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Post by Discoalucard on Sept 11, 2013 20:21:15 GMT -5
www.hardcoregaming101.net/rayforce/rayforce.htmTaito's confusingly named Ray~ series of shooters. The first game has FOUR different names: RayForce (Japanese arcade release), Gunlock (European, I think, arcade release), Galactic Attack (American Saturn release) and Layer Section (Japanese Saturn release). The assorted "ray" titles don't make them easier to keep track of either. RayStorm was one of the first shooters I played when I started getting into the genre, and I wasn't really all that impressed with it. Maybe it was just the perspective or the weird music. On the other hand, once I played Galactic Attack years later, I thought it was fantastic. It's definitely one of the star shooters on the system, and is pretty cheap too, compared to all of the other pricey ones on the system.
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Post by nickz on Sept 11, 2013 21:24:49 GMT -5
I was really looking forward to reading this one! I loved Raystorm and thought the other two were awesome as well. I'm really glad to see it covered here.
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Post by lanceboyle94 on Sept 11, 2013 22:58:00 GMT -5
RayStorm is probably one of my absolute favorite shmups ever. A local arcade used to have it, and when I found out that Taito Legends 2 had it, I got it ASAP.
Speaking of TL2, apparently the Xbox version is region-free. And while the Xbox/PC versions of Taito Legends 2 are emulated (based on MAME, apparently) the PS2 version has all native ports, since one of the devs had said that they couldn't get to run some of the more intensive games (mostly the F3 system games) at 60FPS, so they just simply asked Taito to port them. And they threw RayStorm and G-Darius while they were at it.
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Post by Allie on Sept 16, 2013 15:38:09 GMT -5
RayStorm is probably one of my absolute favorite shmups ever. A local arcade used to have it, and when I found out that Taito Legends 2 had it, I got it ASAP. RayStorm was the second PS1 game I owned (the first being Psychic Force, which was returned and replaced with Tekken 2 a few days later, though I ended up re-buying Psychic Force a few months after that...), so I still have a soft spot for it, myself...
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Post by Weasel on Sept 16, 2013 16:14:31 GMT -5
I mostly just skimmed the article, but it seems like the Comparison Screenshots sections are in need of some labels (RayForce lacks labels altogether), and in RayCrisis, both screenshots appear to be exactly the same, despite being noticeably different from ones earlier in the article...misnamed files, perhaps?
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Post by Allie on Sept 16, 2013 17:04:15 GMT -5
I think the RayCrisis ones were wrong, yeah. You can tell the difference between Arcade and PS1 because PS1's Encroachment meter is different.
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Post by Discoalucard on Sept 16, 2013 20:28:20 GMT -5
Should be fixed, both of those!
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Post by PooshhMao on Sept 17, 2013 1:27:30 GMT -5
Nice, I felt this site could do with a Ray article. There are some things you might want to consider adding; - The Saturn version indeed lacks some graphical effects (like the perspective mapping on the planet in the background of stage 2 among others), but oddly, they're all there when playing in Tate mode. Maybe this was an extra incentive to play the game as it was intended? R-GearApparently Taito was developing a straight sequel to the original but canceled it in favour of RayStorm. I would've loved to play this game. Despite the crappy video quality, it seems it was coming along nicely. KamuiNot directly related, but this late 90's PC shmup is a total love letter to the first game, with a similar overall design and feel (though featuring a lock-on system more akin to Soukyuugurentai). It's brilliant and still one of the finest exclusive shmupping experiences on the platform. I had both Galactic Attack and Layer Section II on the Saturn (I even reviewed the latter on shmups.com about fifteen years ago).
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Post by Allie on Sept 17, 2013 12:16:59 GMT -5
I wouldn't add Kamui.
The Alltynex series (Kamui/RefleX/Alltynex Second) deserves its own separate article, especially now that it had an official commercial (though Digital) release back in June.
EDIT : Heh! I had a review on that site too (GleyLancer).
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Post by Purple Moss on Sept 20, 2013 14:50:07 GMT -5
RayForce is an excellent shooter, and the laser system makes one feel like an actual pilot in the jet fighters of the future. There was a flash shmup called Arcanacra Black Label that featured a similar laser lock-on system (but inspired by Cho Ren Sha). Sadly, all the links are down, so it seems to have been lost forever. Edit: Minor correction.
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Post by nickz on Sept 21, 2013 9:54:35 GMT -5
There's also a doujin game on the X68000 called Crossfire EX that borrows a lot from RayForce. It's actually a pretty cool game and plays a lot like what RayForce would look like if it were developed on less advanced hardware. I've played through it a few times. It's very good! I think the studio behind it really liked RayForce to make something like this. www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHJGLIci5Ow
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Post by derboo on Nov 10, 2013 10:12:32 GMT -5
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Post by lanceboyle94 on Nov 10, 2013 14:32:15 GMT -5
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Post by zerker on Mar 7, 2015 9:17:33 GMT -5
So I picked up the Windows version of Rayforce (aka Layer Section) and tried it on each of my three PCs (running Windows 7, Windows 8, and XP). The Windows 7 PC was running too fast, but I found out that replacing the sapi.dll from an alternate copy on the CD solved that. Windows 8 was running too slow, but I was able to fix that with an alternate ddraw.dll. However, both of these machines also run in 640 x 480 with an unscaled 320 x 240 image in the middle of the screen. Does anyone know of a fix to get the game fill up the whole screen?
The screen size is NOT an issue on my XP machine, but I can't get it to throttle the game properly (sapi fix doesn't help), so it runs too fast.
Anyone else with the Windows version have any tips? Internet searches result in nothing useful.
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Startling
Banned
A better gamer than all of you plebs
Posts: 54
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Post by Startling on Feb 2, 2016 20:26:42 GMT -5
Ray Force was released in 1994. The program code says 1994 and sources have always reported it as a 1994 release. MAME still says 1993 because MAME is silly.
All releases of the PlayStation version of Ray Storm have the 13 Players mode. You can clearly see it in the options. The US release of the PlayStation version is pretty obviously not the most feature complete if they're doing weird things to the difficulties like that, never mind the above. The US release actually raises the difficulty; it's supposed to be difficulty 2, not 4. With all this in mind, the best version of this port is clearly the original Japanese release.
I'm not really sure what's with Open Sesame's site. The column on the left seems to list publishers, but Tose is definitely not a publisher, and I seriously doubt a contractor would contract a significant part of the game.
There are a lot of problems with two bits near the end of the Ray Crisis page, but I'd like to avoid those topics at the moment.
Typos: "("Cracking")and", lots of instances of "Playstation", some instances of "R-Gray 1/2/0" instead of "R-Gray1/2/0" like the rest of the article, some instances of "XBOX"
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