It's one thing to do a 'homage' to Turrican when there's nothing else like it on the console... but trying to out-Slug one of SNK's flagship series on its native hardware is another. I have no problem with them doing a Run n' Gun, that's awesome, but the art style is far too close to Metal Slug for comfort. They could have gone for Probotector style mobile suits or something crazy like Alien Hominid. Just look at how unique and cool looking Demon Front is on the PGM.
From watching the trailers the game does seem very competent, if a little lacking a certain something. Unfortunately I think the choice of art style will end up biting them in the ass as the game will inevitably be directly compared to the Slugs and I'm unsure if it can live up to that level of quality. I look forward to seeing some honest reviews from anyone that has taken the plunge.
I *think* people on Neo Geo. com seemed to quite like it as a general consensus. For me it just seemed too close to Metal Slug but I'd like to watch a play-through to be sure . I wish they had copied Contra and instead of the Slug games. I was quite excited when I heard they were makign a run and gun, then when I saw it was basically Metal Slug I was very disappointed.
I don't think the price is so important because you can always sell these games for more than you paid. I wish they were cheaper of course but there's only 3 or 4 of them making a 888 meg neo geo game that will have a limited run. It must take at least 6-8 months work per game. Probably more. Also it's better coding than an official game
I have also very mixed feelings for this and I didnt pay too much attention to their former games (even though Turricane sounds interesting...!) but at the end you are probably right SD - no matter what I will probably be able to sell it for more if I dont like it.
I saw the video but I think its a joke... the masks at the beginning, the music and almost everything seems just takes from MS.
Personally I think it's great the there are developers who make games for obsolete systems. Kraut may not be to my liking but the others are for sure. Gunlord, Neo XYX etc.
They invaded holy Neo geo ground; Metal Slug. It's just plain dumb to do it.
I don't take it as a 'hommage' to MS, it's too easy to get away with that.
NG.DEV isn't a bad developer, I bought enough games from them and I'm satisfied with them. But as fans of the system, we should stay critical and not welcome every game because 'nothing comes out anymore'.
Saw this on the Facebook page. New Video. Seems like the AES version is back on sale too.
YouTube Video
after a long wait we finally have a new video ready.
Sorry for the long time. But it's the first time and maybe the last time we create a project like this. So we want to put everything in that we can.
Currently Kraut Buster has no release date, but a release in the late 1st/early 2nd quarter of 2017 seems realistic.
We have great news for the music, Rafael Dyll is back with a vengeance. With a dramatically increased budget and the fist time with the support of a musician who plays live in the studio his guitar and e-guitar. Having live recordings from a studio musician is a first in one of our games.
The result is a fantastic rocking OST.
The sound mixing of the video has priority on the music but we have tons of new SFX in the game too. Currently it has around 2x-3x the amount of SFX than Gunlord. We haven't decided on voice recordings yet, but we will do some experiments with it later this year too.
As the project increased significantly in size and budget we decided to introduce some kind of mission select structure to the game. So the players can choose the length of the gaming session and the mission parts themselves.
Kraut Buster can be played both as a short and sweet arcade experience or a long more console like session. It also adds more variety and replay value.
The player can also select his military rank (1-PRIVATE,2-CAPTAIN,3-COLONEL) which has a big impact on difficulty. It influences the amount of action and AI of the enemies among other things. The grunts/Zakus are always kinda stupid but they may learn a trick or two in higher difficulties.
We are currently testing whether we allow difficulty selects for each sub mission (kinda like in Death Smiles) or only global.
The video was captured at rank 2-CAPTAIN.
The wolf mask was designed for speed runners, it increases both movement speed and weapon power. It's draw back is that it consumes ammo faster, so it requires a more careful ammo/weapon management.
The video is quite long as it's purpose is to show new mission parts and general progress. More details will be added but like always in game development that will be done in the last 3 months (polishing phase).
It shows parts of mission 2 (2-2/2-4) and mission 4 (4-1/4-2).
