Running Out of Event Commitments

 Well, that's both Australian Speedrun Marathon 2021 and Shmup Slam 4 behind me. What's next for hot Gaming News from ol' Pichy?

Well for a start we have dates booked to run a national fighting game event in October. Sadly, the world has still ended so we're probably just going to run a bigger local tournament. This does give me two full days to propose whatever nonsense fighting games or weird versus games I feel like. Study up on your Dark Awake. Learn a shmup and show it off while there?

There's also an online exhibition during the period that was supposed to be the PAX Australia convention in Melbourne. Currently my list of speedruns I can demonstrate are:

 - Mr. Driller: Drill Land All Level 1 (get that runback!)

 - Fantasy Zone (Regular, Master System Bosses)
 - Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance (Maxim Any%, Maxim All Bosses. Latter is cursed.)

 - Shippu Mahou Daisakusen/Kingdrom Grand Prix.

Current works in progress include:

 - Metal Slug 7 (stages 5-7 are very tight routes to get what you need done)

 - ESP.Ra.De (Stage 4, man. Stage 4.)

- Fantasy Zone 2 DX

So Fantasy Zone 2 DX is a full remake of Fantasy Zone 2 for a modified build of the first game's Sega System 16 arcade board. It was developed by M2 while they were working on a PS2 collection of everything Fantasy Zone related and is the feature piece of that bundle. It's a radical reworking of FZ2's systems as it's intended to feel like the full arcade sequel Opa Opa never had.

The original Master System/Sega MkIII Fantasy Zone 2 has all the flourishes you expect from a console STG. Life bar instead of health, recovery items, three variations of every stage that must all be completed if you want the best ending. In comparison, the M2 reimagining is shorter, harsher and extremely cool. I'm still in the early stages of research and routing but it's going to be wild. There's risk/reward routes, secret item shops and a wider range of permanent upgrades that may make suicides less worthwhile than they are in the first game's boss rush.

I'm not sure how long it's going to take but I'm glad to say I finally have a new method of capturing the footage. My Open Source Scan Converter arrived.

Thesebeauties (what are you doing to my formatting, OSSC photo?) provide a lagless means of adapting analogue videos ignals to modern HD displays with far better scanline and dithering options than most HD ports of old games. They're pricey but the impact's been large so far. Take one of the roughest HD ports of a Cave game: the Muchi Muchi Pork and Pink Sweets bundle.

 

Terrible as my photography may be, I think you can see there's a difference. The photo on the left with the smeared sprites and washed-out colours is actually the HDMI 1280 x 720 feed. The right is a 480p output using a component cable.

Since my rotating monitor is a picky old jerk, capturing all those 3:4 vertical shooters I love was a bit of a pest. I have to output using a DVI signal which means the OSSC can't transmit audio through the HDMI cable. I've got some jerry-rigged solutions for that so I'll be able to capture everything from Fantasy Zone 2 DX through to ESPGaluda.

We can of course merge the feed with my stream layout from June to create works of beauty.

 

 

Buckle up, gamers.