Just saying, but I do have a curator page. If like my remarks about games, you can find more of them here: https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/curator/44130985-TDP%27s-Gaming-Escapades

Let me tell you a story.
Back when Streets of Rage 4 was first announced, I thought it would fail to be a good game and refused to be excited for it, with the reason being DotEmu's involvement. A lot of my friends didn't get why I was so mad and I think that's because they never had any experience in having their nostalgia shattered to teeny tiny pieces by the utter negligence of this company.
Back then, DotEmu was utterly infamous for offering incredibly lackluster emulations of various retro games and never updating them properly. And the worst part was that many companies, and specifically SNK, kept giving them permission to do more of them. Such negligence ultimately caused the stores to be filled with broken re-releases of retro games, most made by one company...
...and Raiden Legacy is one of them.

On the surface, this game performs just like other ones that were handled by DotEmu. For example, the frame rate never goes beyond 57 fps and sometimes even drops down to 54. The emulation is also pretty wonky, with the games starting to stutter quite frequently throughout gameplay. But then the game starts introducing other issues that are incredibly baffling to see.
The menus, and I repeat, THE MENUS of the game are the most demanding part of it, each suddenly causing the application to hog more CPU than it really should (as high as %30) just for the actual emulation to only need a franction of that amount (%1 at max). Moreover, each transition between the menus freezes the game for a splitsecond. And this is such a surprise because the UI looks incredibly ugly, simple and amateurishly designed for it to be demanding; especially compared to other games that DotEmu has put out or even the GOG version of this game, which I will get to later. I mean... there's not even a music track playing in the main menu! Was that so hard to have a track playing from one of the games?
And then there's this issue with the game's settings messing with what they are not supposed to mess with. The game never respects your resolution settings, always reverting to the default with the culprit being the HD music option being active. How does a music option break resolution settings?! Or the portrait mode actually rotates your operating system's display instead of just the game's process, even in the windowed mode! Also, who in their right mind decided to have the confirm button do everything? Despite coming out in 2015, Raiden Legacy does not support using the left and right directions to cycle between available menu options. Instead, you need to cycle between them by mashing the A button (on a Xbox controller). Even DotEmu's previous releases had better menu navigation than Raiden Legacy on Steam, what's their excuse here?!

After suffering through the Steam version, I tried the "allegedly" better GOG version, just to find an entirely different build of the game. The GOG version seems to be a direct port from mobile and therefore has a much cleaner and more goodlooking UI, though the overall design really does feel out of place on PC. To my shock, the GOG version also runs at solid 60 fps and has no stuttering, but adds its own exclusive issues to the mix.
Contrary to the Steam version, the GOG version has no controller support in the menus, the default keybindings are atrocious (why the hell is the A button used for pausing the game?!) and each time trying to navigate the menus results in +10 seconds of the game freezing. I'm not joking, the freezing is so long that even Windows itself thinks the process has died.
So basically, DotEmu has created multiple versions of the same game, with each of them having different looks and their own problems that you cannot find in the other. I have heard of exclusive games and content, but exclusive bugs and issues? Truly marvelous. A groundbreaking move from DotEmu to move the bar of quality for their emulated retro games catalogue to a brand-new, previously unheard of low.

So, now we know that the collection's performance is all over the place. But how are the games themselves?
Well, you really can't go wrong with Raiden. This series of games have consistently offered a fun gameplay, unless we are talking about Raiden V which is... ugh..., and the games in this collection are no exception. The only problem here is how DotEmu has handled them, because the games we have here are not 1:1 arcade emulations and don't offer much customization. DotEmu's versions skip the intros and the "insert coin" screens using savestates, immediately starting you on main stages or the character/plane select. And this causes some issues.
First, we have the preservation concerns. Publishers like us to stop emulating games and buy their re-releases. But why should we do that if they constantly rip parts of those games away and make them incomplete? And don't you dare hit me with "but we don't need those" nonsense. Seeing the intros and gameplay demonstration popping up is a staple of arcade gaming. That's how many of us were intrigued to try those games. To take them away is just nonsensical
Second, the aforementioned fact means there aren't much settings to customize your experience both visually (like optional side arts) and gameplay-wise. The game never allows you to change the number of lives, credits and bombs in the arcade mode and doesn't even offer a coin insert button. So you are forced to beat all of the games with only 3 credits available. The only way you can have unlimited credits, is by beating all of the levels normally and then using the training mode, which is incredibly dumb if you ask me. Considering how challenging Raiden series can get, this is a very bad move that hurts casual playthroughs.

If you are still not sure about DotEmu's negligence during this game's development, then by all means take a look at the game's installation directory to see definitive proof.
The UI graphics used in the GOG version of this game are already present in the Steam version. And that's why a simple file change allows you to change your game version with ease. Not only that, this game also contains resources from Metal Slug 2 for some reason, which DotEmu had also worked on! You can literally find that game's menu backgrounds and even Marco's portrait in the game files!
How did they forget to take them out after all these years if they were placeholders? Why create different versions of the same game to make supporting them difficult? Why this one game has a significantly dumbed down UI design compared to all of their other retro emulations? Why leave all of the glaring problems intact for about a decade? Why re-use the mobile specific autoshot mode for the PC/Console versions where players have easy access to physical buttons?
Raiden deserved better than this. You deserve better than this. Avoid Raiden Legacy.


