Lang got a shout out from Gio during the panel, and then one of the presenters on the Twitch stream specifically named Jeff as someone responsible for willing this thing to life. It's pretty wild.
This is great news. I just really hope it turns out well - e.g has functional netcode & matchmaking, customizable control schemes, etc. If they drop the disc on any aspect of this it would be heartbreaking. However, the developer seems to be working closely with the competitive Windjammers community, so that's somewhat reassuring.
Windjammers France helped us maintain continuity with the arcade version, and broadened our understanding of the game’s tremendous eSports potential.
This comment seems to suggest it's not exactly an emulated rom / port. If this is the case I hope it doesn't change the feel of the game any. You can read DotEmu's (the Windjammer PS4/vita developer) post about the game over on the PlayStation Blog.
I played a full match on the show floor at PSX earlier today. The default settings had the round timer set to 90 seconds with no point limit. It was strange seeing scores going into the 20s and beyond, but it allowed some really intense matches and ultimately felt like the right amount of time. Between the two demo stations they had running the game, one had a scanline graphical effect and the other did not. I take that as confirmation that there will at least be settings of some kind, though I didn't see one for myself.
The game itself played pretty much exactly like it does in arcades or on an emulator. There's a bunch of new art for the character and stage selection menus, but in-game is basically unchanged. I know people are worried about potential problems given the track record of DotEmu, but the framerate and input felt pretty much like I expected it to. Any shortcomings this release might have will probably be limited to whatever new online modes they're adding. Simply having an easy and legal way to pull up windjammers and play it with friends locally is enough for me to buy it.
when/if i finally play this (though as a duder i think i'm obligated to buy it) i'm probalby going to suck absolute crap at it. but whatever! curse my old man hands.
@cathadan: That sounds good. If you can set it to 90sec/unlimited score you can probably set it to have a score limit and no time limit. I'm on board, even though I already have it set up in MAME with unibios.
@icyeyes: It is pretty clearly emulated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_5zPQwLofo says as much
The term "emulated" is a bit ambiguous here. The completely new user interface and online features are obviously not, but the developer did say it's "basically emulated" and "what we changed was more around it". So it sounds like they've recreated the original arcade mechanics (emulated them) while also expanding and improving upon other aspects of the game (UI, netcode, etc.). So it's not "emulated" in the sense of emulating an original NeoGeo rom, but that's not necessarily a bad thing and I'm probably the only person here who would even care. In any case, they've obviously put some work into this thing and that's great news. I really hope this does well and generates a greater following for the game. Who knows, this might even lead to an official sequel if it becomes popular enough.
@icyeyes: No, it's certainly emulated, as in the neo geo code running on an emulator. The extra menus and stuff use other tricks, perhaps directly changing memory addresses, perhaps just passing inputs down while their interface sits on top. If you want more evidence that they didn't recode the game itself, look at answers to questions like this one: https://twitter.com/DotEmu/status/807299669877555200 .
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