ARCADE WATCH
Keeping an eye on the coin-op gaming scene
NG Dev Team was founded in 2001 by German brothers Timm and Rene Hellwig, and ever since the collective has been flying the flag for forgotten videogame hardware. Its debut game, Last Hope, launched for Neo Geo AES in 2006, and for Neo Geo CD and Dreamcast the following year; 2010’s Fast Striker was an MVS game that made it to Japanese arcades before being updated for Dreamcast. While it hasn’t made a game for Sega’s hardware swan song since, the developer has stood by SNK’s, and its latest release is its most ambitious yet.
Over three years on from its announcement, Kraut Buster finally began shipping in December. It’s a 2D run-and-gun in the style of 20th-century classics Metal Slug and Contra – though not at the same time. The game offers three difficulty levels and two play modes, one a slower, more tactical and developercontrolled experience the developer compares to Neo Geo’s signature shooter, the other a faster-paced, more freeform style reminiscent of the Konami classic. The scoring system differs vastly between the two variants: in the slower T-Mode, scores are boosted by the number of treasures you find, while in C-Mode you’ll want to hoover up pick-ups dropped when you quickly rack up kills.
The action is extremely busy by Neo Geo standards, and NG Dev Team has devised a 16bit AI that reacts on the fly to reduce slowdown or sprite flicker, despawning corpses or dialling down the effects when things get too hectic on screen. It’s smart stuff from an indie developer that, despite its retro heritage, is now seeking to broaden its horizons: though it will return to Neo Geo in future, it’s now making a game for Switch.