Since completing this review, a lot of the issues with the launch version have been patched! Here is a note on the patches from the devs: www.bitwavegames.com/news/a-new-version-added-to-out-zone
Showing the 6 loop clear video while I also have a 14 loop clear video why you gotta do me like that man. But in all seriousness, what's really interesting about these ports is that they have uncapped framerate, which is something I've not seen much with ports of old games. Meaning that if you have for example a 240 hertz monitor, you can play these games at 240 FPS and the input lag would be insanely low, beating even runahead on regular emulators. Any yeah the Out Zone port using the oldest romset is one of the biggest problems here, because it's basically an unfinished beta build of the game. It's extremely buggy and it's missing a lot of content. Important secrets that you use to score the game with are simply not there and tons of regular enemies are used as placeholders for enemy sprites they didn't finish yet. The final boss is also missing patterns and graphics, as well as music playing in the wrong stages. Really wished the gadgets also had some actual use. Like I keep losing track of how many C items I've collected during runs for the Zero Wing secrets and having a gadget there that just tells me would be extremely nice.
Oh jeez what happened is a Mandela effect I promise lol. I thought you had a 9 hour clear then I thought I must have dreamed it and that you had this 2.5 hour clear, so your 14 loop clear is so crazy I literally thought I had made it up on my head lol. Also yes I think the wrong rom is absolutely the biggest problem, but I m hoping that s an easy patch? Just stick the right rom ha. Idk maybe it would be more complicated than that
The ports load instantly on Steam Deck. I can tell a difference in playing Truxton on the Taito Egret 2 Mini and Astro City Mini V vs this. It makes the input lag quite noticeable.
You're doing God's work with these port reviews my guy. I'm definitely gonna grab Outzone despite the bugs since I've been waiting for it to get an official home release since I saw it in Shmup Junkies Toaplan review series. Hopefully some of the kinks get ironed out!
I m glad you enjoyed the review! Pretty complicated to cover with all the technical issues. I do hope the devs go grind mode and patch up all the issues, cuz there is a great port that it possible underneath
Thanks for the feedback, I'll try that. Out Zone has aged very well and is still just as fun to play. Truxton has obviously aged more in its game design, but still remains beautiful and qualitative for its age (1988). And then it played an indisputable role in the history of video games, perhaps inspiring certain elements to games like Super Aleste, Soldier Blade or even Axelay. If I understood correctly, the problem would be at the level of the sound. Regarding the input lag, I am delighted to learn that it is low. In addition I am lucky to have a G-Sync screen.
Love these deep dives on port quality, looking forward to the eventual review of the City Connection Batsugun port. Here’s hoping it’s not a dumpster fire
Another in-depth review thanks. Looks like they paid proper attention to the fundamentals which is great, and the niggles can be patched easily. If more devs can get the lag sorted like this out of the gate hopefully the standard will raise for all future ports, in that area.
Yes I think the devs have the right idea, they just need to smooth out the user end experience for sure. Also I really hope they patch in the correct rom ha.
I have to admit that I am very happy with outzone, truxton , zero wing and twin cobra in this collection. I am hopeful that one day we’ll get to see dogyuun.
yes shout out to Jaimers! and yes they need to patch these audio issues immediately, because most players aren't playing shmups and listening to Swans like I do ha.
so there are two ways! you can get a vga crt with supports 31kz, or you use an extron to get 15kz on a standard crt: ua-cam.com/video/9PlAvo8hWNY/v-deo.html
NICE! always love your quick and dirty take on great titles and releases that put forth the effort but need a bit more polish to make it over the finish line. Love the channel Mark keep it flowing. BEST OF LUCK ON THE T-SHIRT sales!
Fantastic review..As a casual, old fart player I'm still buzzing with nostalgia and joy at the sheer accessibility, price point and positive aspects of these games , which you point out really well in your review. The prospect of many of these games coming to pc soon is also great ss i suspect I'll be old by the time the ever busy M2 has released all it's garage ports!
Hello, i know it's an old video but I'd love to see you do an in-depth review of Bit Waves collection so far. I bought the full package just for ease. I'm genuinely blown away what they are doing for the price point. I can only see them improving if they keep this up. Just the type of developers we need right now. Also keep up the good work, i love listening to you while i work from home. 😊
Nice review as always, highlighting the good and the not so good about the port. Have a question: how do you connect your pc to a crt? Do you use just a Hdmi to AV or something more elaborated?
Oh good question! In this vid I use a simple HDMI to VGA adapter (I have a vid about it) but if you want to get it onto an s video crt, I use an extron emotia (I have a vid about that as well ). Thanks for tuning in!
@@TheElectricUnderground First off all, thanks for the answer! My bad, i thought you were using a commercial crt tv. But, im gonna search for that vid because im also interested on crt monitors and also s-video stuffs. What about the inches? How many inches should be an "ideal" crt monitor in your opinion?
the Truxton music you showing in the video sounds like Genesis version, which is sounds kinda broken compare to Arcade/PCE version that sounds more soft to me
Love what Bitwave is doing so far. I hope they become the M2 of PC given M2 seem to be allergic to PC. I need to go back and check but if you use exclusive fullscreen on a g-sync display, you might get the correct framerate (EDIT: nope, still 60fps) I do hope they get rid of the folded paper font though :D
Thanks for pointing out some of the problems with these ports as well as the positives. I'm glad someone could confirm the speed difference, I thought I was losing my mind! I REALLY like what Bit Wave are doing and I hope people will pick up these ports, but they definitely need a little polish and hopefully this video will give them some encouragement before they get around to games like Batsugun.