The games are fun, but Raiden (and you as the player) deserve better than a lackluster and lazily-made collection of savestates with major performance issues that are still there after almost 10 years

[quote]Just saying, but I do have a curator page. If like my remarks about games, you can find more of them here: https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/curator/44130985-TDP%27s-Gaming-Escapades [/quote] Let me tell you a story. Back when Streets of Rage 4 was first announced, I thought it would fail to be a good game and refused to be excited for it, with the reason being DotEmu's involvement. A lot of my friends didn't get why I was so mad and I think that's because they never had any experience in having their nostalgia shattered to teeny tiny pieces by the utter negligence of this company. Back then, DotEmu was utterly infamous for offering incredibly lackluster emulations of various retro games and never updating them properly. And the worst part was that many companies, and specifically SNK, kept giving them permission to do more of them. Such negligence ultimately caused the stores to be filled with broken re-releases of retro games, most made by one company... ...and Raiden Legacy is one of them. [h2]In fact, Raiden Legacy is the worst one among them[/h2] On the surface, this game performs just like other ones that were handled by DotEmu. For example, the frame rate never goes beyond 57 fps and sometimes even drops down to 54. The emulation is also pretty wonky, with the games starting to stutter quite frequently throughout gameplay. But then the game starts introducing other issues that are incredibly baffling to see. The menus, and I repeat, [b]THE MENUS[/b] of the game are the most demanding part of it, each suddenly causing the application to hog more CPU than it really should (as high as %30) just for the actual emulation to only need a franction of that amount (%1 at max). Moreover, each transition between the menus freezes the game for a splitsecond. And this is such a surprise because the UI looks incredibly ugly, simple and amateurishly designed for it to be demanding; especially compared to other games that DotEmu has put out or even the GOG version of this game, which I will get to later. I mean... there's not even a music track playing in the main menu! Was that so hard to have a track playing from one of the games? And then there's this issue with the game's settings messing with what they are not supposed to mess with. The game never respects your resolution settings, always reverting to the default with the culprit being the HD music option being active. [b]How does a music option break resolution settings?![/b] Or the portrait mode actually rotates your operating system's display instead of just the game's process, even in the windowed mode! Also, who in their right mind decided to have the confirm button do everything? Despite coming out in 2015, Raiden Legacy does not support using the left and right directions to cycle between available menu options. Instead, you need to cycle between them by mashing the A button (on a Xbox controller). Even DotEmu's previous releases had better menu navigation than Raiden Legacy on Steam, what's their excuse here?! [h2]You have heard of exclusive games and exclusive content, now witness exclusive bugs[/h2] After suffering through the Steam version, I tried the "allegedly" better GOG version, just to find an entirely different build of the game. The GOG version seems to be a direct port from mobile and therefore has a much cleaner and more goodlooking UI, though the overall design really does feel out of place on PC. To my shock, the GOG version also runs at solid 60 fps and has no stuttering, but adds its own exclusive issues to the mix. Contrary to the Steam version, the GOG version has no controller support in the menus, the default keybindings are atrocious (why the hell is the A button used for pausing the game?!) and each time trying to navigate the menus results in +10 seconds of the game freezing. I'm not joking, the freezing is so long that even Windows itself thinks the process has died. So basically, DotEmu has created multiple versions of the same game, with each of them having different looks and their own problems that you cannot find in the other. I have heard of exclusive games and content, but exclusive bugs and issues? Truly marvelous. A groundbreaking move from DotEmu to move the bar of quality for their emulated retro games catalogue to a brand-new, previously unheard of low. [h2]How can anyone make such a lackluster collection?[/h2] So, now we know that the collection's performance is all over the place. But how are the games themselves? Well, you really can't go wrong with Raiden. This series of games have consistently offered a fun gameplay, unless we are talking about Raiden V which is... ugh..., and the games in this collection are no exception. The only problem here is how DotEmu has handled them, because the games we have here are not 1:1 arcade emulations and don't offer much customization. DotEmu's versions skip the intros and the "insert coin" screens using savestates, immediately starting you on main stages or the character/plane select. And this causes some issues. First, we have the preservation concerns. Publishers like us to stop emulating games and buy their re-releases. But why should we do that if they constantly rip parts of those games away and make them incomplete? And don't you dare hit me with "but we don't need those" nonsense. Seeing the intros and gameplay demonstration popping up is a staple of arcade gaming. That's how many of us were intrigued to try those games. To take them away is just nonsensical Second, the aforementioned fact means there aren't much settings to customize your experience both visually (like optional side arts) and gameplay-wise. The game never allows you to change the number of lives, credits and bombs in the arcade mode and doesn't even offer a coin insert button. So you are forced to beat all of the games with only 3 credits available. The only way you can have unlimited credits, is by beating all of the levels normally and then using the training mode, which is incredibly dumb if you ask me. Considering how challenging Raiden series can get, this is a very bad move that hurts casual playthroughs. [h2]My expectations were zero but HOLY F***![/h2] If you are still not sure about DotEmu's negligence during this game's development, then by all means take a look at the game's installation directory to see definitive proof. The UI graphics used in the GOG version of this game are already present in the Steam version. And that's why a simple file change allows you to change your game version with ease. Not only that, this game also contains resources from Metal Slug 2 for some reason, which DotEmu had also worked on! You can literally find that game's menu backgrounds and even Marco's portrait in the game files! How did they forget to take them out after all these years if they were placeholders? Why create different versions of the same game to make supporting them difficult? Why this one game has a significantly dumbed down UI design compared to all of their other retro emulations? Why leave all of the glaring problems intact for about a decade? Why re-use the mobile specific autoshot mode for the PC/Console versions where players have easy access to physical buttons? Raiden deserved better than this. You deserve better than this. Avoid Raiden Legacy. [h2]TL;DR[/h2] The games are fun, but Raiden (and you as the player) deserve better than a lackluster and lazily-made collection of savestates with major performance issues that are still there after almost 10 years