release a B&W game just like Safari Rally? Seems like some of us speculated that SNK might've decided at the last minute that it wasn't actually clear to release. I found the post you were talking about, I think. Not sure what it means as far as current ownership; I think it would be unlikely for Taito to have any ownership stake in a game that still says only another company's name on screen. Taito has published other firms' games in arcades (and on consoles), but I don't think ownership was ever part of such things. By the way, Atariboy, do you know if the recent Midway collection's rendition of Sinistar uses 49 directions on the analog stick? I recently attempted in vain to defeat the Sinistar even once on my Awecade cabinet but was hampered by the 8-way stick. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember This rendition has more than the 8 directions of movement that many earlier ports and emulations of it had. So it should be much more pleasing to you to play. If you have any way to record gameplay and upload it to YouTube, you should if you purchase this. Everybody showing this release off on there has no clue how to play Sinistar when they get to it. They just randomly fly around shooting things until Sinistar is finished forming and then they die. They have no clue that your mission is to mine bombs from the asteroids so you can destroy Sinistar. I have Midway Arcade Treasures Extended Play on the way for the PSP at the moment. I believe it's my first UMD game in several years. I resisted buying it five years ago or so since it seemed superfluous with the console efforts, but I decided I couldn't resist checking it out finally. I think the two Capcom collections might be next on my list (Which I also skipped since I purchased the Xbox releases with a few extra games). Was there ever a bundle with both of them available for a cheap price? POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember I don't have a YouTube account, nor any way to record gameplay. I'm pretty sure I've killed the Sinistar at least once on my Awecade machine, years ago, but I didn't even come close during my recent attempts. I think he had, like, 5 pieces left in my best run. Kept missing out on ore pieces. Robotron, though, I may have set myself a new high score (still dismal by real players' standards, though). As far as I know, there was never a Capcom bundle, but as I never considered myself in the market for the PSP Capcom retro collections (had the PS2 releases), I never actively looked into them. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember I don't think there was a bundle, but they've been on sale for $4.99 each. I got Reloaded POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Digital or was that a sale on the UMD versions somewhere? Since my interest in them is due to being on a handheld and since the PSP 3000's d-pad should be up to the task, I'd rather not download them. Downloads of material that is also available on UMD for me has been restricted to games I wanted to play on my PSP Go hooked up to my HDTV with my PSP upscaler and my old PS3 SixAxis controller. So my downloads have mostly been limited to the more modern 3D games (I hate the PSP's analog nub) and my actual UMD purchases have been games that would play well with a d-pad like classic compilations. The only exceptions someday I think will be when I buy a Vita. I want to download the Activision 2600 collection even though I own the UMD release (I love those games and a download on a Vita will be nice and convenient) and Gran Turismo PSP (No desire to play on my Go on my TV when I have all the console versions available and no desire to play on a PSP with that awful analog nub...but it seems perfect for a Vita game with a proper analog stick). Wish I could download Outrun Coast 2 Coast when I get a Vita someday. That's the UMD game that first showed me how awful the PSP's analog nub was so I'd love to be able to enjoy it on the Vita with proper controls finally when I'm in the mood for some handheld Outrun fun. But Sega never made it available and now they don't even have a valid Ferrari license. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember still dreaming of Last blade on my Vita one of those days...or the possibility of NGPC games...those sprites are some of the best for a handheld...nostalgia kicking me badly again... POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember It was digital, dunno when it was, I think this summer? Relatively recently at least. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember In what I believe is G-Mode's (Edit - I got G1M2 mixed up with G-Mode, so my speculation is likely meaningless where these SNK classics are concerned) first Virtual Console release, Burgertime by Data East is now available on the Nintendo Wii. Even though the Wii isn't too far behind the PSP when it comes to commercially dying here, perhaps this represents their new direction for their classic coinop emulations for the next couple of years. Seems odd otherwise why they released 3 of the 4 early 80's releases that were on Data East Arcade Classics as PSP Minis yet the 4th is for the Wii. Not to mention the recent long period of inactivity here that we've been discussing. Hopefully we get some of the SNK classics that could use a 2nd stick and/or 2 players on the VC. And some new stuff yet to be seen in the past 15 years of arcade rereleases thanks to the wonders of emulation would be nice to see. Many candidates left in the 80's arcade back catalogs of SNK and Data East. And perhaps they will license games from elsewhere (They hinted at that a while back). Hope someone does Berzerk and Frenzy someday. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember It's not even the arcade game and is just the NES version. And it's 100% G-Mode since they're the publisher and no emulation work from G1M2 is required. So it has nothing to do with G1M2 and the guesses I were making based off this release have absolutely no foundation here. Hopefully they move on to a new platform soon. Not much else happening outside of them in recent years on consoles/handhelds where classic arcade gaming is concerned. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember As I recall from AtariAge forum discussions, the BurgerTime port generally agreed on as being the best is the Intellivision's. I get the feeling that will never be re-released in any modern marketplace, though. I suppose there is a faint chance of it happening, in view of Activision games being on the Atari Flashback 2, Taito games being on AtGames' Atari Flashback 4, Capcom games being on AtGames' latest portable Genesis emulator, etc. But, G-Mode tying up with the Blue Sky Rangers seems to have a lower probability of occurrence. Where would G1M2/SNK go, I wonder? Pre-Neo Geo games by SNK are too obscure for something as casual as iOS/Android. They would probably sell even worse there than they did as Minis. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Intellivision Products has licensed the Activision/Imagic library in the past so there's some precedence there for acquiring rights. Relicensing some rights in order to rerelease games they own that Mattel/INTV Productions programmed and released back in the day seems to have a bit of a chance in the future. Three of their most iconic games on the Intellivision from any publisher were Mattel's own ports of Bump 'n' Jump, Lock 'n' Chase, and most of all, Burgertime (Which is often the game you'll see someone complain about missing from a collection). And they're nice arcade games, something there's not nearly enough of when Intellivision does an Intellivision collection. Much like Atari's unlicensed 2600 library of original console efforts, many of the Intellivision counterparts sucked 30 years ago and many of the nice games haven't aged well or require two players. So a few more arcade style games to go along with things like Thin Ice would be welcome. And acquiring what they need from G-Mode for those three games would also allow them to release the unofficial Burgertime sequel called Diner as well. And their Dig Dug (INTV licensed the AtariSoft game and rereleased it in the late 80's) Easter Egg called 'Deadly Dogs', which was a hack of Mattel's standalone game TRON Deadly Discs that replaced the Tron characters with the hot dogs from Burgertime, would also be releasable as is after extracting it from Dig Dug if they licensed some rights from G-Mode (It certainly would stand no chance seeing the light of day as a Tron game). And G-Mode is in the business of licensing their properties out with direct publishing seemingly more of a secondary function of the company. So I imagine they're more aware of the true value of their properties in such a deal than other companies might be that may tend to overvalue their IP. So those three properties might not be so out of reach. Hopefully they do a Wii U collection and pull out all the stops someday and approach G-Mode (The gamepad is perfect for one). Or perhaps go the DLC route for licensed properties if that's what it takes to get classics from companies like Activision out there. "Where would G1M2/SNK go, I wonder? Pre-Neo Geo games by SNK are too obscure for something as casual as iOS/Android. They would probably sell even worse there than they did as Minis." Wish I had a idea but it does seem like there's no real avenue now with the death of PSP Minis to release standalone digital versions of more obscure classic arcade games. Microsoft and Sony really need to consider Virtual Console type services now that PSN Arcade and XBLA have outgrown classic rereleases for the most part. And I really don't see Wii U's own Virtual Console, if it even has an arcade section when it launches, as being the ideal marketplace for old arcade games aimed at classic gaming fans. So I don't see the Wii U being their savior. It's ashame that Microsoft had just such a service but let it die when the developer went kaput. Game Room had so much potential and G1M2 could've made a perfect fit, but it just wasn't properly supported by Microsoft. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember To fill the niche that SNK's departure in the Mini's category has left, I finally got around to buying a lot of Game Room content on the Xbox 360. I limited it to game's I figured I'd like and beyond the exception of three of my favorite Activision 2600 games and Thin Ice on the Intellivision, I just purchased game's I didn't already own in a previous collection or on a download service (Not to mention that I have the ability to play all the 2600 and Intellivision releases on real hardware). Anyways, to get to the point, I wondered if anyone like Onmode has ever played Flak Attack, Finalizer, and Mega Zone. All are vertically scrolling arcade shooters and all are from Konami (As are the vast majority of my purchases here). I've been unusually disappointed so far by all three. Flak Attack kick's my butt way too soon, Finalizer isn't nearly as neat as it looked at first glance and really ramp's up in difficulty too quickly, and Mega Zone is rather plain but has a bit of early 80's charm that might draw me in eventually. And Midway Arcade Origins is also helping fill my arcade need's. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Anyways, to get to the point, I wondered if anyone like Onmode has ever played Flak Attack, Finalizer, and Mega Zone. I've, er, actually never even heard of any of them. ? Now I have to go find my scourge. Also, I get the distinct feeling that you're . . . baiting me, with all those extra apostrophes. But I'm holding strong! So far. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember Now I have to go find my scourge. If it were anyone but you, I'd think they were kidding... POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember I've always tended to use those when I shouldn't. I've kicked a few bad habits in recent years though. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember I honestly thought for several minutes that you were talking about scourges. Last night, I looked up footage for those 3 games on YouTube. Flak Attack, which it seems was the Japanese name for MX5000, does look pretty difficult. Finalizer came off as tedious to me. Mega Zone does seem rather interesting, if primitive. If Flak Attack and Mega Zone came out in PS Home Arcade for the same price Time Pilot asks, I think I'd get them. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Now you're going to have to fill me in. Just what is a scourge? Some strange reference to someone that plays Konami published arcade games or overuses apostrophes in situations they're not appropriate to use according to English grammar punctuation rules? Beyond tending towards being long winded with my reponses since brevity was never my strong suit, I think I'm above average where forumgoers are concerned when it comes to following English language laws. And hopefully I'm correcting more mistakes over time than I'm introducing to my writing now that I'm several years past earning my MBA. I'd hate to be regressing in this area. Correct apostrophe use was never one of my best points though. English class when it came down to things like diagraming a sentence and such during grade school was probably my most disliked area. Contractions are no problem nor is using it to change something into a plural if it's not a word but is instead something like a designation or acronym (PSP's would be far more commonly seen than PSPs, for an example). But correctly using it to mark a possessive case and when it should be applied at the end of a word are certainly weak areas. Not to mention sticking it in at points where it just doesn't belong. It would be better around here if we didn't have a 60 minute edit rule so my window to catch mistakes and correct them was wider. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember A scourge is that thing that flagellants used to punish themselves with, sort of like a short whip with several different thongs. Slightly less painful than playing through Samurai Beatdown POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Beyond tending towards being long winded with my reponses I'm a card-carrying member of the same club. I think I'm above average where forumgoers are concerned when it comes to following English language laws. Oh, I certainly don't dispute that, which was why the apostrophe thing struck me as odd, almost as if were an all-too-obvious intentional lure for unsuspecting grammar cops. Not to mention sticking it in at points where it just doesn't belong. I' d'ont kn''ow w'hat yo'ure' tal'king ab'out''. '' ' POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember Perhaps one day there may be signs of hope we get some good Neo geo pocket games on a handheld, total retro bliss... POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Wonder what G1M2 are up to these days. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # onmode-kyMember Probably just uncredited contract work on other firms' games. I'm not aware of any emulation-based releases of late that might be all-G1M2 work (not counting the NeoGeo X, which, well, I'd be surprised if that were theirs). I wonder if SNK Playmore ever considered moving from Minis to PlayStation Mobile. Granted, doing so would render their releases unplayable on the PS3, which was a major part of the draw for Minis developers. Come to think of it, what has SNK Playmore done lately? Their press releases for the past 5 months solely encompass releasing Metal Slug games on iOS/Android. Did they give up on everything else? POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember Supposedly SNK is hiring people for a new game. King of Fighters? I don't remember, saw a headline, didn't click on it because I don't care about fighters much. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember I don't know if it counts, but SNK releases from the Neo Geo are still trickling onto the Wii Virtual Console through a licensing agreement with D4 Enterprise every two or three weeks. The King of Fighters '99 just came out on Thursday for instance. Sure doesn't seem like they do much of anything these days though. POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember Maybe the Ouya can emulate those games... POSTED 6 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember Yeah...it's going to be an eternity. POSTED 5 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember Eternity can be so long... POSTED 4 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember Imma gonna keep waiting... This must be how Shenmue 3 fans felt. POSTED 3 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember How come SAR: Search & Rescue never got reviewed? POSTED 3 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember I don't know. When was it released? POSTED 3 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember Odd, it's there now. I was looking to check that the five releases that came after this one's release in March 2012 had been reviewed, and suddenly it's right there. I swear that I looked twice before I posted that earlier and there was no sign of it. POSTED 3 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember I don't know if I remember that or not. Did it have a triangular logo? I don't remember anything about the gameplay, but I think I remember the logo. POSTED 3 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember You're thinking of Bermuda Triangle. POSTED 3 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember No, I was sort of right I guess more a trapezoid than triangle Isosceles trapezoid. I have no memory of the game other than that. It's eerie re-reading the review I wrote because I have no memory of it. And speaking of things I have no memory of, there is a MAME for the Ouya (referencing Sniper's comment) but I have no idea how to get the roms on it. I know I managed it once, because I have 2600, SNES, Genesis, and N64 Roms on it. But for the life of me I cannot remember how now that I want to get mame roms on it. POSTED 3 YEARS AGO # AXMMember You mean you can't download them from, say, Emuparadise, like a regular Android device? Huh, a guide I just read tells you to download Dropbox (an .apk of it?), upload the roms from your computer to Dropbox and download them to your Ouya. POSTED 3 YEARS AGO # JeremyRMember Hmmm, that doesn't sound familiar. I think I just plugged it into my computer somehow, but I'll be damned if I can remember how. POSTED 3 YEARS AGO # AtariboyMember If you had asked for the one with the trapezoidal logo, I'd of said that one. POSTED 3 YEARS AGO # Sniper D. LuffyMember Between last blade 2 and garou.... Close enough POSTED 2 YEARS AGO # Edited July 22, 2019 by Atariboy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sniper D. Luffy Posted July 22, 2019 Share Posted July 22, 2019 Much cleaner due to the spoiler tag Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeremyR Posted July 23, 2019 Share Posted July 23, 2019 I think pretty clearly, SNK peaked with Vanguard. I'm sure others will disagree. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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