Good overview! I'm enough of an audio guy that the issues you described will bother me, so at minimum, I would want to wait until they patch it. More troubling is the ROM they used. Ideally, it would be nice if they would include them all, and allow you to choose which iteration or region you want to play, and have a separate leaderboard for each one. To me, this seems like maybe they just weren't ready for prime time, and released the games too early. But these days, everyone is doing that, so you can't blame Bitwave entirely, when most companies are in the same boat. At minimum, I'll wait until some of these issues are resolved, but part of me is thinking that waiting for the eventual M2 ports is still maybe the way to go. It means waiting longer, but I can do that, if that results in ports that have all these issues resolved at the time of release, and when the physical hits my mailbox, I don't have to worry about a day 1 patch to fix stuff.
Yes like I said in the review the ports do feel unfinished in a lot of ways. They need to patch the rom problem, that is a bit complaint for me as well. I m curious to see how they will respond to the feedback
In this time of publishers taking stuff from accounts of consumers, I'll like to remind everyone that this games are available on GOG too and they are DRM-Free! Thanks for the review! are you planning on reviewing the latest games they released?
I got Out Zone PCB, but it is such a difficult game, and I don't have the time to grind it like crazy, that I am so happy that there is a new port of this game with save stats and other features.
Oh that is so cool man! That would be a really cool pcb to have :-) and yes savestates are an excellent way to practice a game like out zone, especially with all the loops.
Bought out zone yesterday. I basicaly had the same opinion. In the first play i notice the destructable trees in stage 1 were not there. I imeadtly thought that they build the game from scratch and did not know it was a old ROM set. I played that game a lot (One of my all time faves) and visually i could not spot all the diferençes, but my subconscious knew that more was off. I only did not notice sound diferençes. But in termos of lag and acessibility options (specially autofire) uiss great. Not sure if it is a issue but i notest that when you use autofire with the superball it fires the circular shoot repeatly but when it comes to the front shot only fires the first One. To fire again you have to release the button and press again. Overall i AM happy considering what i pay and i hope they fix the problems (that for me is basically the old ROM set). Just wished that they add a options to Change bullet color in those releases specially for twin cobra as they blend a bit with the background.
Yes the game does feel really nice input lag wise :-) the oversight of using an old ROM is crazy, but I really hope they patch it and plug in the correct rom
I love Outzone, but those omissions are pretty bad. I mean, using the wrong romset, effed-up dip-switches and the bad sound is a pretty bad set of errors. Also, if they effed up the easter eggs that's no fun. Cool to see things like the hitbox visibility though. It is nice that it at least has multiple res and save state options but a 57hz workaround couldn't be hard to have worked in. But the wrong romset and shite audio?? Hmm. Things I'd "like to have seen" would be: - Fix the counterstop - Colour changes on the SP pickups to make them more obvious - OST remix - it has a banging soundtrack, a remix would have been awesome (and heck, they would sell soundtracks) any chiptune musician would love to remix this stuff. - Contact one of the original artists (they are still around) to do a special border set - wouldn't have cost much and they would probably have enjoyed it. - A "black label" mode or the "special" mode offered in the M2 ports, they could have done something really interesting with OZ even if it is essentially paying someone to build a romhack. But then... that's why we love M2.
Sorry for being a little bit off topic but are all metal slug steam ports bad or just some of them? I was planning to play metal slug 1 and x and already bought them on steam, am i better emulating them?
All Metal Slug ports (NeoGeo ports by Dotemu in general) are bad, but luckily you can just copy the rom files and play them in your favorite emulator. Some Dotemu ports like Garou MotW got later updated by Code Mystics with rollback netcode etc. and play really nice.
Thank you very much my dude! Also yes I'm really fond of that intro of the turtles collection review ha, check out the whole thing if you haven't :-) reminds me of some janky southpark type of style.
Been playing these in MAME in Retroarch. There doesn't seem to be much of an incentive to pick these up unless it was a Shot Triggers job. Have they done anything with the visuals?
I would say the main selling points for this release vs mame would be the small hitbox option and the hitbox displays, but mame is much better emulation overall. This port is probably a little more responsive than mame though
Just picked this up, it’s ok. Obviously the games within are very good, but the porting is so so. If I may add to the critique, I swear there is some sort of bilinear filtering in effect and it gives the game a somewhat soft appearance. Also did you say no auto fire? My hand is already exhausted from ten minutes of twin cobra! On the positive side, it got me to figure out how to use my sticks turbo function.
Many years of playing shmups without sound ha. It'd Dodonpachi's fault because during my era of practicing for the 2 all it only plays 3 FFFing songs ha. So to save my sanity I just started playing with music over the top and now I'm used to it.
Ordered a second shirt and sent the $$. Forgot what email I used to fill out the google form. I am guessing that will be sorted out once you contact us for shipping? Let me know if you need any info just in case.
Man us horizontal shooter fans can't get any love on the Electric Underground? Seriously though this is basically the only review of this that matters and it's heartening that the biggest factors are taken care of. The rom selection problem is baffling though.
@@TheElectricUnderground oh my God. That's the game bud. That's the one that made me love this genre. I'm going to write something for your reddit about what that game means to me and I hope you get time to read it. It's in my heart.
