Battle of the Ports - Shienryu (紫炎龍) Show 494 - 60fps 

Definitely have to say, the PS1 and Saturn was truly the console generation that actually brought the real arcade experience home for the vast majority of us. Least up to the 16-bit era, if you didn't own an X68000 or Neo-Geo AES, the cabinets still offered something that you couldn't exactly get at home.

I didn’t read all the comments, but Shienryu doesn’t have to be interlaced on PS2. There’s an option for 240p and TATE mode. It’s actually an excellent port.

Shienryu's Stage 1 being a remake of Daioh's Stage 1 makes more sense as much of Warashi's staff hailed from Athena. The cycle repeated itself when some of Warashi's staff regrouped as Cosmo Machia, now the current IP holder of Triggerheart Exelica. Adding to that, Hamster acquired Athena's library and reissued Strike Gunner S.T.G and Daioh on Arcade Archives not long ago.

A must have for Saturn.

One of my all time favourite non Cave shooters.

From the same studio as Triggerheart Excelica nearly 10 years later.

Probably the most adequate shooter I've ever played. Lots of really nice and subtle 2D effects as well. It won't knock your trousers off, but whatever. Fond teenage memories of picking this up for 20 dollars on PS1 at Zellers in Canada. When I played it recently, it was on a CRT in TATE via an STV board. The only way to experience it imo. Great vid as usual.

Gotta say those are some nice pixel art graphics! Lovely colouring and shading~ ...the chin on that guy though! :D

Awesome video, but then again, they are all awesome haha. I recently started going through your back catalog of videos haha. I've watched them all before and they never get old. Thanks for all your work!

Damn, another of those nice 2D high sprite count that I never got to see in the arcades. Somehow, those do not seem to have reached Europe/France because I never saw them in the arcades I was going to in the late 90s. This may also have been due to me starting as a game developer and being so into perpetual rush mode that I didn't have the time to visit arcades and missed all those games. Skunk rush mode, I am glad those silly inefficient periods are over (for me at least). Thanks for the video Mark!

Just played it 2 days ago after Sengoku Blade Ace 2, good little shooter.

Simply one of my favorite shooters of all time. I usually still play in my PS2, and their arranged 3D version too. I enjoyed a lot this BotP!

Those PlayStation modes seem like one of the programmers found a programming library with a bunch of effects.

oh man i love this game, i play the ps1 version due to not being able to emulate saturn games well at all but i'm happy to see botp on this

I absolutely love Shienryu, it's always in my top 5 shmups of all time. It's the game I always pick up first when I decide to revisit my Saturn, I'm happy to know that the Saturn port is the best one, as it's the one I spent the most time playing

Its no surprise I didn't see games like this in the arcades where I lived. Arcades in America were already in decline by the late 1990s, so the surviving ones were sticking with the latest, 3-D spectacles that people would gladly pay a dollar-per-play, rather than "Oh, here's another 2D shmup!"

A great STG that deserves much Attention. The best Warashi Game in my opinion.

Great BOTP. I love the graphics in this game, but do wonder what on earth the developers were thinking with the weird PlayStation versions.

What a wonderful Graphics! I just love it! I Will download to play.

This game is pure class. Definitely worth playing in MAME or on the Saturn.

I've still never ever played this one - looks good 😊👍

This shooter is really fun

I like the Saturn port. That said, PS2 can be helped tremendously by using a Low display resolution setting from the options menu, along with the tate.

Thanks Mark, excellent video as always, I bought a pack of 22 saturn games imported from japan in 2018 among them this game and it's a great game, I didn't know the original arcade here where I live so it was great to be able to play it on my japanese saturn. By the way, how expensive it is getting today to import saturn games or accessories.

I can't be the only one that gets the feeling the developers of the Playstation port knew they had a mid-level version of the game and decided they should just be cute with goofy ass modes. Surprised "Comical mode" doesn't make fart sounds every time something gets shot down.

I am surprised Natsume didn't remove the Comical Mode on the PS1 version, considering that only people who watch theatrical or variety shows such as Gaki no Tsukai knows the idea behind it.

I ❤ the music too

Also, are you doing a video on the recently uploaded Sega AI Computer stuff, Mark? I tried some games on MAME but Sega enforcing hiragana on the games made a big headache on me when trying to decode in-game text.

Amazing game, never heard before 😮😮😮

Classic shoot cm up,along with terradiver one of my non Cave faves

I’ve seen a couple people say that the PS2 version has 240p mode buried in the options somewhere. Haven’t ever looked into it personally.

Nice to deep dive this game.

You said the PS1 game was released in 1999, three years after the Saturn version, but the title screen showed the year 2002 (C) Natsume...

