Exactly! I think both are great games, and well worth looking into.
There can be only one. (terrible highlander reference)
The 360 HD release zoomed in, cropped and stretched the image to fit 16:9 with no way to go back to the original aspect ratio, it’s not a recommended way to play the game if you can help it.
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Really? I had no idea!=O
That… explains a lot. Why did Working Designs mess with so many games I try to enjoy?
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Victor Ireland thought he was a better game designer than the og ones?
Maybe it was trying to combat rentals, though I never really understood how making a game more difficult made them less likely to be rented and more likely to just not be bought. There is a dude who was going through and hacking the games to UnWorking Design them. Basically keep most of the translation, fix the stupid shit they added, and fix the game plays changes they made. If you have a way of playing burned games on the various systems you can play them. Doesn’t look like they’ve done Raystorm though, mostly just the rpgs.
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Strikers 1945 series is great, they’re tough but are easy to pick up and play without being too manic. Strikers 1-III are all great, I and III//99 are my two personal faves. If you like Strikers I also highly recommend trying out one of the Gunbird games if you want a similar shooting experience in a more comical steampunk setting.
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Wow, that’s annoying, had no idea WD messed up Raystorm’s challenge level. I always thought it felt inordinately difficult just getting to the last stage on one credit. May have to hunt down an import copy now. How does the Saturn port of Raystorm compare? Always been curious about that one.
Space Megaforce is great on SNES/SFC if you can find a way to play it (cart tends to be very expensive these days), tons of manic action but with nicely balanced difficulty, great visuals which show off the SFC Mode 7 effects and like other Compile shooters it has crazy weapon variety to experiment with. Also if you’re going to be playing Gradius III SFC you might also enjoy trying Super R-TYPE for another iconic horizontal shmup. Like Gradius III it has a lot of slowdown but it’s still a decent introduction to the R-TYPE series and another early showcase of the SFC’s graphical power.
Edit: Strikers 1945 series, DonPachi games and Raiden Project are all worth playing as high quality introductory vertical shooters as mentioned before.
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Unfortunately, I haven’t played the Saturn version yet.
Regarding Sunday Night shmupping, I’ve already managed to clear Steel Vampire this month, and it’s not even a 4th of the way through! I’ll have to go again for the “Genocide Hard” difficulty level clear, but I’m pretty happy I managed to get through the game so quickly.!
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That’s a cool idea! I hope someone does eventually take on RayStorm.
I don’t mind when they localize translations of things. I find the Lunar remakes on PlayStation to be somewhat charming. But making games like RayStorm or Silhouette Mirage inordinately difficult was not necessary.
I returned to some Sunday night shooting, though my experience was a little underwhelming. I know it may be a bit blasphemous for some, but I downloaded Dodonpachi Dai Ou Jou on my iPad (known as Blissful Death on the platform) and was expecting controller support, but it’s touch only. 
There are a few other CAVE shooters on iOS, which would be awesome due to the aspect ratio of iPads, but I’m not sure if they have controller support… Anyone here can confirm whether some of the CAVE ports on iOS support controllers?
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Silhouette Mirage is exactly the game I was thinking about. It’s the only English version of the game as far as I know and that is such a bummer.
I got extremely far in the PS1 version but then it got so insanely difficult. Then I learned about the changes and wondered… why? WHY? They don’t even really make sense.
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A gaming journalist needs to hunt down Victor Ireland and ask him exactly that. I really don’t know why they thought they were better game devs than the OG ones and could change things as they saw fit. The only thing I can think of is that they wanted to combat rentals but it seemed like a stupid way to do that.
Tonight’s Monday Night Shmup is Blazing Star for Neo Geo. Playing the ACA version on Switch. Stay safe out there, folks.
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Does anyone have other opinions of these ACA ports ? How do they compare to the originals ?
Solid emulation and a safe purchase, the whole series of ACA releases compare very favourably to the originals.
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I’d highly recommend them. Like @tomwhite2004 said, the emulation is good. The scanline options look good as well. Considering what some of these carts cost, 8 bucks digital is a steal if you just want to play the games.
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@MrCrynox Yeah ACA line is solid as tomwhite said, very good emulation for a great price of $7.99 across the board and they all have nicely adjustable scanlines and other customization options. Thanks to Hamster I no longer have to spend extra money on certain Saturn/PS1 era ports for games I’ve wanted for years like X-Multiply, Image Fight and In the Hunt to name a few examples. They also did the emulation on the Konami Arcade Collection. Their Nintendo arcade game ACA ports are also great.
Only negative I can think of though on the Neo Geo ACA line itself is I read on another forum that Hamster could easily enable the AES options in these but for whatever reason don’t. Not sure how much that would apply to shmup MVS titles, but as an example I know this is a complaint some have for Neo Geo fighting games on the ACA line which feature extra training modes, ect in their respective AES home versions.
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