I bet it is ha. I would say though that if you buy the release officially, like here, you can use the roms guilt free. that's how I see it. (I know nintendo would beg to differ lol)
I was going to go and grab this partway through the review. I like the idea of Truxton and played it a bit on my phone (which you can move too quickly and it has no save states, it's not good ofc). The audio might kill it for me though, the clip you played sounded really bad. How does that kind of thing get released?
@The Electric Underground And the Steam reviews don't mention it. Now and again I tend to see a lot of reviews of ports on Steam that endorse (or pan) the game that's ported but make no reference to the actual port job itself. Like how does one not get the sound? I got Truxton "elsewhere." It's fun, I like the music, but man it's much harder than I expected. Boss 1 flays me.
The idea of Toaplan bullets being 10% faster is terrifying, though maybe it doesn't matter that much because many were basically unreachable anyway. I'll have to see after a patch or two comes out and I buy it again.
Is there a true 4:3 ratio option? Almost no retro compilation offers this while this is the easiest thing to do since the games are natively meant to run that way. That's why I never buy those, because playing a 4:3 game both letterboxed AND pillarboxed on my 4:3 VGA CRT is absolute nonsense.
I understand that fewer people have a 4:3 these days, but when a game screen is originally in that format, it`s pretty dumb when doesnt let me use it for a perfect TATE. That`s a thing that bothers the hell outta me and has made me ask refund for a couple titles.
@@yours_truly_ Yeah I can understand it for modern "retro" 2D titles because making it work in different ratios means quite a bit of additional game design adjustments. But for games that natively ran in 4:3, that's like virtually no extra required work at all. There's no excuse to not include a native ratio mode.
Just bought Truxton and as love this game to death I can forgive the bugs to play an official release, if the port gets patched to solve the issues I'll grab Outzone and Zero Wing too
Why is it that when they do these ports of classic loved shmup they don't give it all the bells and whistle features that we have now for current games , removing lag from the game should be a big focus.
They are really fun in terms of feeling nice and responsive and having solid save states. I do enjoy the small hitbox option as well, I do hope they patch up a lot of these bugs though.
They're both very difficult, although Truxton 2 is both difficult and long. Out Zone I played a lot back in the days, the difficulty comes from the fast depleting energy meter (which fooled me thinking it was the life meter the first time) which forces you to press onwards near non-stop. The difficulty factor intensifies later on when you have to navigate through moving platforms over floor gaps, it becomes very maze like, and that's not even mentioning all the enemies shooting at you during this time. At least the game is generous with it's screen clearing bomb, clearly intended for you to use them liberally to make rapid progress
57 FPS has to be an average right? Screen update is 60 frames on crt. So you could only get divisions of 60, like 30 fps, 20 or 15 or 12 etc… 57 means it plays at 60 most of the time and 30 rarely. Are they actually playing back 57 frames? That’s not how CRT slowdown worked.
Nope actually 57 is the base frame rate, that's because back in the arcade days crt monitors could handle funky framerates no problem, so you would get arcade games running at wierd timings like 57
i usually play out zone on the sega astro city mini v and tatsujin on the egret II mini..yes..not the best options there but i m fine...cool PC ports here..but i d much prefer using MAME at this point xD
When you started listing your personal issues with the save states, I thought you were being too harsh on the developers. Then you started listing the ROM and audio issues, and YIKES! Those are some real deal breakers. Hopefully the devs will address those problems ASAP because they are really bad. I do have to say I am impressed with the 2 frames of input lag. You almost never see that from official releases.
Yeah ha if only the save state ui was the only issue ha. I love how low the input lag is, so I hope they get the correct rom plugged in cuz that s a crazy oversight
Your move, M2. 😂. I am so tired of waiting on them. This collection might force me into a “gaming pc”. I’m guessing I don’t need a $3000 video card to run Toaplan games? Can I get away with one of those little Beelink pocket pc’s with nothing but integrated graphics?
People who say they can't feel 7-8 frames of input lag have the reaction time of a mushroom. And it's a surprisingly popular belief, it feels like a "you're just a scrub, quit whining" attitude sometimes.
Yeah I ll never understand how people can say they don't feel lag. I can only imagine it's because their setups are so laggy that it all blends together
I like the ports and they play well (Outzone hard version looks good to me?, but I know nothing about the original PCB or emulated versions). Well, at least they got simple stuff like pixel perfect scaling right where other arcade ports failed. Why are there so many issues with these modern arcade ports, why not license/pay/donate to FBNeo and use that or at least make something superior.
About these classic collections, most of the time developers keep suboptimal things about the games which could be improved and provide nothing new. For example, why would SNK keep slowdowns in Metal Slug games? We didn't need to have it today. And why can't Capcom, just to throw a name, build a nice convincing CRT filter so we could get that retro graphic vibe in a better way? They just release a legalized emulated version, and that's just stupid.
Hmm. Dunno. If they're passionate amateurs who will work hard to listen to fans and responsively fix bugs, in order to do better in future, then all can be forgiven. I'm a little concerned by the types of the bugs in the release to be honest.
yeah peter no doubt. I think the safe play is to bookmark the page and keep an eye on the patch notes ha, that's what I would do if I was concerned with the bugs.
@@TheElectricUnderground there's patch notes? Where would I locate those? I've seen in the community hub the developer saying that they're adding issues to a "list", which is a positive sign of acknowledgement.
