Batsugun, The Final Fantasy of Shmups! Arcade + Saturn Review! (Patreon Voted Review)

[@tokyobassist]

I can't wait for M2 to pull the trigger on this release because it's been teased a lot. This game is excellent as an introduction bullet hell but hard to suggest due to ease of accessibility. Fun fact: - Summer Carnival Recca '92 predates this game by one year and was programmed by Shinobu Yagawa...the daddy of Battle Garegga. - Tsuneki Ikeda was a programmer for Batsugun...the same one that made DoDonpachi - Ikeda later hires Yagawa for the express purpose of making a Battle Garegga 2. The result was the infamous Ibara. I love stories like this. It's crazy how early the seeds are sown.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Killer comment!

[@Renegaiden_]

I watched Batsugun gameplay today, and in an instant, I can tell that this is where the roots of DonPachi/DoDonPachi were born Heck, there had to be a key developer who left Toaplan and went to Cave to continue the lineage. The bee at the results screen gave me that 1 big hint as well.

[@PiroKUSS]

What is Ibara infamous for? Does it suck or something?

[@DonnyKirkMusic]

@@PiroKUSS Its more like its unfairly-difficult for most people, which is why every release of it afterwords smooths out the difficulty and the rank system, which caused most of the difficulty.

[@ShmupJunkie]

I always loved this game I prefer the faster bullets vs the slower pattern dodging. What surprises me is few ever mention V-V / Grind Stormer as an earlier bullet hell. First time I played it I was blown away how much it felt like an early Donpachi... even moreso than Batsugun. All the way down to the spread shot vs the focused beam. It’s not quite bullet hell but it’s hard as nails and feels very much like one to me... at least as close as you’d expect for a game that released so long ago.

[@niespeludo]

It's also the first Toaplan shmup with the reduced hitbox. Which in turn was one of the first to bring some of the bullet patterns we associate with bullet hell. I love your content as well man, you 2 should collab sometime.

[@ShmupJunkie]

dr_ubio that may happen sooner than you think 😁

[@mishikomishiko9088]

I'm waiting for M2's Toaplan Collection

[@Tomorer]

Yea the Special Version with MUSHA as a bonus :)

[@MRrZero]

More reviews like this please. Especially love when you cover what the best it is to play some of these games, and how the ports differ.

[@corkman111]

Toaplan forever!! I love the Astro City look. A part of my personal heaven includes rows of Astro City machines set up to play shmups. Thanks for the review.

[@WildPumpk1n]

Ahhh batsugun, my first 1cc... And the only one 😂😁😁

[@philmason9653]

I've heard about this game for years, but never had the chance to play it. That blue spread fire is utterly hypnotic.

[@gaupau]

This might be my favourite STG of all time. I can't speak on it's objective quality but there's something about the way this game makes me feel. The gorgeous visuals and colour, the amazing soundtrack (Geo Frontier being one of my fav video game songs ever). It truly feels like it represents the 90s arcade scene in a nutshell. Such a gem and I really hope M2 does a release of it because it deserves a wider audience!

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yes it does! Bat is a fantastic game! Especially special edition

[@censoredterminalautism4073]

The New Astro City. One day I will have one. Actually, two. Maybe three. Perhaps four, just to be on the safe side.

[@neontetra1000]

You can get a mini one!. They just released the handheld / desk top Astro cab!.

[@censoredterminalautism4073]

​@@neontetra1000 Not the same thing. That's just a novelty item. They have to be huge, that's part of the appeal! And the small one doesn't have a nice CRT, and I don't play old games without one. The Astros actually have really durable monitors too (it's no coincidence that Japanese arcades are full of them, they are both really durable and extremely common). Easy to find parts for as well, because so many of them were made. I definitely want to get a few of them. At least two, because rotating the monitor takes work, so you want one vertical and one horizontal. And then you can also change the panels and have different parts if you want to, and have a Sanwa stick in the horizontal cab and a Seimitsu in the vertical (I would say a Korean stick if you prefer those, but putting Korean parts in a Japanese candy cab feels like something that you would go to hell for, and would probably activate my minor OCD as well). Though that still leaves games that should be played with a 4-way gate, so if you want total convenience, it makes sense to have another cab for that. Maybe you could use the player 2 side of the horizontal cab, but then playing with another human being on that cab becomes less convenient. Basically, I have every excuse to get three of them. They are not even that expensive for someone that never spends any money like me. Transportation is a problem, but I can just buy a decent used van, or whatever I can fit that into. And I do want to find a gigantic 40 inch CRT (or two) as well, and I need to be able to transport that. Unfortunately I can't do it now, but it's a plan that I have.

