Kraut Buster New NGDEV - 2015

Shito

King of Typists,
20 Year Member
Joined
Jan 4, 2002
Posts
9,353
As for polishing the quality and level of art set and stuff, these guys are really blurring the border between "indie" and "official", right?

Honestly, that's pretty impressive. Pretty impressive. Even those who are not interested in the so-called "homebrew scene" just cannot avoid to recognize the great amount of passion and effort that has been put in this release.

Oh, BTW, I for one just think CYBER-LIP to be better than the MS series overall though. :-)
 
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Geddon_jt

Creator of the Master List,
20 Year Member
Joined
Aug 20, 2000
Posts
1,321
Thanks for the impressions/reviews everyone. I'm definitely hoping for more orders to pop up soon on this one. Sounds like a good time.
 

Arm

n00b
Joined
Feb 3, 2019
Posts
6
They have remained faithful to my animatic mostly in terms of board except my style was more anime especially for the dictator, the girl and some of the characters face/eyes shape /expressions which make them look a bit strange (which wasn't the case originally) . Otherwise pretty detailled rendering and overall good result imo
I saw the select screen. I really like how they remained faithful to my original design and pixel art of this screen for the character portraits.
 
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Ukyo

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20 Year Member
Joined
Aug 25, 2000
Posts
1,062
nice work Arm.

yeah, so in T-MODE the multiple path thing is pretty cool, all the levels are linked thematically...so you do 1-1, then you can choose between 2-1 or 2-2...

2-1:is a snow/mountain stage leading up to the start of a interior base. final boss occurs at the top of an elevator.
2-2: skips all the exterior elements, starts at the elevator and then you can go through the entire base. (totally different enemies / BG / Boss) (in all respects could be considered stage 3)

trying to work out the nuances of the masks:

CHICK MASK: grenades turn into eggs ( more damage?) POW chicks get bandanas and fire machineguns (better multiplier?)
JASON MASK: longer slide? extended melee attack w/knife, POW chicks get masks, and throw knives.
TENGU MASK: super jump, extended melee with sword, grenades turn into bombs that don't bounce. POW chicks throw ninja stars.
WOLF MASK: super movement speed...
 

Retrogamer

Troller of Old Men,
20 Year Member
Joined
Apr 1, 2002
Posts
2,188
Ukyo, did you pay for expedited shipping?
Mine shipped last Wednesday. Trying to get an idea when it will arrive.
 

ShootTheCore

Bead Banger
Joined
Feb 11, 2015
Posts
1,498
OK, so I’ve played through Kraut Buster four times so far (twice in T Mode and twice in C Mode). Here are my impressions:

The Good
1) The intro is outstanding. Beautiful art, cool character design, strongly establishes the setting and style.
2) In-game art is mostly excellent. Beautiful backgrounds, lots of great animated sprite art with the characters. The art style on this title “feels” more like a Neo Geo game than any previous NG Dev games. It’s obviously inspired by Metal Slug with small background animations and details, but there’s not as much of those details as Metal Slug. Not quite as much character animation as MS either.
3) The game performs extremely well. Smooth 60fps with absolutely no noticeable slowdown. There is some minor flicker when things get hectic.
4) Character movement is also smooth and fluid and the controls are tight and responsive.
5) The music alternates between being good and excellent. The electric guitar especially sounds bad-ass!

The Bad
1) Not much weapon variety. There are multiple guns, but each is just a minor variation on the standard machine gun.
2) Almost no vehicles. Your character only gets to ride in a mech once for a brief (but fun) section of the game.
3) Masks add little to the game. They may look like Kid Chameleon masks but the effect they have on gameplay is far less than Kid Chamelon.
4) Dull level bosses. Each level boss is just a big vehicle. Big tank, big harrier, big train, etc. The mid-level bosses are actually more interesting in the ways they attack you.

In the end, it’s a great looking game, great sounding game, great playing game, but the lack of weapon, vehicle and boss variety definitely puts it behind the Metal Slug games. Worth playing, but only if you’ve already fully experienced Metal Slugs 1-3.
 

Ukyo

,
20 Year Member
Joined
Aug 25, 2000
Posts
1,062
Ukyo, did you pay for expedited shipping?
Mine shipped last Wednesday. Trying to get an idea when it will arrive.

I got my shipping confirmation on the morning of 1/30; I don't think I payed for expedited, estimated shipping time was 8-10 days, but took less.
 

boss0033

Kula's Candy
Joined
Feb 5, 2007
Posts
294
IMG_0386 copy 2.jpg

Anyone get this while playing and if so, why??? I was on level 4-2 when this happened. I am running it off an original Neo Candy 29 with a 4 slot board. Only have KB in slot 1 and all other slots empty. I just turned off the cab. Any help would be appreciated!
 
