The Sunday Night Shmup thread

Well, now you know as Free Mcboot does play burned discs. I had PS2 games that didn’t read well at all but I rip the games and burned them to blank DVDs and those worked perfectly with Free Mcboot.

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Thanks for clarifying! I might need to update to a newer FMB version then. All I had read about it, prior to acquiring a FMB-enabled memory card, said it was only capable of reading ISOs and files from a hard drive or USB, so that must have been either bad info, or it’s functionality that was added later.

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Wow, nice to see the HuCard and case in the flesh there!

I’ve wanted to play this for a long time, it’s a shame it’s not going to be on the PC Engine Mini.

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Yeah, it might had been added later on then because it works flawlessly for me, it was the only way I did backups.

You’ve probably seen this already but Rising Star Games are back publishing shmups again, starting with a partnership with Qute! https://www.risingstargames.com/news/76-rising-star-games-to-publish-two-quality-shooters-from-japanese-developer-qute

I really liked their PAL Cave releases in the early 2010s, from the extra bonus discs to the comprehensively written colour manuals they felt like a passion project from enthusiasts of the genre.

The other surprise is how fast Natsuki Chronicle and Ginga Force have made it off the Xbox One, though I suspect the PS4 version is early in development since it isn’t being demo’d at PAX. I hope that Qute themselves still publish a Windows Xbox release with Play Anywhere support so I can pick up my save and so it gets a chance of being on Game Pass one day for more exposure.

Good news all round.

Apparently I already own Black Label for Mushihimesama Futari after buying it a decade ago - it was the first non-free purchase I made!

I was redownloading some content onto my new Xbox 360 S and saw it at the bottom of the list. Hadn’t had it downloaded to my old Elite. Looking forward to trying it soon!

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I had stuff going on yesterday, and didn’t get around to playing any shmups, but I had a lot of shmup action over the weekend, between Shmup Slam on Saturday, and watching the Studio Mudprints stream last night. I’ll be firing up Gaiares tonight, hopefully, since that is the March Shmup Club game!

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Been playing Soukyugurentai. Deceptively tough! You feel like a badass because you’ve got the wireframe lock-on lasers and a healthy blast of vulcan, but past the 2nd level shit gets hectic. The bosses are all right up on you, giving you very little space to react.

I’m not a great shmup player so I’m simply aiming to play for survival with the default allotted amount of credits but after a couple days trying at this game, I’m still tapping out at the beginning of stage 5 of 6.

I really enjoy games with lock-on systems and thankfully the Saturn has both this and Galactic Attack to scratch that specific itch.

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I don’t own this one but a friend brought it over once. The 4:3 aspect ratio (rather than being 3:4 TATE) really makes things feel clausterphobic. I liked what I played though. Movement and dodging of bullets felt slick and everything was polished. Everything just felt a bit more hectic due to less time to react from the aspect ratio.

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Darius Cozmic Collection 2 announced

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Exciting news! Can’t wait for G-Darius. I wonder what else will make it into collection 2?

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Speaking of Darius Cozmic Collection related news, from the shmups twitter: Both versions of Darius Cozmic Collection are out on the Jpn PS4 store and the Switch version has been patched with the additional SFC/MD/PCE games:

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I’m hoping they use the opportunity to give us a full Dariusburst experience. It would be nice to have the vanilla game, DB:AC, and DB:CS with all DLC. Would also be nice if they threw in a couple more console ports, like Sagaia SMS, Super Darius 2 PCE, Darius R, etc.

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Thanks for the heads-up! Just grabbed the update from the eShop servers. Will test it this weekend, wish I brought my game card with me today!

From what I gather there’s a training mode which is exactly what I’ve been looking for, as I’m frankly rubbish at all the games and I’m so obsessed with getting as far as possible on 1 credit that I’ve made glacial progress. Using save states has never felt ‘right’ for me in the genre due to the large amount of variation during each playthrough.

That said, I’m surprised they are adding in the console games. From what I remember didn’t Taito release the (previously limited edition only) console games separately in an additional game last year on the Japanese eShop? Does that mean they added the arcade games to that version? What happens if you bought both?

Yeah I’d be first in line for a Dariusburst collection with every version and all the DLC. That would be amazing.

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Downloaded the Darius patch and extra games last night (Super Nova SNES, Sagaia Genesis and Darius Alpha PCE). Having detailed descriptions of all the games in English, translated menus, Zone maps on the pause screen and not to mention the new training modes all makes for a really ace free update. Also regarding the new English menus, didn’t realize until now that Darius Alpha and Plus both allow you to toggle on/off the Supergrafx performance enhancements for those respective Hucards, M2 is such a ridiculously great company.

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I updated my jp arcade edition copy. Its very nice and very surprising to have English menus and descriptions now. Now if SLG ends up shipping my console edition I’ll be very happy.

The only downside is that every time they update I lose all of my saved replays.

Another neat thing I noticed, the ability to display rank in Gaiden, its fun to see how much I can manipulate it. And the zone map is a nice touch.

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Last time they did a patch I lost my original replays but this time I didn’t lose any of my most recent replays from after the last update, guess it’s just blind chance if your replays don’t get wiped out after an update? :neutral_face:

I planned to play some Deathsmiles this evening but my 360 auto-booted to Mushihimesama Futari so you can probably guess what I ended up playing instead…

I haven’t played an awful lot of Black Label yet but I’m happy to have made it to stage 5 on one continue now, even if I haven’t amassed the biggest score yet.


I also updated my Darius CC, training mode is indeed very neat though I fear I’ll always be rubbish at the games!

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For tonight’s Sunday Night Shmup I’m returning to Soldier Blade after quite a few months. Man, this is one beast of a Hucard game.

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