[@timecop808]

Love this game so much! Thanks for making this review.

[@beebot]

I loved this game on the Saturn - fantastic. Soundtrack sticks in my head

[@futureskeletons66669]

I agree with your Psikyo assertion, the glowing pick ups are lifted straight from all of Psikyo's verts.

[@KikenEnryu]

In standard Batsugun once the ship reaches max power (Full Level 3) the experience meter will loop. Each time a loop is filled, a bomb item is spawned.

[@coldcoffeeMK2]

DoDonPachi beta core was released today for MiSTer. Love to see your review on that.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Holy crap that s awesome! Is there any footage of it? I don t have a mister yet

[@coldcoffeeMK2]

​@@TheElectricUnderground I only see one video on it right now. It just released this morning. It's nullobject first CAVE release he's going to be doing more CAVE shooters after DoDonPachi. Great time to put one together.

[@vadicanik]

I love these deep dives and how you compare the ports to the arcade original. Would you please consider doing a video or series of videos on the best non-port shmups of all time or for each console? I would love for you to outline the must play shmups of the PC Engine, Playstation, SNES, NES, Genesis and the like because I can always get my arcade or modern fix but I'm sure I'm missing out on some grade A shmups of the past I can throw on my romcarts!

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Oh that's a cool idea!

[@flutebasket4294]

I can't seem to accurately configure the auto-fire for ship B on Shmuparch. No matter what I change under "turbo fire," pressing the button rapidly makes the sparks shoot faster than simply holding the button

[@TheElectricUnderground]

That is weird! All else fails you can use antimicro combined with the keyboard input as an autofire, that works really well

[@whatamalike]

Literally just been looking this up and thought "hmm, i wonder if electric underground has heard of this?" only to find you'd done a full blown review! Aha great minds think alike ;)

[@TheElectricUnderground]

:-D

[@ThatGamingGuyfromthe70s]

Whilst i really respect what you are saying i cant help but listen to the finest soundtrack ever made in the background😃

[@TheElectricUnderground]

yeah batsugun music is under-rated for sure!

[@darthboman]

I love Special! Definitely a fun game, and not to hard to clear the first loop.

[@dingo535]

Nice review, I definitely need to try this out but couldn’t get it working on my old pc with shmup mame.

[@martinhernandez656]

Can you change to batsugun Saturn arrange arcade on MAME final burns neo to try extend 500000 to every 600000

[@felipek.165]

Now Batsugun is coming to Switch and Play Station!

[@mareksekua4287]

I'd like to try Batsugun but I have a problem with that autofire You were talking about. I use shmuparch. How can I enable it? In service mode like in Dodonpachi? I can't acces it, when I try it says sw error. Some kind of port would be great for this game.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

I can t remember if Batsugun has a c button or not. Try holding start and see if it s in the service menu. If not you can use something like antimicro to bind your keyboard key and stick button to autofire :-)

[@lunaria_stg]

Batsugun is to bullet hell what Space Invaders is to shmups as a whole. It's interesting to see how Toaplan's visual style gradually evolved from something simple like in Same Same Same to resembling Dodonpachi in the later games like Tatsujin and Batsugun. On transparency, I was reading some of the developer interviews recently, and CAVE said they only gained the ability to use it with the SH3 hardware from Mushi onwards, so I guess Toaplan wasn't able to use transparency then either. And like someone else said, looking forward to M2's Toaplan ports.

[@rosstee]

​ @The Electric Underground Hi, will you please review the upcoming Batsugun on PS4, mainly to test the amount of lag? I had it preordered but have cancelled as I want to make sure the lag isn't crazy bad! Thanks

[@blaaaaaaarghable]

This is a cool review, but could you make the game footage a bit larger on screen? There's a lot of detailed stuff happening but it's shrunk to fit the Astro city frame

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yes I think I will do so next time, shrink down the panel for more screen space

[@Daniel-it1dp]

The Electric Underground or make your video TATE to keep with the theme and have your face smaller and stacked 😁

[@Kumagumi]

Yo mark! Are you gonna do the new batsugun cityconnection version review ?

[@RasLion]

Thx for reviewing this beautiful game

[@ThistleWoe]

What are you looking at during these videos?

[@Tchiko.]

Hi, I’ve seen your input lag data base, thank you. But I have a question : are those arcade shmups freelag on their original arcade CRT hardware ?

