Developer Of New Dreamcast Shooter Redux: Dark Matters "Has Plans" For Wii U And 3DS eShops

looks good. we need more games like this.

SCHMUP? Sweet!

Will definitely buy both. Can't wait for Gunlord.

oh no! wii u is the new dreamcast! nooooo!

More support the better.

Saw this on another web-site wishing it would come to the E-Shop.

"Developer Of New Dreamcast Shooter Has Plans For Wii U..."

That can't sound good

I always enjoy finding out about projects like this, when devs continue to create for the systems that the companies consider dead.

What are the yellow things the ship collects? It looks like peices of the breakfast cereal "Pops". REDUX! Sponsored by Kellogg.

Whoa. Is that Genzoman artwork at the top?

Yes, yes it is: http://genzoman.deviantart.com/art/Redux-Dark-Matters-306548611

I hope that the Wiimote gets supported into the future like this. I'd love to see a really ambitious game with skyward sword's gameplay one day.

awesome! I likeee!

@Shworange
That's what made me want to play. Yes it does look like breakfast cereal.

Would likely buy if it works without a Gamepad.

Well if sega won't give us dreamcast vc then all dreamcast games should be ported over to the wii u. The gamepad could be the equivalent to the vm module.

Seems unlikely it will be done properly if they think porting to both is an easy thing to do.

(e.g Retro City Rampage and Gunlord have put in extra effort to make it good (Possibly why they are taking so long). Definitely don't want a cheap filter. Could put up with it not being full screen. I don't want it stretched.)

Maybe I should just get Pier Solar / This on the Dreamcast (And put in the effort to make it able to be permanently connected to my TV).

Looks pretty average to me.

Most of the elements look like very generic, non-specific shapes, where it's kind hard to make out exactly what they are supposed to be or specifically look like, even the ship. Just generic, non-specific "shapes", I guess.

It's cool that it's a game being made for the Dreamcast in this day and age but people are getting desperate if they're seriously hyped that this might be coming to Wii U too.

Seriously; just step to the side and look at things objectively for one second...

Sweet... I love R-Type and this looks like it has a lot of “inspiration” from R-Type

@Kirk have to agree with you there. I still use my Dreamcast from time to time, but after the official support ended, only these kind of side scrolling shoot em ups were made, and in between the odd platformer and a top down racer, but all WAY below what the Dreamcast is actually capable of, although some of these shooters display some (for the Dreamcast) impressive graphical effects. Still, I would never buy this for my Dreamcast OR Wii U. And if this comes to the Wii U it should be no more than a 700-800MB download, since the original game fits onto a 1GB Dreamcast GD-ROM disc, so when compressed for digital download that should be considerably smaller. Should therefore not cost more than $12/€8.

@TheRealThanos

Yeah, I mean I'm not saying it's bad or anything, I wouldn't know (although it doesn't look particularly stand out), but it's not anything to get excited about and certainly not in relation to it being somehow significant that it's coming to Wii U. It's just another game in a list of random indie titles coming to the system that are going to have very little impact in the grand scheme of things. Some indie titles are worth a fair bit of hype just because of how cool they genuinely look, like Shovel Knight imo, but this shooter is just one more random game on the indie list. Both Xbox One and PS4 have similar lists full of indie titles; some of which look cool and most of which look like forgettable filler. The Wii U needs a lot more than a bunch of random indie titles like this.

@Kirk I don't want to insult this title and the effort that must have gone into making it, but to me it does indeed seem to be a cookie cutter type of thing, especially considering the tons of other indie efforts you mentioned. And that is of course besides the fact that most of them are (as far as we know now) not coming to the Wii U.
I don't know how far back your memories go, but cookie cutter side scrolling shooters do remind me of the Shoot Em Up Construction Kit on the Commodore Amiga...

@TheRealThanos

Well I don't personally recall the Shoot Em Up Construction Kit on the Commodore Amiga but I can totally imagine this shooter being created on some kind of Shoot Em Up Construction Kit for Unity or something like that. I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if that's exactly what it was actually. Although, benefit of the doubt, I expect they did do it from scratch...but probably still on Unity.

Like I say, it doesn't look bad and kudos to the guys for doing it and getting it on Dreamcast no less (it's certainly more impressive than any game I've made myself thus far) but it's not a title that anyone other than a very small crowd of enthusiasts searching for Dreamcast games or desperate Wii U owners are going to look twice at imo.

@Kirk Agreed. But I do want to share some of the "wonderful" games made with S.E.U.C.K. for Amiga. Towards the Dreamcast developer it's a bit of a low blow, but it was meant as a pun and because you didn't know it, that probably got lost. So without further ado, here are two examples:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6Ji9Reu1-Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBZ1PbHpQ_M
I'm pretty sure without ever having seen any of your work that you can do better.
In all fairness though, tech wasn't as advanced back in the early nineties and even the deluxe version of the program itself would fit on two 3.5" floppies...