I signed no contracts ha. I said at the beginning of the video that I really value low lag and save state support, so I'm probably going to be more lenient about the other issues than most other reviews. That being said though, the devs should be at their computers night and day getting all the bugs patched out as quickly as possible.
Yeah as it is right now the game is in pretty rough shape. I m hoping that are hard at work patching things up. It s pretty key for them to get it done asap otherwise it s gonna leave a bad impression for future releases
Not relevant to the review, but if youtube ever gives you trouble with monetization, you could upload to odysee and i would watch there Up to you but i need more of my favorite channels on there 😂
yeah i'm really picky with wallpapers too, so I just had them turned off on this port. And yes the audio is pure madness ha. I wonder why it sounds so crazy
Man, why would you review games you don't like or care about? I like you and understand you want to create content, but this probably does more harm than good to your channel. Please reconsider this! 🙏The ports have several serious flaws that hopefully will get patched, but you don't mind them just because you don't care about the games, so it's all about input lag, savestates and reducing the hitbox - something I don't get to be honest, the games are designed around them! Would this kind of flaws be OK in a DDP port? or any Cave game? Think about it
@@charlibiris ??? Whenever he reviews games he doesn't care about or have put time into, it shows. And those "reviews" are lackluster to say the least. If you know well any game that's not one of his (Cave) favourites, you'll realize how his review of it isn't that different from the mainstream media he criticizes so much. Heck, check the M2 Toaplan "reviews". He reviews them for the views, I understand that, but the passion isn't there and the end result is poor.
I do like outzone and truxton though ha. I'm guessing you might be referring to the turtles cowabunga collection? I do like some games on that collection (turtles in time mostly) so that's why I covered it. Part of my role of a reviewer though is to provide coverage for releases that my audience is likely interested in, and then parsing though the quality of the releases :-)
Since completing this review, a lot of the issues with the launch version have been patched! Here is a note on the patches from the devs: www.bitwavegames.com/news/a-new-version-added-to-out-zone
They do patch the games frequently, is a good sign!
And they released Batsugun!!!
Showing the 6 loop clear video while I also have a 14 loop clear video why you gotta do me like that man.
But in all seriousness, what's really interesting about these ports is that they have uncapped framerate, which is something I've not seen much with ports of old games.
Meaning that if you have for example a 240 hertz monitor, you can play these games at 240 FPS and the input lag would be insanely low, beating even runahead on regular emulators.
Any yeah the Out Zone port using the oldest romset is one of the biggest problems here, because it's basically an unfinished beta build of the game. It's extremely buggy and it's missing a lot of content. Important secrets that you use to score the game with are simply not there and tons of regular enemies are used as placeholders for enemy sprites they didn't finish yet. The final boss is also missing patterns and graphics, as well as music playing in the wrong stages.
Really wished the gadgets also had some actual use.
Like I keep losing track of how many C items I've collected during runs for the Zero Wing secrets and having a gadget there that just tells me would be extremely nice.
Oh jeez what happened is a Mandela effect I promise lol. I thought you had a 9 hour clear then I thought I must have dreamed it and that you had this 2.5 hour clear, so your 14 loop clear is so crazy I literally thought I had made it up on my head lol. Also yes I think the wrong rom is absolutely the biggest problem, but I m hoping that s an easy patch? Just stick the right rom ha. Idk maybe it would be more complicated than that
Since they are a new developer, I am going to support them off the bat. I will cross my fingers and hope for some patches.
Yes hopefully this is some growing pains they will sort out :-)
Tatsujin is a golden shmup masterpiece.
It had great ports on the MegaDrive and PC-Engine.
Yeah that's a cool one! mean game
Proud owner of pcb here 💪
I was playing the PC Engine version just yesterday, the soundtrack is so nice through that juicy soundchip.
exactly what he said, as a casual I think it's a cool one especially for older shmups it ticks a lot of boxes.
The ports load instantly on Steam Deck. I can tell a difference in playing Truxton on the Taito Egret 2 Mini and Astro City Mini V vs this. It makes the input lag quite noticeable.
oh yeah the input lag on these ports is super low, now players can really feel the sludge of most other ports input lag.
You're doing God's work with these port reviews my guy. I'm definitely gonna grab Outzone despite the bugs since I've been waiting for it to get an official home release since I saw it in Shmup Junkies Toaplan review series. Hopefully some of the kinks get ironed out!
I m glad you enjoyed the review! Pretty complicated to cover with all the technical issues. I do hope the devs go grind mode and patch up all the issues, cuz there is a great port that it possible underneath
Thanks for the feedback, I'll try that. Out Zone has aged very well and is still just as fun to play. Truxton has obviously aged more in its game design, but still remains beautiful and qualitative for its age (1988). And then it played an indisputable role in the history of video games, perhaps inspiring certain elements to games like Super Aleste, Soldier Blade or even Axelay. If I understood correctly, the problem would be at the level of the sound. Regarding the input lag, I am delighted to learn that it is low. In addition I am lucky to have a G-Sync screen.
Yes I like out zone a lot more than truxton ha. Probably my 2nd fav toaplan game after batsugun :-)
@@TheElectricUnderground Same for me👍
Love these deep dives on port quality, looking forward to the eventual review of the City Connection Batsugun port. Here’s hoping it’s not a dumpster fire
Yes fingers crossed, batsugun is my fav toaplan game :-)
Another in-depth review thanks. Looks like they paid proper attention to the fundamentals which is great, and the niggles can be patched easily. If more devs can get the lag sorted like this out of the gate hopefully the standard will raise for all future ports, in that area.
