Did you ever play it, /vr/? Did you like it?
>>11634096Yeah I play the Saturn version and convinced my local arcade to get it for neogeo and I've played there. Not a lot of people know about it. I play Tinker & Linker because the directional shot is very useful.
>>11634140>and convinced my local arcade to get it Holy fucking based. Hopefully it catches some people's eyes and gets them to try it.>I play Tinker & LinkerThey are pretty good, wish i played them more. I enjoy the cast in general, but usually i like playing Till when i'm messing around, and Sprites (Or Mevious if i'm feeling really evil) when i'm trying to win, so not a lot of space to play the rest. How did you find out about this game though?
The last boss is hard, what do I do? I get up to her just fine on 1 credit but then I feel like I have to get lucky. Obviously the answer is "git gud" but are there any tricks to beating her?Fun game though.
I mean Twinkle Star Sprites pretty much invented the versus battle shmup. It's great with friends.
>>11634268If you are 1cc'ing on Character Mode instead of Story Mode, a good tip i can throw your way is what characters to choose. The AI is really precise with movement, and doesn't seem to have issues with fast aftacks, but does struggle with wider ones. Space control is king if you wanna crush it, so things like Nanja Monja or Griffon are your best bets. In case you are stuck with Load Ran, well, fundamentals are sadly all you can rely on for the most part. Memory is blazing quick and has a disturbingly broken charge attack, which makes her really hard to take down. But her charge attack is also one of her weaknesses, at it takes very long to charge (Around 2 seconds), leaving her vulnerable to fireball and EX attacks. On another general tip, just try to make the best use out of the Fever Orb that you can (the blue moon thingy) as AI also sucks dodging the big fireballs and thats your best time to fill the screen with them. Best of lucks on your 1cc anon.
>>11634290>I mean Twinkle Star Sprites pretty much invented the versus battle shmup.I know, but i think thats a topic that has done a lot of harm to the game in a way. Being the pioneer of shmup fighters is its legacy, but also the reason i feel a lot of people write it off for the newer, shinier games that should have in theory done it better. Even on circles where people are really into shmups i see this happen, and it angers me because its a great game. The small group of open minded friends i have got to try it because of me, and they all loved it, and i thought that'd make me happy, but it makes me feel a bit sad if anything. It deserves more love for what it is instead of being solely defined by its legacy.
>>11634325I guess because of how cute'em up-y it is? I'd say a lot of people probably learned about battle shmups from the Touhou ones.
No, but I do own a Saturn, will check it out. Nice 2D
>>11634338Well, it did happen to me a good couple times that i was very much told no because it looked too girly, but i feel that's a bit of a moot point considering Touhou also has a cast full of cute chicks. I'm fine with people finding out about the genre via Touhou, i just wish they branched out and tried stuff like TSS:
>>11634349>>11634325I've played TSS and the touhou vs shooters, but I never got deep into them because I just prefer traditional shmups to vs ones. Out of curiosity though what is it about TSS that puts it above other vs shmups for you?
I've been playing this for 10+ years, both arcade and saturn version. But there are only two friends that will play this with me.It's fun, but after some time you pretty much know every patterns and attacks so it's who will make a mistake first.
Twinkle Star Sprites is my favorite Neo-Geo game. We are nearly 30 years removed from its release, yet it is still by far the best versus shmup. I wish more people played it on Fightcade. If it had the playerbase to support it, I could play it forever.>>11634338The irony of its cutesy graphics is that it is unbelievably intense. I'm sure the title doesn't make recommending it any easier."I know this really awesome shmup you should check out.""What it called?""Uhh... Twinkle Star Sprites""..."
>>11634096I played it on Mame with some coworkers 15 years ago.My main was Yan Yanyang : liked her charged shot and the pig birds' trajectory annoyed my opponents.
>>11634256Last time I was at the arcade I saw some Asian guy playing it so I asked if he wanted to do versus. I went easy on him but he was excited about it and wanted to get it on his mame setup.
>>11634096It was one of those games that was like a shared secret between friends on how good it was. It is uniquely competitive and fun but not as recognized by most others, so my friends and I would play it whenever we had a chance. I like it lots and I'm happy to be here amongst others who like the series too.
>>11635117you'll be here forever
>>11634268How much the final battle lasts depends on how good your character's special attack is. Nanja Monja can destroy her easily but you may struggle if you use someone like Kim. Or sometimes a boss attack with hard-to-dodge patterns like Sprites' lighting over the screen can damage her if you corner her (that is if it's able to attack before it's melted by the CPU's lighting fast shooting).
>>11634401Well, Twinkle Star Sprites is an all around solid game. I love the feel of it, and despite having more serious looking titles as preference, it's that right amount of cute, with an artstyle that feels like a time capsule to the old days. I adore the music too, with every stage having atleast one version of the songs thats of my liking, and that stupid character select screen jingle that gets on my head... But if you are to press me about it, i'd say the fundamental difference between other vs shmups and TSS and the thing that puts it above is the chain combo system. A lot of vs shmups (and especially the older ones) range from pretty barebones chain systems (where i'd say PoFVs and a lot of TSS clones are) to straight up nonexistent (where its just jets duking it out), and considering the development team itself admits in interviews that it was the hardest part to get right about the game it's not hard to see why other games ditch the efforts in favor of their own gimmicks. Fireballs, bar and bosses are all tied with eachother, but the chain system is the bedrock that lets them all coexist. Zakos are the puzzle part where you get to knowledge.check opponents, not for a staight up win like its the case with things like Chess, but for the opportunity to take iniciative in offense with an earlier Fever mode. A lot of vs shmups put all their attention on micro and completely neglect the strategic side of the game that TSS balances so well with reflexes. It helps to make your wins feel earned, and makes it easy to see something you could have done better in your loses instead of just getting a 'lol just move your fingers faster grandpa'. It aleviates a lot of the frustrations to be found with the genre for an easy to understand but hard to master system that will always have you going 'one more game' a lot more than you'd expect.