The last video (#2) showed parts of 1-1, 2-1 and 2-3.
For the first time we used 60 fps for the video. If your video player does not support it, there maybe some glitches with flicker transparency effects (sprites seem to disappear) or other problems.
We added Kraut Buster AES (regular) back to the shop for a limited time to increase the budget further.
Best regards,
NGDEV
The video was captured from the NEOGEO MVS alpha version. The original game is 60hz@224p 4:3 and looks very crisp. The borders where added for technical reasons.
Im not sure why they continue to bring out new games that are copying other games that are common enough as it is, id really love to see another Nam 1975 style game myself. Not many like it at all, and it was a great game.
Im not so sure about the polished comments, i have Last Hope here, and i must say its pretty ordinary. It just lacks that finished feel that the official games had.
Make a NAM clone and im in, make it futuristic, make it wild west, make it pre/post 1975, make it 90s conflicts... I dont care, just make it, and follow the same gameplay line as NAM.
Im not sure why they continue to bring out new games that are copying other games that are common enough as it is, id really love to see another Nam 1975 style game myself. Not many like it at all, and it was a great game.
Im not so sure about the polished comments, i have Last Hope here, and i must say its pretty ordinary. It just lacks that finished feel that the official games had.
Make a NAM clone and im in, make it futuristic, make it wild west, make it pre/post 1975, make it 90s conflicts... I dont care, just make it, and follow the same gameplay line as NAM.
I often hope someone will make a NAM-1969 game. Since in NAM-1975 the 2 soldiers are returning to 'Nam. Their original tour was in 1969.
Last Hope - it was their first game The graphics look a bit rough at times and it has some weedy bullets and bosses. I don't remember any slowdown and it does also look pretty good in places. Games like Metal Slug, Pulstar and Blazing Star can slow down and flicker (sprite flicker) quite a lot at times. So while polished graphically, some of the coding isn't very polished. Obviously though,they are much better games overall.
I would say in terms of pushing the hardware NGDevTeam are probably without equal. They lack the team size to really cram in the content though. Which is why I think making a Metal Slug style game has pushed them over budget. I expect them to go back to schmups for their next game.
Looks great. Some very nice artwork. You can see they've really put a lot of work into this game. Hope I can play it in the future. I still don't like the masks though. Also the pseudo-WW2 setting appealed to me but it seems like they've introduced more and more futuristic stuff like robots.
I would also love to see another NAM 1975 style game for Neo Geo. I think most people enjoy that kind of game. Something similar to Gamshara would be nice.
To be completely honest: the game is in pre-order.
The table has turned completely around for me, especially after video #3 the feeling of the game clicked for me. It's indeed in some parts still homebrewish but the game has improved (a lot) since the last publication. It isn't finished yet, still some time to go before release in 2017. But I decided to give it a chance. We'll see.
NEO-GEO man wrote:They may have pushed the console, but for what? There are loads more powerful consoles out there to push these days if its graphics you want.
The point is, this is the Neo Geo though not some other system. What made it stand out at the time was the graphics and arcade quality. The best titles were usually a combination of great graphics and gameplay. Apart from releasing new games for a dead system they put out what are pretty much bullet-hell schmups on the system. So they are giving us something completely new. On a system with 12 mhz CPU that's impressive. Fast Striker and Neo XYX are both great games and rank up there with the system's best schmups. No slowdown adds to the gameplay and responsiveness IMO.
To be completely honest: the game is in pre-order.
The table has turned completely around for me, especially after video #3 the feeling of the game clicked for me. It's indeed in some parts still homebrewish but the game has improved (a lot) since the last publication. It isn't finished yet, still some time to go before release in 2017. But I decided to give it a chance. We'll see.
Hope you enjoy it Sensi
I know a lot of people did but I've never thought it looked homebrewish, its always been the over-familiarity (of Metal Slug) that has been a problem for me. I still don't understand why they didn't go the Cyberlip/Contra route. But yes agreed, looks like it might be good for what it is though.