@TheRealThanos

I probably shouldn't show you my game after watching those videos because in some ways I can tell they're actually better than my own game lol. Although to be totally fair to me; My game isn't actually a proper shmup so it lacks any real enemies, power ups or general level variety etc which it absolutely would have if I were making a proper shmup. Plus, I'm well aware I'm a kinda average artist and very average programmer.

Here it is though for comparison: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QazLcOA8xbw

@Kirk So, after having seen your trailer and actually liking it, what do you consider it to be yourself since you don't see it as a proper shoot em up?
You might be selling yourself a bit short here, though. There's a lot of people talking about what kind of work they do and what not and because of the nature of internet forums and the (presumable) experiences of us all with that, I can't even blame some people that don't take me seriously when I actually provide facts based upon what I know and am experienced at. Some probably think that I'm just a kid trying to be an adult. In some ways understandable, but I also think it's a shame since I always look for the good in people instead of being suspicious of ulterior motives or whatever, but that must be what the internet did to us. Anyways, drifting WAY off topic...
I am interested to find out in what ways you think the examples I gave you are better. Mechanics? Level build up? Or something else? I can't tell because your trailer is shorter so based on that I'm rather clueless. A shame it isn't on Android though...

@TheRealThanos

Well it's actually a kind of more like a reflex test where the aim is to simply collect all the gems in the level by steering through the asteroids, or destroying them if they are in your path, and matching your color to that of the gem by passing through switches. It just looks like a shooter on the surface really. There are a couple of bits that feel more like a traditional shooter though, such as when you are in the black hole sections where you shoot the ships a bit like a very basic Space Invaders, but that's just because the main mechanic is a bit simple in and of itself, especially in a "shooter" skin, so I added some other stuff to the game as a result.

Those games just look more like traditional shooters with a bit more depth in terms of different weapons, enemies and levels etc. Personally, I'd have went more down that route if I'd thought of it at the time, and had the skill set at the time in terms of programming, but in reality my game is actually just a modified version of one of my older games, iZone/iLectronz http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rzi8g3SsKQ. It used a lot of the same basic gameplay mechanics at it's core, adding a little bit to the basic formula of iZone/iLectronz, and also being primarily on the iPhone I didn't want to have virtual controls so all you can do manually is just move left and right with the ship firing automatically etc.

If I was a better programmer myself or knew a good programmer the game would have been very different.

@Kirk That older game looks more like Guitar Hero to me. But like I said: I think you're selling yourself short. To be able to disguise a game as a shoot em up, or at the very least give people the impression that it is (well at least at first glance anyway) is a case of credit where credit's due as far as I'm concerned. Maybe you should hook up with @Shiryu and @Yorumi for music and added programmer talent. You never know what the combined effort may produce... (the relevant game is in comment #27, guys)

@TheRealThanos

Yeah, it would be cool to work with other people, especially a talented programmer.

@Kirk Well, I hooked them up with this article by using the mighty @ so might be they will look into your game and see what's what. Another tip I could give you is to subscribe to gamasutra.com. Don't know if you're already familiar with it, but that is a site where professionals of the gaming industry meet, share articles and ideas and it even has it's own job application service...

@TheRealThanos

Yeah, I check out Gamasutra every now and then.

@Kirk Think about it do you really think Unity supports the Dreamcast ? (More importantly it doesn't have any of the traits that are associated with similar type games made with Unity. i.e Syder Arcade.

@TheRealThanos Gunlord isn't average its a bit like Render Ranger R2 on the Super Famicom. It more like what a AAA used to be like before the term existed i.e Decent Pixel art. It is better than any of the indies I have played. (Light years better than such as Mutant Mudds anyway).

@TheRealThanos Music for shmups!? I'm game! http://shiryu.bandcamp.com/album/gundam-the-v-project

@unrandomsam Like with this game, I meant no disrespect to the effort, and in some ways it is even nice that people still want to develop for Dreamcast, but what I would like to have seen somewhere when all this renewed support for one of my favorite consoles ever started, is a true, full on 3D effort, and not 2D shooter upon 2D shooter with, like I said before, the odd platformer and top down racer thrown in for good measure. And now of course there is Pier Solar, but then again, it won't look as good as on current platforms, so why bother? And as for this game on Wii U? I don't know, I'm afraid the worldwide sales will be quite disappointing. It is nice, but not special enough. The one saving grace it has at the moment is that there aren't that many indie games on Wii U and maybe they will put it up for a good price seeing as I can't imagine it being a very big download, as I already explained in comment #22. Unless of course they upscale it all to HD with upgraded textures and so on.
@Shiryu. Talk to @Kirk, he's the programmer of the in my humble opinion pretty nice effort. (link to game in comment #27)

@Kirk Did you make it in Construct2? That's awesome reminds of old Amiga shmups, loved it!