Yes I think the devs have the right idea, they just need to smooth out the user end experience for sure. Also I really hope they patch in the correct rom ha.
I have to admit that I am very happy with outzone, truxton , zero wing and twin cobra in this collection. I am hopeful that one day we’ll get to see dogyuun.
Let us hope they do batsugun justice as well :-)
@@TheElectricUnderground They say they're doing Toaplans entire library including Batsugun (Which comes out in March)
These games are on Gog as well if you want to get them without the drm
Oh yeah!!!!! That s awesome
Thanks to Jammers
Great about the no lag
Music quality would be my biggest complaint
yes shout out to Jaimers! and yes they need to patch these audio issues immediately, because most players aren't playing shmups and listening to Swans like I do ha.
Happy to hear about the low input lag.
Happier to hear Policenauts music.
hell yeah! Policenauts ost is a legendary, I have to use it every now and then ha.
That hitbox feature is really nice. That's the type of features that are hard to get from just standard emulation that go a long way with re-releases.
exactly viewtiful, I think stuff like this should try to always be included in ports, otherwise they end up being just watered down emulation.
How do you play this pc ports on a crt?since a pc is 31 khz and a crt is 15khz you need some kind of conversor .
so there are two ways! you can get a vga crt with supports 31kz, or you use an extron to get 15kz on a standard crt: ua-cam.com/video/9PlAvo8hWNY/v-deo.html
NICE! always love your quick and dirty take on great titles and releases that put forth the effort but need a bit more polish to make it over the finish line. Love the channel Mark keep it flowing. BEST OF LUCK ON THE T-SHIRT sales!
Absolutely understandable my friend :-) here s to hoping they are patching as we speak ha
Fantastic review..As a casual, old fart player I'm still buzzing with nostalgia and joy at the sheer accessibility, price point and positive aspects of these games , which you point out really well in your review.
The prospect of many of these games coming to pc soon is also great ss i suspect I'll be old by the time the ever busy M2 has released all it's garage ports!
Glad to hear it! It s crazy outzone has never been ported before, though I suspect the m2 port will be more polished :-)
Hello, i know it's an old video but I'd love to see you do an in-depth review of Bit Waves collection so far. I bought the full package just for ease. I'm genuinely blown away what they are doing for the price point. I can only see them improving if they keep this up. Just the type of developers we need right now.
Also keep up the good work, i love listening to you while i work from home. 😊
Nice review as always, highlighting the good and the not so good about the port.
Have a question: how do you connect your pc to a crt? Do you use just a Hdmi to AV or something more elaborated?
Oh good question! In this vid I use a simple HDMI to VGA adapter (I have a vid about it) but if you want to get it onto an s video crt, I use an extron emotia (I have a vid about that as well ). Thanks for tuning in!
@@TheElectricUnderground First off all, thanks for the answer!
My bad, i thought you were using a commercial crt tv. But, im gonna search for that vid because im also interested on crt monitors and also s-video stuffs. What about the inches? How many inches should be an "ideal" crt monitor in your opinion?
the Truxton music you showing in the video sounds like Genesis version, which is sounds kinda broken compare to Arcade/PCE version that sounds more soft to me
yeah the audio sounds crazy, I don't know what is going on with it but it is not pleasant that's for sure.
Love what Bitwave is doing so far. I hope they become the M2 of PC given M2 seem to be allergic to PC. I need to go back and check but if you use exclusive fullscreen on a g-sync display, you might get the correct framerate (EDIT: nope, still 60fps)
I do hope they get rid of the folded paper font though :D
Yeah I think they have the potential, they just need to get all these bugs sorted out :-)
i am always so happy to see love for Out Zone! thank you for the review.
Thanks for pointing out some of the problems with these ports as well as the positives. I'm glad someone could confirm the speed difference, I thought I was losing my mind! I REALLY like what Bit Wave are doing and I hope people will pick up these ports, but they definitely need a little polish and hopefully this video will give them some encouragement before they get around to games like Batsugun.
Yes that little speed difference is noticable for players of the arcade version, bullets move slightly faster but every pixel counts in this game
Good overview! I'm enough of an audio guy that the issues you described will bother me, so at minimum, I would want to wait until they patch it. More troubling is the ROM they used. Ideally, it would be nice if they would include them all, and allow you to choose which iteration or region you want to play, and have a separate leaderboard for each one. To me, this seems like maybe they just weren't ready for prime time, and released the games too early. But these days, everyone is doing that, so you can't blame Bitwave entirely, when most companies are in the same boat. At minimum, I'll wait until some of these issues are resolved, but part of me is thinking that waiting for the eventual M2 ports is still maybe the way to go. It means waiting longer, but I can do that, if that results in ports that have all these issues resolved at the time of release, and when the physical hits my mailbox, I don't have to worry about a day 1 patch to fix stuff.
Yes like I said in the review the ports do feel unfinished in a lot of ways. They need to patch the rom problem, that is a bit complaint for me as well. I m curious to see how they will respond to the feedback
In this time of publishers taking stuff from accounts of consumers, I'll like to remind everyone that this games are available on GOG too and they are DRM-Free!
Thanks for the review! are you planning on reviewing the latest games they released?
3:56 The wipe IGN uses? :o
I am liberating the wipe from the prison of IGN
@@TheElectricUnderground ay lmao
Wondering why they didn't add FIXEIGHT to this collection
Any plans to review Wanted: Dead?