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Gaston

Mature's Make-up Artist
Joined
Jan 15, 2003
Posts
1,352
View attachment 53160

Anyone get this while playing and if so, why??? I was on level 4-2 when this happened. I am running it off an original Neo Candy 29 with a 4 slot board. Only have KB in slot 1 and all other slots empty. I just turned off the cab. Any help would be appreciated!

What happens if you reboot and retry? This could point -if I'm not mistaken- to an issue with the hardware (i.e. a chip on the mvs cart) Hopefully this isn't symptomatic!
 

GadgetUK

Ace Ghost Pilot
Joined
Sep 27, 2013
Posts
1,323
Mine arrived! Had a quick play of both T-Mode and C-Mode (easy difficulty). Overall I am very impressed! EDIT: Ignore what I said about brightness, its a coincidence that the video I watched earlier had low RGB levels (I think), and my TV had that auto brightness thing enabled that detects room ambient light (and it was super bright in the room). Brightness is perfect.

The only negatives I have so far is that after saving scores it seems to dump you at the cross hatch. After a soft reboot it then boots OK again, but that happens every time a score is saved. EDIT: After a power cycle that stopped happening?!?! The nice thing there though is saves seem to be stored on EEPROM on the cart!!! =D The other thing I noticed was one of those pink "collision boxes" appearing over my character as I slid somewhere whilst dropping and firing. Just for a frame or two and then it mysteriously disappeared. No doubt that can prolly get fixed with an update later.

The pluses are it plays really really well imo and could imo easily lead you to think you are playing a MS or Contra game, but it has enough of its own character to stand on its own feet. The gfx and animation are sweet! Just one thing I would say is some of the bosses are a bit too easy - eg. that first one that you can just stand in front of right up close and it cannot hit you at all - hopefully they might be able to make that a bit harder with an update? I love all the small details etc like the animals and people moving around. Lots of love gone into this!

I've only played the first 3 levels so far and only played on easy, so my end opinion might change yet, but atm I would say its my favourite NGDEV game.

EDIT: Just played through quickly to end on T-Mode, it's great, I really enjoyed it as much as a Metal Slug game for sure. I would say that I felt I wished there was just one more level, but that said it did take a good 40 minutes to play through so I cannot complain. The amazing backgrounds, sprite work, and variation of enemy types makes this a fantastic game! It does get harder as the levels progress as well. I managed the first few levels without many lives lost but it starts to get much harder like Metal Slug does on those last few levels. My fav enemies are the women with whips and knives, and the "knight" like soliders with shields and heavy machine guns.
 
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boss0033

Kula's Candy
Joined
Feb 5, 2007
Posts
294
Not sure how to reboot other than turning the cab off and on. Pressing in the buttons for the soft reboot I got no response. My only option was to turn the cab off.
 

Ukyo

,
20 Year Member
Joined
Aug 25, 2000
Posts
1,062
boss0083, when is the last time you cleared your memory cache? Try that if it happens again.

as for boss difficulty , gadget you should up the difficulty. On hard even the first boss can get crazy, stage 2-1 boss throws quite a bit at you..screen filling rocks, bombs, and soldiers in addition to the drills. Cant imagine it's the same pattern on easy, very fun on hard, I'm 3/4s through stage 3-1 on 1 credit so far. game continues to impress. weapon lock is a game changer, feels so good.

as for technical quirks, I've seen the soft mem hex screen appear after scores as well. KB cart also doesnt like being paired in multi cart setup...running on mv2f it won't game select. (But most ngdev team carts won't multi game correctly).

Running on unibios 4.0, Raz if you are reading I appreciate the "NG:DEV" variant title appearing on boot.; looks slick man.
 

GadgetUK

Ace Ghost Pilot
Joined
Sep 27, 2013
Posts
1,323
boss0083, when is the last time you cleared your memory cache? Try that if it happens again.

as for boss difficulty , gadget you should up the difficulty. On hard even the first boss can get crazy, stage 2-1 boss throws quite a bit at you..screen filling rocks, bombs, and soldiers in addition to the drills. Cant imagine it's the same pattern on easy, very fun on hard, I'm 3/4s through stage 3-1 on 1 credit so far. game continues to impress. weapon lock is a game changer, feels so good.

as for technical quirks, I've seen the soft mem hex screen appear after scores as well. KB cart also doesnt like being paired in multi cart setup...running on mv2f it won't game select. (But most ngdev team carts won't multi game correctly).

Running on unibios 4.0, Raz if you are reading I appreciate the "NG:DEV" variant title appearing on boot.; looks slick man.