[@PaulHindt]

All games have some level of input lag which varies wildly depending on the nature of the target hardware platform. Not even arcade PCBs are immune to this. In the most basic scenario it takes time for the electrical signal to travel from the player controls to the CPU, trigger an interrupt on the CPU, calculate the player's new position and/or action(s) based on which input was given, register that value in memory, update the sprite data in memory representing the player, and then render the resulting frame to the display. If you're playing on a CRT the electron guns scan line-by-line from top-to-bottom to render the new frame. This means that if your player sprite is at the top of the screen it will appear to respond to inputs sooner than if it were at the bottom. So "frames" is not a perfect measure of input lag but it is one that works well enough and is something pretty much everyone understands. A lot of shmups have the equivalent of a 1-2 frames of lag, although some have 3. Check out Buffi's Input lag list (Google "inputlag buffis") for an example of various games they've tested. While Batsugun is not on their list, DoDonPachi is, and it was measured at 2 frames of input lag, for example.

[@Tchiko.]

Thank you for your answer and the link with datas.@@PaulHindt

[@dankhill6851]

I feel like in a sense Silver Surfer for NES can be considered an early bullet hell, that games tough, and it's not because you have to tap the button over and over, it requires a ton of memorization. I'm surprised nobody recognizes Silver Surfers true potential, it's such a good game.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

I ve heard this a lot! I ll have to give it a try!

[@Tomorer]

Who got money on this one for the next M2STG offering?

[@Seriousbomb54]

this game is great. I have never gotten the 2-all yet, but gonna get it for sure. for scoring you need to know that some enemies give 59630 score. this score itself is a joke, because it can be read as gokurosan which translates to thank you sir. The game also got its own manga up until stage 3. in later loops it becomes more and more like pink sweets, because you use your bombs for scoring all the time. So toughest sections are the ones where you aren't allowed to bomb or else you won't get enough score to get the counterstop. leeway seems pretty big tho, heard of some attempting the counterstop as fast as possible.

[@gianyrivera1082]

Wouldn't it be called the Dragon Quest of Danmaku Since Final Fantasy came out after Dragon Quest lol

[@TheElectricUnderground]

The analogy is more a out how it was the studios final game, like FF, but then it really was the final game sadly, unlike ff. I can see the dragon quest comparison too though :-)

[@techknow9237]

It got released on XB today 😁

[@TheElectricUnderground]

fantastic!

[@PolarBauer]

Love this game! My first 1cc! Never touched it again tho

[@ZatohRondohoon3227]

No Words, Really. No Words. This Game, Looks Pretty Solid, Pretty Much A Pioneer Of Bullet Hell Sub-genre Of SHMUPs. Looks Very Challenging. By Any Chance, Have You Reviewed DDPII?

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Ohhh bee storm! Not yet :-) came super close to a 1cc though

[@ZatohRondohoon3227]

@@TheElectricUnderground I'm Actually Farming Strats, I Mean, Practicing That To 1CC It. It's Difficult, Nonetheless, But Very Easy If I Master It Correct.

[@reichen609]

Oh, so it's called 'bullet hell'! NOICE! I'm just a spectator (more than a gamer) and there was this game that I always watched other people play. I only remember that this one plane had this very OP support blast(?), I don't know what it's called, opposite to the main blast. It looked like 2 thick columns of purple, cloud-like fire that honed in on its target! Like a homing support beam or something. I'm desperately looking for this game as I forgot the name. I really thought it was this one, Batsugun, coz they have the same aesthetics. But I don't see that plane here. Anyone know what that game is? 🤔

[@rosstee]

Raiden 2 or 4 (IV) maybe?

[@boonboy8333]

I love toaplan staff but this whole style of infinity bullets spewing out of the players ship while the poor enemy ships gently scatter a couple peanuts into the air 🙄

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Try the special version! It ups the bullet counts in the 2nd loop

[@boonboy8333]

@@TheElectricUnderground Mmm maybe it's my age but I can only appreciate stuff like tatsujin/truxton, skyshark, and mr heli. But even these games need remakes where the enemy has decent and varied firepower plus sound quality rework

[@overkill1473]

Shmup sounds like alcoholic beverages. Sorry dude i had too many shmups last night. I cant walk straight today.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Ha it does!

[@GamingPalOllieMK]

Dude I love your videos and I love shmups and bullethells especially but why do you show yourself in a bigger frame than the game itself? It's more fun to watch gameplay from a game than some guy talking, at least that's how I feel

[@kirkcavenaugh758]

1st

[@skyealexander4605]

Something weird is going on. A gaming web site listen Top 10 Best Bullet Hell games and had the likes of freaking Undertale on it and only like two BUllet Hell games. Elsewhere, I see people calling 30XX and Dead Cells Bullet Hell games. I'm wondering if people need to be educated on what makes a SHMUP much less a Bullet Hell game. I can't really call arena roguelites and Metroidvanias Bullet Hell, nor can I say the same of Mega Man style games or RPGs.