@Shiryu Liking the music. You might wanna upgrade the website's security though if you don't want to risk losing money. As it is now, all tracks can be freely downloaded with apps available for both Firefox and Chrome.
Come to think of it, there's an easier solution: remove the complete songs and just replace them with samples of each song, say about a third part of the actual song, so people can work up an appetite, and a sample of about a minute should be more than enough to get a good impression of a song. And if they want to have the whole song or use it, they have to pay first.

Sounds great! I'd love it if they had leader boards. As much as I loved Mighty Switch Force, the lack of leader boards was a bit sad. Besides that, any shmups on Wii U will be very welcome.

@TheRealThanos As far as I know it will look identical for Pier Solar. (Same way Gunlord looks the same on Neo Geo (Which it was made for) and Dreamcast (Which was for people like me who wouldn't pay £350). If it is supposed to be 4:3 and it only has that on the Dreamcast I will probably get it on that. (If it uses any type of filter or is stretched anyway).

@TheRealThanos Those where made in 2003 I think. No worries, all my music is available for free in MP3format @ http://shiryumusic.no.sapo.pt/ Only made a Bandcamp shop because there where a lot of people asking where they could donate and/or buy my music in lossless quality. It's an hobby, second only to video games, I will never be able to live of it so download away! ^_^ (plus all the money made Bandcamp will exclusively go towards purchasing new music production related software. Everybody wins!)

@Shiryu That page launches a 404 Not Found. Why is it down? Whyyy???

@Shiryu thanks for clearing that up!
@Olmectron because he forgot the u in music...
(just correct the link manually so that it says "shiryumusic")
@unrandomsam I was under the impression that Pier Solar was HD on current gen consoles. Seeing as the Dreamcast has a 480p limit, I don't see how versions could be the same. Of course the game itself will essentially still be the same, but outside of the few people like me that actually still own a Dreamcast, I think that most will buy this on their current console.

@Olmectron Cause I'm an idiot and was typing in the dark -> http://shiryumusic.no.sapo.pt/

The music is AWESOME, but it looks too slow of a shmup for me and the graphics are bland. Not to mention it looks incredibly hard to distinguish background from the actual level. Bosses look cool though.

Super R-Type?

@Shiryu Loved "The Codex" in "Megaman XXV The First & 1/2". It is simply wonderful. Good job. It was a hard time deciphering, I'm not that much into computers, how to extract the songs when the file didn't have any extension.

@Olmectron do you have WinRAR or WinZip? If not, you can easily find them online. Personally, I'd go with WinRAR, since that is compatible with more sorts of files. Just download and install and the option to extract files will appear when you right click on the file to be extracted.
EDIT: link removed by me.

@TheRealThanos Thank you. Yep, I use WinZip. The hard part for me was because it didn't have any extension when I downloaded it (.zip, .rar, etc.). It was only "."

I think I'll try with the WinRAR version you linked, since sometimes I can't open some compressed files with different extensions using WinZip. Thanks again!

@Olmectron You're welcome. You can try that link or search for "WinRAR full" and select the 4shared link. I say this because I'm not certain it is allowed even though there are versions of WinRAR that are free. Alternatively, 7zip definitely is free and supports even more different types of files. I use all three programs on my PC. (WinZip, WinRAR and 7zip)
As for files not having an extension: you can still right click and select "open with" and direct Windows to the program you wish to open the file with, or let Windows display extensions (Google it, because it depends on your OS) and add an extension of your own, WinRAR will then be able to read it.

@Olmectron Forget about the 4shared link. It installs a program and requires you to make an account. Nothing bad in and of itself, but you'd be better off looking for another link or a torrent or whatever programs you use; or try 7zip like I said, because that is free anyway so you can just download it from the official site.

@Olmectron I advise you install 7zip, free open source and very impressive: http://www.7-zip.org/

All my albuns are inZip format. If they file you downloaded had no extension, it's because Windows himself can unzip files and hides the file extension. You probably only had to press Right Mouse Button on top of the album you downloaded and choose "Extract" or something liek that. Glad you enjoyed, there is a new "Mega Man" Ep coming tomorrow.

PS: I see @TheRealThanos already got you sorted.

@unrandomsam

"Think about it do you really think Unity supports the Dreamcast?"

Good point.

@Shiryu

Nah, in Game Maker Studio.

@Kirk Ah, I was close. Great work. ^_^

@Shiryu

Cheers

Some cool tunes there by the way

It took them two years to reskin R-Type!?

Then by all means, do so! This looks great, and I'd be torn between buying it for Wii U and 3ds... With the right prices, extra's or cross platform sales/compatibility, I might even get both.