I m divided ha, I m gonna put up a poll and see
I bought the collection now and I see your point about the menus. They're really janky, but strangely charming.
Yeah def have that homebrew vibe ha
I’m buying this off of 2 frames of input lag alone. The rest can be fixed.
I really hope so! It s still pretty fun to play as is, just needs some patches asap
wow! The Seer by Swans used as a soundtrack for Out Zone! Must be a crazy experience.
It s a fun time! The seer is great shmup music generally 🦢
I got Out Zone PCB, but it is such a difficult game, and I don't have the time to grind it like crazy, that I am so happy that there is a new port of this game with save stats and other features.
Oh that is so cool man! That would be a really cool pcb to have :-) and yes savestates are an excellent way to practice a game like out zone, especially with all the loops.
Bought out zone yesterday. I basicaly had the same opinion. In the first play i notice the destructable trees in stage 1 were not there. I imeadtly thought that they build the game from scratch and did not know it was a old ROM set. I played that game a lot (One of my all time faves) and visually i could not spot all the diferençes, but my subconscious knew that more was off. I only did not notice sound diferençes. But in termos of lag and acessibility options (specially autofire) uiss great. Not sure if it is a issue but i notest that when you use autofire with the superball it fires the circular shoot repeatly but when it comes to the front shot only fires the first One. To fire again you have to release the button and press again. Overall i AM happy considering what i pay and i hope they fix the problems (that for me is basically the old ROM set). Just wished that they add a options to Change bullet color in those releases specially for twin cobra as they blend a bit with the background.
Yes the game does feel really nice input lag wise :-) the oversight of using an old ROM is crazy, but I really hope they patch it and plug in the correct rom
In Saturn radiant silvergun you could unlock show hit boxes. I learned a ton from that feature!!
Oh that s really cool! I wish it was a more common feature of ports
I love Outzone, but those omissions are pretty bad. I mean, using the wrong romset, effed-up dip-switches and the bad sound is a pretty bad set of errors. Also, if they effed up the easter eggs that's no fun. Cool to see things like the hitbox visibility though.
It is nice that it at least has multiple res and save state options but a 57hz workaround couldn't be hard to have worked in. But the wrong romset and shite audio?? Hmm.
Things I'd "like to have seen" would be:
- Fix the counterstop
- Colour changes on the SP pickups to make them more obvious
- OST remix - it has a banging soundtrack, a remix would have been awesome (and heck, they would sell soundtracks) any chiptune musician would love to remix this stuff.
- Contact one of the original artists (they are still around) to do a special border set - wouldn't have cost much and they would probably have enjoyed it.
- A "black label" mode or the "special" mode offered in the M2 ports, they could have done something really interesting with OZ even if it is essentially paying someone to build a romhack.
But then... that's why we love M2.
Yeah I really hope the devs don't just walk away because the port has a lot going for it, but no doubt it needs patching.
Sorry for being a little bit off topic but are all metal slug steam ports bad or just some of them? I was planning to play metal slug 1 and x and already bought them on steam, am i better emulating them?
All Metal Slug ports (NeoGeo ports by Dotemu in general) are bad, but luckily you can just copy the rom files and play them in your favorite emulator. Some Dotemu ports like Garou MotW got later updated by Code Mystics with rollback netcode etc. and play really nice.
They are all bad :-( you pretty much have to emulate them, i even made special settings for them for shmuparch 8 coming up
Spot on review! Also 2:08 rofl hahahahehaieheiah
Thank you very much my dude! Also yes I'm really fond of that intro of the turtles collection review ha, check out the whole thing if you haven't :-) reminds me of some janky southpark type of style.
Been playing these in MAME in Retroarch. There doesn't seem to be much of an incentive to pick these up unless it was a Shot Triggers job. Have they done anything with the visuals?
I would say the main selling points for this release vs mame would be the small hitbox option and the hitbox displays, but mame is much better emulation overall. This port is probably a little more responsive than mame though
What do you think about fixeight compared to out zone?
do you listen to swans albums while playing these games?
Just picked this up, it’s ok. Obviously the games within are very good, but the porting is so so. If I may add to the critique, I swear there is some sort of bilinear filtering in effect and it gives the game a somewhat soft appearance. Also did you say no auto fire? My hand is already exhausted from ten minutes of twin cobra!
On the positive side, it got me to figure out how to use my sticks turbo function.
Anyone know how to rapid fire in Truxton? Mashing the button is killing my thumb and controller!
How can you not listen to the music and sound effects of Outzone? Jesus, you HAVE to listen! Not this version tough.
Many years of playing shmups without sound ha. It'd Dodonpachi's fault because during my era of practicing for the 2 all it only plays 3 FFFing songs ha. So to save my sanity I just started playing with music over the top and now I'm used to it.
Ordered a second shirt and sent the $$. Forgot what email I used to fill out the google form. I am guessing that will be sorted out once you contact us for shipping? Let me know if you need any info just in case.
Oh can you send me a message on discord and I'll help you get it sorted out :-)
Man us horizontal shooter fans can't get any love on the Electric Underground?
Seriously though this is basically the only review of this that matters and it's heartening that the biggest factors are taken care of. The rom selection problem is baffling though.
Ha I am going to review einhander soon so there is an upcoming hori :-)
@@TheElectricUnderground oh my God. That's the game bud. That's the one that made me love this genre.