Thanks, yes - I just found that and forget to edit the post above! The bosses do get quite hard with some fun attack waves to avoid etc. It's funny because I was a bit unsure about how I felt about it when I saw other peoples video footage yesterday, but having played through it a few times now I think it's fantastic. I love it!
 

Razoola

Divine Hand of the UniBIOS,
Staff member
20 Year Member
Joined
Nov 12, 2002
Posts
4,662
Running on unibios 4.0, Raz if you are reading I appreciate the "NG:DEV" variant title appearing on boot.; looks slick man.

Would love to see a screenshot if you can. No thanks needed, Its all NG:DEV. I did not do anything apart from explain to Timm how they could inject their own graphics into the Unibios splash screen if they wanted to.
 

Ukyo

,
20 Year Member
Joined
Aug 25, 2000
Posts
1,062
Would love to see a screenshot if you can. No thanks needed, Its all NG:DEV. I did not do anything apart from explain to Timm how they could inject their own graphics into the Unibios splash screen if they wanted to.

yeah, will do.
 

sylphia

Kuroko's Training Dummy
Joined
Aug 31, 2008
Posts
77
Kraut Buster received today. I only played the game in T mode for a short run but I am overall very pleased with the game so far. Graphics, animations, controls and music are all really nice. Lots of details everywhere. I did not notice any flickering or slowdown using the default settings, even when there are quite a lot of bullets and ennemies/objects on screen. The game introduction is very well made.
My only complaints so far would be:
- the orange bullets are too slow (this might be related to the chosen mode and game settings, I do not know)
- the enemies who descend from their ropes have rather curious and unrealistic movements when they jump to attack
 

Mikekim

n00b
Joined
May 14, 2016
Posts
41
The only negatives I have so far is that after saving scores it seems to dump you at the cross hatch. After a soft reboot it then boots OK again, but that happens every time a score is saved. EDIT: After a power cycle that stopped happening?!?! The nice thing there though is saves seem to be stored on EEPROM on the cart!!! =D The other thing I noticed was one of those pink "collision boxes" appearing over my character as I slid somewhere whilst dropping and firing. Just for a frame or two and then it mysteriously disappeared. No doubt that can prolly get fixed with an update later.

mine arrived today... had a quick play... no issues in saving... running in home mode (analogue CMVS 3.2 Uni BIOS)
 

Neo Alec

Ned's Ninja Academy Dropout
20 Year Member
Joined
Dec 7, 2000
Posts
11,897
That's what a crash looks like on an NGDev game. I got one on the unpatched Gunlord. I looked up the error code on their site and it said it was fixed in a subsequent patch.
 

Missile

Another Striker
Joined
Nov 18, 2007
Posts
311
OK, so I’ve played through Kraut Buster four times so far (twice in T Mode and twice in C Mode). Here are my impressions:

The Good
1) The intro is outstanding. Beautiful art, cool character design, strongly establishes the setting and style.
2) In-game art is mostly excellent. Beautiful backgrounds, lots of great animated sprite art with the characters. The art style on this title “feels” more like a Neo Geo game than any previous NG Dev games. It’s obviously inspired by Metal Slug with small background animations and details, but there’s not as much of those details as Metal Slug. Not quite as much character animation as MS either.
3) The game performs extremely well. Smooth 60fps with absolutely no noticeable slowdown. There is some minor flicker when things get hectic.
4) Character movement is also smooth and fluid and the controls are tight and responsive.
5) The music alternates between being good and excellent. The electric guitar especially sounds bad-ass!

The Bad
1) Not much weapon variety. There are multiple guns, but each is just a minor variation on the standard machine gun.
2) Almost no vehicles. Your character only gets to ride in a mech once for a brief (but fun) section of the game.
3) Masks add little to the game. They may look like Kid Chameleon masks but the effect they have on gameplay is far less than Kid Chamelon.
4) Dull level bosses. Each level boss is just a big vehicle. Big tank, big harrier, big train, etc. The mid-level bosses are actually more interesting in the ways they attack you.

In the end, it’s a great looking game, great sounding game, great playing game, but the lack of weapon, vehicle and boss variety definitely puts it behind the Metal Slug games. Worth playing, but only if you’ve already fully experienced Metal Slugs 1-3.

Great review. As for the dull level bosses. I rememeber Last Hope had that problem (I have the Pink Bullets version). Every boss was just a huge static thing that fired bullets or waved a tentacle. Was a real shame because I enjoyed it a lot apart from that.

From what you say it's also disappointing there aren't better weapons. But yeah pleased to see that overall everyone rates it so far.
 
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