Update from Decemeber 2016 from NGDevTeam Facebook page
Kraut Buster Mission Status Report 2016
Dear customers,
with the year ending here is the current state of Kraut Buster for NEOGEO.
Compared to our original vision the game got pretty huge, basically twice as many mission parts, twice as many bosses etc. as originally planned.
Without any additional financial costs to you, but at cost of waiting time.
At current projections the game will break even but will not generate any profits in the first year, but that was expected from the beginning, it was always a dream project for us.
Work on the final mission already started. We have the basic map done, currently it's getting finalized pixel art.
The game is kinda "two games in one" both in content and game modes. It comes with two quite different feeling game modes.
"Slug"* mode:
Tactically and slower game mode, similar to the classic MS series. Lots of stops with fighting bigger enemies and a more tactical approach.
Due to the size of the game, we plan to offer a mission select (A or in this mode to keep the playtime around 30 minutes.
"Contra"* mode:
Fast and action oriented. Only stop at mini bosses and bosses and run and crush through enemy hordes. Probably no mission select here as the increased speed/flow gets the playtime under 30 minutes.
Enemy balancing and enemy placement may differ slightly to reflect the slightly different mechanics.
Weapons/Powerups/Secrets/Masks will be handled differently in this mode too.
* (Both game mode names are just placeholders)
We will show the "Contra" mode in a later video in 2017.
Some current statistic numbers (subject to change):
9+ bosses
6+ mini bosses
19 mission parts
207 screens.
Nearly all are individually hand drawn pixel screens (not tile based, think more fighting game backgrounds).
That's like 86 KoF backgrounds (of course with less animation in K. All combined, give a huge picture of 66240x240 pixels.
New screen shots from Mission 4-4 are available on the game site/the shop site and Facebook.
As you can see in the screen shots, we also reworked the HUD:
We removed the big bubble head from the HUD as it looked too "western"/unfitting for NEOGEO to us. It also would have taken too much of the very small SFIX ROM space with the other characters.
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Release date:
In the last newsletter from 16th June 2016 we stated:
"Currently Kraut Buster has no release date, but a release in the late 1st/early 2nd quarter of 2017 seems realistic."
Our new estimate is to start beta testing in June and start to ship in September. We originally had planned to have 3 pixel artist full time on this project, but in the end only two were available over the full course. That lead to an unexpected delay.
We know that we started pre order too early for it, but without the pre orders we wouldn't have been able to made a big game like this.
The next few games will be smaller projects again, with similar work sizes like NEO XYX (pixelart) and Razion (CGI).
We will probably do a huge project in the size of Kraut Buster in the future again, but not for a few years and in a different genre.
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MVS reprints:
Originally it was planned and communicated in the newsletter that the MVS reprints will be produced together with Kraut Buster MVS. As sales of the reprints are getting close to our minimum factory order amount we will try to produce them earlier. For now we set April 2017.
Thanks for being patient and happy holidays,
NGDEV
I know I kept saying it should be more like Contra rather than Metal Slug but not sure how wise it is to put a Contra mode in. I was more thinking of a game designed from the ground up in that style. It would be better to stay true to their original vision for this game and keep it more focussed. It's good they listen to criticism though. Looking forward to this game. It's a shame they won't make much money from it though.
Was to slow when it came to pre-ordering this game! Hope someone will cancel their pre-order I think it looks really good and im sure it will be fun to play too! They have really improved the quality of their games compared to their first release.
Was to slow when it came to pre-ordering this game! Hope someone will cancel their pre-order I think it looks really good and im sure it will be fun to play too! They have really improved the quality of their games compared to their first release.
Though a few people will cancel soon I bet as many people are angry about how long it is taking to develop it. It was supposed to be released back in 2016.
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Complete UK/Euro Clamshell NEO•GEO Pocket Collection 
in this mode to keep the playtime around 30 minutes.
I think it looks really good and im sure it will be fun to play too! They have really improved the quality of their games compared to their first release.