I'm going to write something for your reddit about what that game means to me and I hope you get time to read it. It's in my heart.
It sounds like there's room for improvement but they're on the right track.
"I love to Death Blast my enemies with the Rainbow Circle Shot!"
Yes I think so as well, I really hope they get the rom version updated, that's the most glaring issue for me.
Is it possible to take the roms and use them in Mister FPGA?
I bet it is ha. I would say though that if you buy the release officially, like here, you can use the roms guilt free. that's how I see it. (I know nintendo would beg to differ lol)
I was going to go and grab this partway through the review. I like the idea of Truxton and played it a bit on my phone (which you can move too quickly and it has no save states, it's not good ofc). The audio might kill it for me though, the clip you played sounded really bad. How does that kind of thing get released?
I have no idea how they thought that audio would fly ha
@The Electric Underground And the Steam reviews don't mention it. Now and again I tend to see a lot of reviews of ports on Steam that endorse (or pan) the game that's ported but make no reference to the actual port job itself. Like how does one not get the sound?
I got Truxton "elsewhere." It's fun, I like the music, but man it's much harder than I expected. Boss 1 flays me.
Glad to see that they run well
The low input lag is awesome! Hopefully they get the rom set patched up ha
The idea of Toaplan bullets being 10% faster is terrifying, though maybe it doesn't matter that much because many were basically unreachable anyway. I'll have to see after a patch or two comes out and I buy it again.
Is there a true 4:3 ratio option? Almost no retro compilation offers this while this is the easiest thing to do since the games are natively meant to run that way. That's why I never buy those, because playing a 4:3 game both letterboxed AND pillarboxed on my 4:3 VGA CRT is absolute nonsense.
I understand that fewer people have a 4:3 these days, but when a game screen is originally in that format, it`s pretty dumb when doesnt let me use it for a perfect TATE. That`s a thing that bothers the hell outta me and has made me ask refund for a couple titles.
@@yours_truly_ Yeah I can understand it for modern "retro" 2D titles because making it work in different ratios means quite a bit of additional game design adjustments. But for games that natively ran in 4:3, that's like virtually no extra required work at all. There's no excuse to not include a native ratio mode.
Yes I believe there is, there is a pixel prefect aspect ratio option, I just play full screen :-)
Some of these features are neat but it feels like this stuff should be table stakes... Otherwise why am I not just starting up FBNeo?
I know that is a fundamental question with PC ports, fbneo is always right there
Truxton is great. Nice to see it here. Still have the Genesis original.
Just bought Truxton and as love this game to death I can forgive the bugs to play an official release, if the port gets patched to solve the issues I'll grab Outzone and Zero Wing too
Yeah at least you have your save states and low lag, hopefully they ll get the crazy audio sorted out
Why is it that when they do these ports of classic loved shmup they don't give it all the bells and whistle features that we have now for current games , removing lag from the game should be a big focus.
I don't know honestly, you d think they would want to create something unique by adding new features, I do like the reduced hitbox option though!
I think audio is really important! They gotta clean that up. I can't believe you play without the game audio lol.
It s dodonpachi s fault. I was playing the game for hundreds of hours with the same 4 Tracks over and over, I had to switch the audio ha
No tate mode mention? What is this?
I mention tate mode when it's missing ha.
Aw man, these ports sound great! I gotta get a new gaming PC!
They are really fun in terms of feeling nice and responsive and having solid save states. I do enjoy the small hitbox option as well, I do hope they patch up a lot of these bugs though.
They're both very difficult, although Truxton 2 is both difficult and long. Out Zone I played a lot back in the days, the difficulty comes from the fast depleting energy meter (which fooled me thinking it was the life meter the first time) which forces you to press onwards near non-stop. The difficulty factor intensifies later on when you have to navigate through moving platforms over floor gaps, it becomes very maze like, and that's not even mentioning all the enemies shooting at you during this time. At least the game is generous with it's screen clearing bomb, clearly intended for you to use them liberally to make rapid progress
I love the energy drain system of outzone, reminds me of racing checkpoints :-)
As someone who likes to play on crt when possible I hate how many games now don’t support 4:3 aspect ratio and resolutions.
I know dingo, it s becoming an issue even in shmups :-(
A guy I know who's a super beat 'em up fan rated TMNT Collection highly and even put it on top X lists. I shed a single tear.
Yikes ha, I m excited to release my top 20 beat em ups vid soon
@@TheElectricUnderground Ooo, cool!
They needed 16 days to patch out the crash bug that happened when you 1cc Outzone on Hard 😢
57 FPS has to be an average right? Screen update is 60 frames on crt. So you could only get divisions of 60, like 30 fps, 20 or 15 or 12 etc… 57 means it plays at 60 most of the time and 30 rarely. Are they actually playing back 57 frames? That’s not how CRT slowdown worked.
Nope actually 57 is the base frame rate, that's because back in the arcade days crt monitors could handle funky framerates no problem, so you would get arcade games running at wierd timings like 57
i usually play out zone on the sega astro city mini v and tatsujin on the egret II mini..yes..not the best options there but i m fine...cool PC ports here..but i d much prefer using MAME at this point xD
Yes it s hard to beat mame or RetroArch in PC, no doubt about it
I love To-A-Plan
You mean you haven't played CS, since, beta?
Is it a true port and not just emulation?
I believe it is emulation, but with some more in depth work than just plug and play (like the low input lag probably took some doing).