Funny enough I grew to appreciate 2D on the ps1…even later in life I still play sonic wings special on my vita. I still remember my friend Ronnie buying street fighter alpha 3 on the ps1 over his Saturn which also had the 4mb cart. And saying they did a really really good job, and I agree

I'm shrieking like a little girl due to the excitement!

The extra mode really weird in PS1 and in my opinion quite fun to play.

I hated how people acted like the PS2 was so much more powerful than Dreamcast. As you stated, the PS2 often relied on interlacing which made games look like a blurry shaky mess. And even now with deinterlacing in emulation, it still causes them to be somewhat blurry. The Dreamcast always had honest clean consistent graphics (even a VGA option).

*unknown! But SATURN hands down!* ⭐️ looks like Axelay ship 👍

Looks like a nice game. Is it just me or do I sense a Tatsujin vibe ?

The people that ported the PS1 version were having a laugh, outside of that nonsense it seems like a solid shooter worth playing.

A clever alternative to the bullet hell offerings

Request: Battle of the Ports - Darkwing Duck - Show #495 List of versions: NES/Famicom Game Boy TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine

I have a retail copy of the NA PS1 version but l now play the Saturn version. I'd love to play it in tate mode but have no good way to rotate my TV. lol

i thought you covered robotron? humm guess i'll request that one 🤖

The PlayStation Version and its strange game modes... What's next? - Caveman Mode: Arcade Mode but with Cavemen - Cho Aniki Mode: Arcade Mode with big smiling musclemen - ASCII Mode: Arcade Mode but all graphics are made with ASCII characters

👍 love to see when you post

I always found it extremely annoying that this game completely escaped my attention back in the day despite buying the few American gamer magazines that still devoted coverage to 2d games while most either turned into 3d snobs who dimished the value of 2d games (including their opinions that they should be cheaper priced which is probably where the snubbing of 2d games really started and not like dumb idiot journalists like to claim like actual consumers didn't want 2d and obviously back then I knew SoA was sabotaging the chances of Japanese MD and Sega Saturn exclusive 2d games being translated and localized) or they turned traitors by relegating most 2d coverage to a couple of screens. Thus I ended up never importing this game until years later despite buying SS Japanese imports before SoA forced killing it off. Games like Shienryu remind me of Sega MegaDrive's GleyLancer and Eliminate Down as these were true arcade games made on Sega's home use hardware and the biggest problem with them is that in the west we never got arcade cabinets which should have been the standard but oh well... I really appreciate this game as it would have been cool to see what developer Warashi could have cooked up had they been able to make at least a couple of sequels or more arcade games using ST-V. Still playing this game after all these years and the PS2 version looks interesting to get as well because the PS2 was a huge 2d graphics upgrade for Sony despite the design choices on the resolution which looks fine on a CRT Trinitron tech screen but obviously falls apart on LCD monitors.

This could have been with a few tweaks radien 3 .......

Looks like raiden?

The PS1 port seems more like a shitpost than an actual port, in both a good and bad way

Sega Saturn for the clear win this week. No idea what the Sony people were thinking with their silly "modes" .

You can use a tool for PS2 to force 480p and above. Freemcboot required of course. But these days a Memorycard PRO 2 is the way to go anway

Requested:battle of the ports golvellius

While the PS1 version isn’t awful or anything, just kinda butchered compared to other versions of the game. And you forgot to mention, no TATE mode on that version. That sucks. I was hoping to rotate my monitor in a vertical position (being the fan of vertical shooters that I am) and playing it. But at least the other versions let you do that. But it’s also worth mentioning the company that made this game also made Triggerheart Exelica which kicks ass btw and made a comeback recently. Just wish for a Steam release.

The Saturn looks the best. Pity the Saturn was discontinued and failed to gain traction.

Хороший шутер,у меня версия от Сатурна есть,другие смысла нет ставить думаю,похож на Raiden,т олько в отличие от него эту игру мало таки кто знает вообще.

I'm not really a fan of any of the ports as you have to turn your TV on its side in order for the graphics to look good. I'm not sure why programmers stopped porting shooters that would look good without having to turn your TV on its side in this era.

I'm surprised the PSX version was so lousy. While it lacks the Saturn's RAM, the console can do an excellent job with arcade shoot-em-ups. This was just poor work by the development studio. But, hey, another win for Sega Saturn, yay!

God i hate the interlaced mode on PS2. It looks crap on 240p content

Those modes on psx 😅

Very similar to Raiden II

Considering that PS1 isn't suited vith this sort of titles, the game looks rather good.

I had never played this but wow. It kind of feels like they didn't even really try with the ps1 port. If anything the extra modes are like some practical joke to subject other players to if they wanted a straight forward shooter. Rubbish

Greaty looking game, those sprites of various machines are pretty, but man, this PS1 port with all those weird mostly pointless modes. Who think that they are good ideas?