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")
Day 2 started ~30mins ago
the schedule:
- Clarice Disc on their Irem Game Visual Soundtrack & other OST announcement (they just announced a Gaiapolis CD)
- 13:00: Happymeal & City Connection on the "Final Series", the Happymeal-made series of Jaleco revival games: they've released one so far (Final Exerion) with two others confirmed, and they'll probably announce #2
- 14:00: Radirgy 2 with Maruyama from BEEP Shop & player Charlie
- 15:00: Sol Cresta with Platinum Games' PR rep & some other folk
- 16:00: G-MODE Archives director Hatta & producer Takeshita demoing various G-MODE Archives STG (probably no announcements, they've released 99 games so far & have their own stream scheduled to reveal #100, but I could be wrong
- 17:00: Success' producer/planner TwY and director Nohara on Heaven Seeker, their recent indie twin-stick roguelite (and mayyybe news on Cotton Rock'n'Roll 2, but I'm not confident
- 18:00: a non-specific presentation by retro homebrew publisher Game Impact with various guests, including some ex-Jaleco folk... I imagine they'll announce a new port of an old Jaleco game, a la the recent City Connection MD
- 19:00: Happinet's PR reps showing off their recent physical STG releases (Silvergun, Mushihimesama, Shikhondo)
- 20:00: folk from Data Arts and MOSS on their recent vampire survivor clone, Petit Petit Petit
- 22:00: wrap-up
the next "Final Series" game, out this year on PC/Switch: Final Formation, a new take on Formation Z in the same setting as Final Exerion, with the most notable change being the adoption of free-scrolling stages a la Fantasy Zone, and it seems they're adding a Voltron-esque element that'll let you construct your ship in different ways to prioritise power, speed, etc; they're also integrating the worldview from Final Exerion, as well as the manga-style cutscenes written/drawn by Watari U. City Connection/former Cave composer Daisuke Matsumoto's handling the music.
Game Impact/Habit Soft & City Connection have formally announced a Mega Drive-compatible cartridge release for The Freedom Star, a cartridge release for Jaleco's finished but never-released Mega Drive adaptation of the NMK arcade game P-47; They didn't show the package itself, but they mentioned they're getting Tankro Kato, an artist famous for their work illustrating Hasegawa model kits, to do the box art.
The City Connection president's had this in their possession for a long time and has made it playable at events and even released the music on a certain soundtrack, but this'll be the first public, commercial release... it's definitely a far more liberal conversion than, say, Super EDF, and might as well be an original game. Habit Soft's throwing in a staff roll and fixing a couple bugs but it's essentially untouched from the version that almost came out in 1990.
A couple of the original Jaleco devs appeared to chat about the original release... Nintendo indirectly leaned on Jaleco to "postpone" it, apparently.
one extra bit of news from the G-MODE portion of the stream, which I didn't watch live as I figured they weren't going to announce anything: Argus DX is coming to G-MODE Archives! This is a galakei adaptation of the old NMK-made, Jaleco-published vertical STG Argus, notorious for being one of the most difficult commercial STG ever produced... not that you'd know it from watching footage of the phone version, which has all the bite of the average early-00s phone game.
The "DX" indicates that it's the higher-spec version of the game—the plainer original version has actually been reissued before, as one of the very few entries in Hamster's PS Mobile-exclusive Appli Archives line: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEsiQGWNE5c