I was wandering around the expo floor at PAX East last year when I noticed Earthion at the Limited Run demo arcade. I had a lot of fun playing it on the floor so I bought the full game on Steam. It's a quality shmup! For me the difficulty really spikes on stage 3 and that's where I got stuck, though I did make it to stage 4 once or twice. The initial release had some bullet visibility issues that were improved in subsequent updates. The default CRT filter is fun but I turned it off almost immediately for more visual clarity.
Earthion: A New Mega Drive-Style Shoot-Em-Up
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Re: Earthion: A New Mega Drive-Style Shoot-Em-Up
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a bunch on Youtube. The art has the typical issues of modern 16-bit and 8-bit games where the designers and artists are not targeting the full hardware stack of the era. Rather, they're targeting simulated machines (emulators) and sometimes also flash carts on original hardware but rendered on modern display hardware. What I notice is that the highly detailed sprite work doesn't produce the elegant artifactin…
It bothers me when a new creative work tries to adopt a distinct historical style without understanding its form, structure, context, constraints and motivation. Without that understanding it's just derivative imitation which might evoke echoes of the original but can never match, add to it or take it new directions. While it may sound odd to want new pixel art to be "authentic" in the same way as new music should re…
Very few people are going to play this on a CRT, tho. And even if you included a CRT shader, most people will turn it off.
It's ok to pine for the old techniques, but this is a game made for a Genesis in modern times. It has to stride both.
Re: Earthion: A New Mega Drive-Style Shoot-Em-Up
#53Does anyone have a video of it on an actual CRT TV? Looking at the youtube gameplay, it looks like it would have some problems with text on the overscan getting cropped. I am curious how some of the effects look on a CRT.
No video, but I play this on a CRT with a flash cart and it looks and plays amazing. Way better than playing it on steam via a modern display, even with the fancy CRT shaders they give you.
Re: Earthion: A New Mega Drive-Style Shoot-Em-Up
#54"Physical editions of Earthion are coming to North America! Pre-order the Standard or Collector’s Editions at Limited Run Games" Yikes. Seems like i'm not getting a physical copy then. I'm not giving any money to LRG. Which is a shame because it looks like a cool game.
LRG? Limited Run Games? I've never heard of them before. How come you're shunning them?
I didn't know either, so I started searching around. Just typing "limited run games" in DDG the suggested search that pops up is "limited run games controversy", which is never a good sign. Looks like there have been a few issues and even settlements.
Re: Earthion: A New Mega Drive-Style Shoot-Em-Up
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was always put off by the color palette of the Mega Drive. Every game looks a little sad and drab compared to the SNES or NeoGeo.
Sonic being the exception
And Rocket Knight Adventures - which is quite colorful.
Re: Earthion: A New Mega Drive-Style Shoot-Em-Up
#56This game is so close to be amazing but the bullet visibility problems bring it down greatly. If they can solve the pixel layer limitations, even if it’s only on the non-MD version, so enemy bullets are always above everything else, then it’s a an easy buy. Until then, it’s just only if you’re a dedicated shmup guy that loves MD games.
That sucks to hear - hopefully it'll be addressed! I'm a huge shmup fan particularly danmakus. Shmups from Cave in particular do a fantastic job: even when the screen is absolutely saturated with bullets like having a bag of dried rice dumped on your head, everything is still extremely visible.
Contrast that with Raiden. Some of the Raiden arcade games are notorious for combining the worst two traits: fast-moving projectiles that are also very hard to see.
Re: Earthion: A New Mega Drive-Style Shoot-Em-Up
#57Haven't seen so many uninformed comments in a while on HN :-/ This is a MegaDrive game running in an emulator for the modern ports. Made by Makoto Wada and Yuzo Koshiro. Doesn't get mich more authentic than that imho. Original hardware, original artists. I understand it's not everyone's tea (anymore) tho.
Just to put it out there, since some people might not know, Koshiro who is probably best known for Streets of Rage, is widely regarded as a master video game composer, right up there with Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy) and Koji Kondo (Mario/Zelda).
Give the Stage 1 music from ActRaiser a listen to see (or hear) what I mean:
Re: Earthion: A New Mega Drive-Style Shoot-Em-Up
#58This looks amazing! Wishlisted on Steam, will buy it sometime.
Re: Earthion: A New Mega Drive-Style Shoot-Em-Up
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sega are famously far less litigious than most games companies. They know about modders, community servers (for example PSO servers) and even fans who release brand new games using Sega mascots like Sonic. In fact (IIRC) that’s how Sonic Mania began life. This might be different given it’s a company logo and thus trademark. But I wouldn’t be so sure they’d get a cease and desist like if someone imitated Nintendos log…
I wonder where's the line between using a font and copyright/trademark infringement.
If the font is proprietary then using that without permission could be copyright infringement.
If the logo can be confused as owned by another entity, then that could be argued as trademark infringement.
But these cases would need to be decided in court. And different jurisdictions might be more restrictive than others.
Re: Earthion: A New Mega Drive-Style Shoot-Em-Up
#6012 year old me would have loved this. 60 year old me can't bear more than a few seconds of the trailer.
TBF if you're 60 then you were in your 20s when the genesis game out, which also means 12 year old you was maybe playing the newly released Atari VCS, which also means this game would have absolutely blown your mind at 12.
All to say, you were never the demo for this game - then or now. I'm in my mid-40s and this kind of game feels so refreshing when compared to modern games. Not to be a jerk or anything, but a few years completely changes context of your comment as games/tech were so rapidly evolving over this period.
I quit gaming in early 2000s, tried to get back into it a few times in last 10 years and it's just not very appealing to me unless this retro style games pique my interest. The only exception has been playing the big Nintendo titles with my son (he's 7 and got a Switch at the same age I got the NES).