When you started listing your personal issues with the save states, I thought you were being too harsh on the developers.
Then you started listing the ROM and audio issues, and YIKES! Those are some real deal breakers.
Hopefully the devs will address those problems ASAP because they are really bad.
I do have to say I am impressed with the 2 frames of input lag. You almost never see that from official releases.
Yeah ha if only the save state ui was the only issue ha. I love how low the input lag is, so I hope they get the correct rom plugged in cuz that s a crazy oversight
Your move, M2. 😂. I am so tired of waiting on them. This collection might force me into a “gaming pc”. I’m guessing I don’t need a $3000 video card to run Toaplan games? Can I get away with one of those little Beelink pocket pc’s with nothing but integrated graphics?
I bet you can run this a low spec PC, at least I would hope so ha
Mark, for some of these games the sound is half the reason to play.
I know a lot of people really like the sound and music of the games, so this port is gonna be a rough time for you ha
I could deal with these issues for $9.99 but the current asking price has got me wishy washy.
Yeah nothing wrong with waiting to see how the patches turn out
Swans! Hell yeah
Great album too! My fav of theirs :-)
People who say they can't feel 7-8 frames of input lag have the reaction time of a mushroom. And it's a surprisingly popular belief, it feels like a "you're just a scrub, quit whining" attitude sometimes.
Yeah I ll never understand how people can say they don't feel lag. I can only imagine it's because their setups are so laggy that it all blends together
I like the ports and they play well (Outzone hard version looks good to me?, but I know nothing about the original PCB or emulated versions). Well, at least they got simple stuff like pixel perfect scaling right where other arcade ports failed. Why are there so many issues with these modern arcade ports, why not license/pay/donate to FBNeo and use that or at least make something superior.
NO! You gotta play "Truxton II" !!!!!!! .. .. . or the Do Dun Pachi !!!!!!! .. . . . Yes, yes! .. :-D
Truxton 2 is wild :-)
@@TheElectricUnderground : hellz yeah! .... The starting on it just HOOKS you right hahahahah! I'm smitten?
About these classic collections, most of the time developers keep suboptimal things about the games which could be improved and provide nothing new. For example, why would SNK keep slowdowns in Metal Slug games? We didn't need to have it today. And why can't Capcom, just to throw a name, build a nice convincing CRT filter so we could get that retro graphic vibe in a better way? They just release a legalized emulated version, and that's just stupid.
Hmm. Dunno. If they're passionate amateurs who will work hard to listen to fans and responsively fix bugs, in order to do better in future, then all can be forgiven. I'm a little concerned by the types of the bugs in the release to be honest.
yeah peter no doubt. I think the safe play is to bookmark the page and keep an eye on the patch notes ha, that's what I would do if I was concerned with the bugs.
@@TheElectricUnderground there's patch notes? Where would I locate those? I've seen in the community hub the developer saying that they're adding issues to a "list", which is a positive sign of acknowledgement.
Mark contracts…
I signed no contracts ha. I said at the beginning of the video that I really value low lag and save state support, so I'm probably going to be more lenient about the other issues than most other reviews. That being said though, the devs should be at their computers night and day getting all the bugs patched out as quickly as possible.
Well, now I just think you’re under the Mark NDA. Freaking laws.
I guess I’ll just have to go buy this on steam now. By law, I think I have to? 🥳
I'll wait for this collection to get patched completely.
Yes very wise move :-)
TRUXTON
Low lag doesn't even nearly cover for all the misses in the Out Zone port. Honestly to me sounds like they ruined the game.
Yeah as it is right now the game is in pretty rough shape. I m hoping that are hard at work patching things up. It s pretty key for them to get it done asap otherwise it s gonna leave a bad impression for future releases
Ooph that audio is paaaainful.
Not relevant to the review, but if youtube ever gives you trouble with monetization, you could upload to odysee and i would watch there
Up to you but i need more of my favorite channels on there 😂
That sounds interesting, so far UA-cam has been pretty easy on me ha. You never know though this platform can always turn on a dime
I hate the graphics at the side of the screens I like no graphics or full screen truxton sound is awfull
yeah i'm really picky with wallpapers too, so I just had them turned off on this port. And yes the audio is pure madness ha. I wonder why it sounds so crazy
Man, why would you review games you don't like or care about? I like you and understand you want to create content, but this probably does more harm than good to your channel. Please reconsider this! 🙏The ports have several serious flaws that hopefully will get patched, but you don't mind them just because you don't care about the games, so it's all about input lag, savestates and reducing the hitbox - something I don't get to be honest, the games are designed around them!
Would this kind of flaws be OK in a DDP port? or any Cave game? Think about it
What?
@@charlibiris ??? Whenever he reviews games he doesn't care about or have put time into, it shows. And those "reviews" are lackluster to say the least. If you know well any game that's not one of his (Cave) favourites, you'll realize how his review of it isn't that different from the mainstream media he criticizes so much. Heck, check the M2 Toaplan "reviews". He reviews them for the views, I understand that, but the passion isn't there and the end result is poor.
I do like outzone and truxton though ha. I'm guessing you might be referring to the turtles cowabunga collection? I do like some games on that collection (turtles in time mostly) so that's why I covered it. Part of my role of a reviewer though is to provide coverage for releases that my audience is likely interested in, and then parsing though the quality of the releases :-)
Mister fpga is way to go all these ports are wrong