Mikado's announced another Shooters Fes event for 2024—ICYMI, these are STG-centric live gathering that bring together active commercial STG devs to reveal or talk about their new/upcoming projects, sell merch, etc. I wanna say last year's event got turned into a series of panels at TGMS or some other con, so this is their first dedicated event in a minute.
The schedule on the website lists a lot of familiar participants: Taito, Granzella, City Connection, M2, Success, etc. I guess the biggest surprise is that some of the Bitwave folk from Sweden are going to be there, talking about their Toaplan Steam ports.
There are still a few as-yet-unrevealed slots on the schedule, but City Connection's kicking off with the announcement of a new game, and Happymeal (makers of Final Exerion) are hosting a "Final Series" panel, so I expect they'll reveal their next Jaleco IP revival game. I also expect Granzella to informally announce something, because Kujo informally announces things any time he appears in public.
It'll be streamed on Mikado's channel, and I fully expect the Mikado manager's dad-rock VGM band to play a tune or two.
schedule:
12:00: City Connection (new title...!)
13:00: bad arcade company (one of their games already leaked, Air Gallet)
14:00: Bushiroad (Macross Shooting Insight)
15:00: Neotro (NeverAwake, and they're teasing something... might be connected to a loop lever/spinner controller)
16:00: Pyramid (Alice Gear Aegis... probably just demoing their customary April Fools caravan minigame)
17:00: Granzella (R-Type Final 2/3/Tactics 1+2, plus whatever else Kujo feels like mentioning)
18:00: Taito (Ray'z Arcade Chronology Strahl aka the DVD concert release, and maybe something else...?)
19:00: M2 (DOJ Rinne Tensei, and maybe more...?)
20:00: Hamster (probably just demoing already-released/announced stuff, but who knows)
21:00: Bitwave (Toaplan PC ports, and probably a date/drop for the final batch)
22:00~23:00: ending (might just be chat, might also be dad rock)
@Streetmagik 1 hr ago
Maybe M2 will talk more about Ubusuna or their original Aleste game? 🤞🤞
The little hints I've been given suggest it might be another Taito collab... and as I'm typing this, I just remembered that they already announced a Night Striker reissue way back when, so I guess they'll formally reveal that project
that or more Toaplan stuff, they're long overdue on some of those (but like, what aren't they overdue on)
City Connection's big announcement: their TAKExOFF studio (Akai Katana, Deathsmiles I+II) is collaborating with G.rev to port Under Defeat—specifically, they're porting and expanding Under Defeat HD for modern platforms (PS5/Switch/Xbox/PC)
new features include
- Shinji Hosoe's returning to provide a new soundtrack
- visible display for ranks and other data
- subtitled radio channel (taken from the old guidebook)
due out this winter!
...and they're porting a second G.rev game: Mamoru-kun wa Norowarete Shimatta! / Mamorukun Curse!, their late-'00s overhead run-and-gun that's most famous for being the source for YOKAI DISCO
new features:
- all DLC content included as standard
- Yousuke Yasui's returning, but they're playing coy about precisely how he'll be contributing
- story mode is being revamped for full 16:9
due out next year
Neotro's twin-stick STG NeverAwake is getting "Flashback" DLC this summer—it'll add a roguelite mode with a more arcade-ish structure than the very segmented main game, and it'll contain new stages, bosses, accessories, etc plus the Gabe-chan boss now hangs around the player and functions as an option.
Granzella's segment has mostly been non-specific rambling by Kazuma Kujo about R-Type Cosmos 1+2, R-Type Final 2/3 and whatever other side-roads they decided to go down, but they did also bring along a new trailer for Formation Z (and I gotta say, it's the first time the game looked to me like it might be turning out okay), which they followed up with the reveal that they're adding an R-Type ship as one of the player-characters—and naturally, it'll have a mech form.
DOJ Rinne Tensei's getting a fairly substantial patch with a lot of bug fixes—I don't have time to list them all but the big changes/fixes are:
- adding the ability to quick-save/load from replays
- updating the gadgets to indicate when your bombs are inaccessible due to the bomb sealing bug (in white label, if you die right after bombing & activating hyper, your bomb button won't work)
- adding a setting to properly emulate the level of slowdown experience in BL when a boss explodes (long story, but there were basically two different unmarked revisions of BL and the earlier unfinished one has different slowdown in this particular instance—M2 had no idea but certain people insisted they'd gotten the slowdown wrong and sure enough, they were emulating the later build, but now you can choose to recreate the poorer performance of the early build)
- the Arcade Challenge settings menu has been revised with a "player resource" section that'll let you set your bomb capacity, bomb stocks and powerups on death, among other options
(patch is coming "soon")