>>11636213I want to follow up this comment by stating i actually LIKE Touhou 9. Credit where credit is due, it further iterates on bosses and makes them feel much more relevant, also has amazing music (Tewi, Eiki, and the remade Youmu one being my faves.) and has a lovable cast of (mostly) fan favorites. But PoFV made th sin of oversimplifying too much, sacrificing the relevance of popcorn enemies to emphazise the bosses, and mixing bombs and EX attacks, which would be a nice idea in paper were it not because of them basically refunding themselves in use, turning it into a turtlefest. Phantasmagoria of Flower View has some amazing spectacle with the sheer amount of bullets on screen, but having constant reusable bombs, life protection that will leave you at half hp and full bar to counterattack everytime you'd die of a stray hit, and the (admittedly benefitial) Focus mode that will let you micro a lot easily, well... It will be a lot more of a turtlefest, one with less strategy,and a lot less resource control. I could probably get behind that flaw if it didn't tip the scales so heavily in terms of playstyle. One thing that TSS gets right is that you can pretty much play either very defensive or very offensive, with both being very valid strategies, making it so every character in the cast has a place. Yanyan is a slow shitty lowtier, but she's got a scrub killer EX that will steal wins so much it'll make her look broken as fuck. Kesubei, and Schmitt are really quick making them the best on long matches where the Reaper appears, and are stronger the more stuff there is on screen (Kesubei with his Mecha-cat superboss and Schmitt with his EX being better on bulk for trapping.) Even Griffon who is considered the worst has people like Itsuki pulling neat tricks with his unique charge attack, and no need to say much of the ridiculously fun (and broken) SNK singleplayer bosses you can pick with the secret code to mess with people outside of tournaments.
>>11636235Meanwhile, if you are not playing Reimu, Marisa or Youmu on Touhou 9, you might as well be shooting yourself in the foot before starting every match. Defense is so solid by virtue of the game mechanics themselves that your only real objective is to burn the meter of your opponent as fast as you can throwing all the shit possible to their side. Tewi is a shit, nobody besides coomers play Reisen, and that only leaves Youmu as the designated defensive character, and she only works because ZUN, in his infinite wisdom, made a character that has a no cost charge attack that destroys basically everything in the game thats in front of her. She isn't even pure defense, she makes it rain in the other side while she just sits there cutting everything. He had his cool ideas, Merlin is pure insanity, and Cirno is the designated meme-tier to flex on people that are worse than you, but in the bigger picture, character representation basically boils down to the big three, and as a result, it ends up being a lot more boring to play and watch.I think thats very much it. It's a bit sad, 2huautists usually denounce Th9 for feeling too random, and TSS is just right there, with all they say they want in a vs shmup, yet they won't play it. ZUN would have been better off copying how zakos work in Sfar Sprites IMO, but that's another can of worms. Feel free to leave your own thoughts about it, i don't get to discuss shmup fighters a lot, and i've been loving the topic.
>>11636256>character x is a meme choice blablabla...Play as the character you like you goober
>>11636275What? Have you ever even engaged with any niche community at all? You have to be seriously naive to genuinely think balance does not shape the way some games are played. Microcommunities are the places where you'll find some of the biggest sweats in the world, and that means you WILL have to engage with the meta, like it or not. Even if you don't suscribe to it, your opponent will make it your problem. Sure, you can try it with friends that are just as clueless as you, it will be lots of fun. But if you genuinely want to be a part of it, better get ready for whatever horseshit your kusoge of preference has, because it's what you'll experience the most. In PoFVs case, you better tolerate getting constantly cornered by Reimu, being randomly killed by on of the 50 Marisa lasers on screen at all times, or 20 minute matches against Youmu.
>>11636256thanks anon i have a very surface-level appreciation for these games and it's nice to read someone who has thought really deeply about them
>>11635117>owns the sega saturn one>even owns the japanese exclusive La Petite PrincesseYou are the real deal.
>>11634096I'm not really all that into these games but you got my attention now. Are there any others like it? I'd rather try all the ones i can on my own to see what i think of them
>>11634096>Did you ever play it, /vr/?No.
>>11636317I don't play gigasweat tryhard games to be honest, I just clicked on this thread because of the cute characters. I haven't played PoFV yet either
>>11634096Yeah, it's great. I found it from Zany Video Game Quotes or just browsing MAME back in the late 90s (can't remember which) and keep coming back to it over the years.I'm fucking trash, though. But it's fun to keep trying.
>>11636256in versus I just used Yuuka all the time because the charge attack cleaning everything is way too comfy, greatest fighting character ever
