Jeebus that’s ridiculous how long your copy is taking.
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Yep, it’s pretty ridiculous. I’ve been waiting on an Otaku Games shipment from Hong Kong, as well, one of their combo SCART/Component switches. That still hasn’t shown up as having reached our shores yet, either.
Congrats! 
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I’ll be surprised if the new Deathsmiles collection isn’t on Unity engine with input lag, it’s only been licensed by Cave and development and publishing is handled by City Connection.
Going from their previous output with Psyvariar Delta and the Jajamaru collection, and from how Deathsmiles I and II is on Xbox, PS4 and Switch, it’s probably going to be in a Unity wrapper or something.
Hope I’m proven wrong!
It’s a big boi! Glad it finally showed up!
For anyone interested the regular edition of the Aleste collection on Switch is finally shipping to the US.
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Does Unity have inherent input lag?
Yeah:
Hardly a fair comparison for a shmup but Fall Guys is on Unity and has it pretty bad when played off a responsive gaming monitor:
The best comparison might be City Connection’s own Psyvariar Delta, or Sisters Royale. Might give us an idea as to how a licensed Deathsmiles II port turns out
Aleste Collection will have its own brand new Game Gear sequel and M2 even showed a working cartridge with the game and box:
Also, Gradius III is coming to Arcade Archives on Switch as and PS4:
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I can’t wait for the Aleste focused Game Gear now, if there wasn’t a pandemic right now it would be even better, would be so surreal playing it on public transport.
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I must admit when they first showed the GG Micro I mostly just laughed it off due to the size, and price for just 4 games. I still would have preferred they release something a bit bigger, with more games… but the Aleste version in that delicious white with blue and teal buttons has completely suckered me in. And including the Big Window will go some way to improving visibility I hope.
I wonder how they’re going to go with the different resolutions of the Master System games? Doesn’t seem to be any info about the screens native resolution.
By sheer luck a local store still had a preorder available this past weekend at normal price, so now I’m just hoping they’re not full of it come Dec 24!
Even still, I’m kind of disappointed that it’s just the 5 games in the collection. Even the base game is overpriced for what you’re getting.
I gave up trying to find a copy of Super Aleste in the hope they’d make a collection… then they do but don’t include it?! I really thought they’d announce more than just GG Aleste 3 recently. I’m sure it’ll come later somehow, hopefully they’d be so generous to either patch in more games or include the rest when they release Aleste Branch.
Since I’ve been in the mood, I put on Blazing Lasers and managed to get through to Area 8 without continuing. Game wasn’t as hard as I remembered, though I failed miserably to millions of bubbles once I got there! And I thought Gradius’ bubbles were a pain!
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Me too. It’s big on novelty rather than practicality and given the odd hardware lineup you have to wonder whether it’ll appeal more to casual observers or superfans.
I just hope the D-Pad is up to scratch. The Game Boy Micro’s is pretty good despite its small size so fingers crossed!
The October game of the month for my Shmup Club is Darius Twin, in case anyone wants to participate, particularly now that several of you have finally received your Cozmic Collections
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It may well just be a coincidence since they don’t share composers but I was playing Cave’s Touge Max and CD Track 6 in-game just reminded me a lot of one of the tracks from Esprade:
It’s only part of the melody, but still! Tell me if I’m crazy or not…
Not crazy. I can hear the similarity. It could be incidental, maybe the ESP Ra. De. composer hearing that knocking around in the proverbial headspace, and drawing from that for the game’s soundtrack, but it could just as easily be that many of the composers from this time were drawing from a lot of the same inspiration, so there are always parallels between different game soundtracks, as well as game soundtracks and popular music. Take this video, outlining similarities between several Koji Kondo pieces, and popular music, notably some Super Mario Bros tunes, and early 80’s popular Japanese jazz fusion and “city pop” bands:
Oh, and for anyone who watches the video and likes what they hear, I’ll just say that Piper’s “Summer Breeze” album is essential city pop/fusion listening. I bought the vinyl re-issue a while back, and after I first heard it, it was something I listened to daily at work, often on repeat. Casiopea and T-SQUARE are also excellent, as is Tatsuro Yamashita.
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Just a note to say the latest episode of my podcast is online! We’re on Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Amazon Music, and even Soundcloud. This time, it’s about late 90’s doujin shooter Kamui, from developer Siter Skain.
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Nice, last year I got absolutely hooked on listening to City Pop/Jazz/Fusion, ridiculous amount of great artists to discover! And as you said it’s pretty clear how much various game soundtracks were influenced during that time, Outrun’s soundtrack is another prime example.
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Late 80s Sega music in general feels so heavily inspired by the citipop trend. Whenever I listen to SST band tracks it makes me think of bands like Caseopea. I really just enjoy that sound, theres something about it i can’t put my finger on.
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Tonight’s Sunday Night Shmup is ESPRade, playing it in TATE with my Hori Switch stand.
Edit: Got a nice amount of 16X combos on the shopping mall stage, very satisfying.
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