MAME.GR

Mission:

Europe, Krautland 1936

You are part of the glorious albeit infamous Kraut Buster corps.
Your goal is to defeat the evil dictator Dolph Edelwolf and rescue all chicks!

Play as either John "Küken" Mallone or Jack "Handsome" Rowdy.


Game Features (exact details are subject to change):

- several long stages with varied and changing settings
- 5-6 end bosses and several sub bosses
- 2 player simultaneous mode
- Chain based scoring system to provide a long term challenge
- multiple heights/ways platforming for more ways to play the game
- 3 "routes" / difficulties
- Arcade perfect playtime of approx. 35 minutes per run (normal route)
- Bloodpumping arcade soundtrack by Rafael Dyll
- 60fps / 60hz (runs 2x as smooth as similar games on the NG)

Graphics:

- Beautiful handcrafted true 16-bit pixel art

- large panoramic backgrounds with a lot of paralax elements

- big fully animated bosses

- tons of animation, little details and pixel love

Hardware Specs (MVS/AES cartridges):

Will use approximately 784 Megabits (exact megcount is TBD)
Full digitized stereo soundtrack
In-system software updates via USB port (MVS)
Custom made PCBs / Custom made cartridge shell

Improved UNI-BIOS/CMVS support: bootup logo and config menu is supported / insert credit via select button


Pre-order now at http://www.ngdevdirect.com

Official game page: http://www.kraut-buster.com

(C) by NG:DEV.TEAM http://www.ngdevteam.com

The video was captured from the NEOGEO MVS alpha version and converted to 30fps by blending. The original game is 60hz@224p 4:3 and looks very crisp. The borders where added for technical reasons.

It's the first time we show the player character: Jack "Handsome" Rowdy and the "contra" mode (displayed as C-MODE).

The C-MODE mode changes the gameplay to a faster more action and running and crushing oriented gameplay.
With less stops, less energy for enemies and less bullet sponges.
Masks and treasures/collectable/secrets are removed in C-MODE to keep this mode as clutter free as possible.
The player's knife attack is also disabled to keep the gunning flow.
To compensate the "simplicity" of this mode we also added a fast kill score system additional to the timed chain system to increase long time appeal of the C-MODE.

Content of video:

We are showing small parts of mission 3-1 (train ride), mission 3-2 (train yard), mission 4-2 (boat ride),

Mission 3-1 you are fighting your way across a military train towards it's locomotive to stop it.
It has 4 parallax layers. Far away background, background, train, foreground details.
All train cars have a nice full body hand pixelated driving motion effect applied to them.

Mission 3-2 is about battling yourself through the ruins of a bombed village, a train wreck and destroying some experimental weapon system in the train yard.
It also introduces the enemy characters: Vixens of the Dictator "Heiße Helga" and "Herrin Peitsche"
We are only showing the first 60 seconds of ca. 6 minutes.

Both missions are also very military. While mission 2 and mission 4 have monsters, robots and tesla enemies.


Mission 4-2 is about escaping a secret submarine base, the fortified coastal zone and infiltrating the dictator's battle ship.
We are showing the first 60 seconds of the "fortified coastal zone" part.

As you can see in the map screen the game has 9 selectable missions.
Some missions consist of several "rooms" with their own settings and graphic sets. Right now we have about 17 "rooms".
Each mission ends with a proper and individual end boss. All stages also have mini bosses.

[...snip...]

We added some new hardware features on our custom PCBs, implementing them and using them well will take additional time too:

AES+MVS:

- 64KBytes EEPROM: for example to save scores / configs / unlocks / achievements / game progress

- WLAN for example to do software updates / worldwide online highscore list
WLAN needs quite some testing both in hardware and software, hopefully it will make it.
Having WLAN on NEOGEO would be quite cool and could lead to interesting stuff in the future.

- GFX ROM doubled in size

MVS:

- Micro SD-Card (software update) to replace USB update. If WLAN does not work out we maybe add this to AES too.
Allows software updates without the need of a connection to a windows PC.

NG Dev Team / 08-03-2018

Kraut Buster

Current state of Kraut Buster development:

With the finalboss fight done, we are now in the end phase.
The final boss fight got bigger and cooler than initially planed years ago, for the last phases we gave him a new dramatic scrolling room and a giant golden war vehicle.

One last bigger task is creating and animating the female soldier character (Valeria).

After we have added the 3rd character we can start the final phase of beta testing.

The two pixel artists will then focus on graphical details like
Background animation / destructible objects / parallax scrolling
Funny animations / general detailing / adding more life to the world.

This will take about 6-8 week.

While the 2 pixel artists finish up, the coder will program the intro / ending / menus / highscore screens / WLAN online features etc.

Hardware wise we recently switched to a completely new generation (2.0) of PCBs, FPGAs and MCU to add new hardware features and to further protect our IPs.

All in all this will bring us to an 2nd quarter 2018 release.

Best regards,
NGDEV