Important Only To Game Geeks and Probably Not Many of Them

Zero Wing

My interest in other video game genres is cycling around again now that I’ve surmounted the Odin Sphere monolith. Some recent time has been spent on new racing games, which I’ll post about later, but I also just bought two games that are akin to a trip back to the early 90s, the tail end of the 2d shooter heyday.

At that time, I had been living on the East Coast a few years, and in between getting married, starting a career, and trying to carve out a comfortable space in which to raise kids, there wasn’t the kind of time to spend going to video arcades the way I used to. I might’ve found the available options depressing compared to previous years if I had as much free time because this was the time of the ‘great shrinkage’, where the small street corner arcade, and the game machines at every convenience store and pizza restaurant started to fade on down to the state things are in today. In the USA, arcades today, and for some years now, have basically been the occasional little mall space OR are the giant super-centers like Jillian’s, Dave & Busters or maybe Chuck E. Cheese. Admittedly, in these latter franchises it is pretty cool to be able to get a beer when you’re playing, but the video game machines are competing with other amusements that have big, attractive, imposing apparatus like pool tables, ball-toss games, or various simulators. Most of the video games themselves seem to be the big ride-on or specialist cabinet types. There’s nothing wrong with the custom cabs. Its great for an arcade machine to offer something not easily duplicated at home. So that’s where you go when you want to ride a virtual racing bike, man a firehose, or use an uzi in a light gun game. But all this spectacle kind of shrinks down the space and traffic for the traditional video game. I’m not saying you can’t find any great arcades, just that not every town is so blessed anymore.

At any rate, back in 1993 or thereabout, I could only eke out a little time for video gaming away from home. But what games they were! At this time sprite art ruled. The color and details in all game genres was overwhelming. Virtua Fighter had only just come out, so the drab dominance of polygons was still in the future. Most of my video gaming was done at home on a Sega Genesis. It couldn’t duplicate the speed and power of my favorite arcade machines but many of the conversions were good considering the limitations. I wasn’t sold on the 3DO. I had a NeoGeo, but carts for that beast were expensive. The Sega Saturn, really the machine that COULD absolutely duplicate those sprite-tastic arcade games was just around the corner.

I liked racing and fighting games a lot. Some great platformers and lightgun games too. But for me, arcade crack was the 2d shooting game, typically called an STG or shmup in the present generation. The 2d shooter is one of the oldest, most venerable video game genres, and at root one of the simplest. It has evolved through ever more complicated hazard patterns and more complex scoring systems, but in the main they are all just dodging and shooting. In a vertical shooter the shit’s coming down from above (Galaxian, Rayforce), in a horizontal shooter the shit’s coming in from the side, usually the right (UN Squadron, Zero Wing). Some games mix the two directions in various ways (Lifeforce for the NES, Thunder Force II). Some games are omnidirectional, usually eight directions actually (Sinistar, Subterranea). There is also the arena shooter, where your character/ship is confined to a single area, room, or space, moving to a new space when the current one is cleared (Robotron 2084, Geometry Wars).

It is the simplicity of the STG that makes it appealing and enduring. Going back to Space Invaders, the shooter has always epitomized the ‘easy to learn, difficult to master’ maxim in gaming. You can just jump in with almost no foreknowledge of how to play, and then play however you wish; for survival, just ‘seeing how far you can get’, or for score, really digging into what enemies to shoot when, the best places to trigger bombs. Or a combination of the two goals, playing in whatever way suits your play style or your current ability with the game. The beauty of the STG compared to a lot of other video games is similar to a simple classic toy or game (or even a stick or cardboard box!) compared to some complicated licensed modern action figure or remote-controlled robot. The simple plaything fires the imagination and doesn’t require a lot of references. It isn’t about knowing a certain cartoon or movie, but you can certainly put that into the toy if appropriate. A simple old plastic gun can be any firearm needed for a play situation. Today’s popular toys are tied to some specific character in some specific show. They don’t require as much imagination, creativity, or effort on the part of the owner. Flashy, but limited. These modern contraptions are not the toys that kids tend to come back to again and again… and they are not the ones fondly remembered or saved for posterity.

It seems hokey, but STGs require little and can give back a lot. Because they are rooted in the old arcade scene, modern players may think the games just don’t have much to them. Played properly, without credit-feeding, they require one to play the same areas over and over again. But the best ones have a ‘just one more go’ addictive quality to them. As you play, you improve. Those small gains are hard fought and mastering these games is almost always a testament to raw skill… not luck, not finding the hidden super-weapon, not a spammable, unblockable move. And no guide book or FAQ is going to help you. The best you can do is watch online videos or ask experts for advice, but in the end you are still going to have to do the shooting, dodging, and scoring yourself.

STGs are kind of a niche or cult genre in video games now. Still around, still made, but rarely having any kind of high-profile or mainstream success, particularly in the US. But back in the years under discussion, the STG was still pretty popular. The height of its popularity was probably just past in 1993, but they were at a creative high point, a golden era to many of the shmup players today. I wanted to get back to THAT.

As I said, the Genesis was my main outlet, and I did have a lot of STGs for it. The shooters made specifically for the machine get most of the good press. Everyone knows the Thunder Force series, Android Assault, MUSHA, and all those games. Greatness sure, but they don’t have the disadvantage of having an arcade original to compare them to. They got made with the console tools and specs in mind, pushing those limitations where possible. Suffering by comparison were the conversions. They always had a precedent to live up to, but a number of these were still pretty decent and went a long way towards making me okay with my lack of arcade time. One particular title was Zero Wing.

Zero Wing was a game that I originally played to death in an arcade in California. It came out in ’89 during what was probably the apex of STG popularity in terms of mass appeal. I loved that game. It wasn’t particularly fast or spectacular. It had a strange hook to the gameplay with your ship having an enemy-ensnaring tractor beam, but it didn’t seem to be that much of a standout feature. You could take it or leave it. There was just something about the combination of the kinda-strange music, and the very weird, dark graphics. The game was developed by Toaplan, who have a distinctive, odd style with their productions. But I liked it quite a bit, and still do. I kept at Zero Wing enough to eventually 1CC the game in the arcade. I was ecstatic when some time later I saw there was a Genesis port of the game. My copy was the Japanese one, so I missed out on the ‘all your base are belong to us’ subtitle that much later became an internet rage. The Genesis port had all the basics down. Music was the same, pace was the same, all the enemies were recognizable and I was really pleased that the odd (some almost disturbing) bosses were still huge and intact. Mostly it was background details that were missing. Again, I played that shit to death.

Batsugun

This brings us to the game Batsugun. Released about four years after Zero Wing, this was one of my go-to games for my infrequent arcade visits in the 90s. It still had the distinctive art and sound, but it was a little brighter and happier than previous Toaplan excursions like Zero Wing or Truxton. With financial dissolution looming however, Batsugun was the company’s last game. Ironically, it was also the start (arguably) of a revolution in STG play and philosophy. I didn’t know it was Toaplan’s final game at the time. I just recognized the name and the graphic style. The play was a different matter.

Batsugun is probably the progenitor of the manic style of shooter, also known as danmaku (literally curtain-fire) or bullet hell shooters. There may be a case for various staples of the subgenre to have derived from earlier games, but in Batsugun, you have the first game (that I’m aware of) that so many of the traits came together in a recognizable combination.

Manic shooters are typically short, even by the already short STG standards. They feature tons of enemy fire, a veritable curtain of it dropping down (hence the nickname) often in mesmerizing patterns. The enemy bullets tend to travel slower than previous forms of shmup, with the skill in dodging coming, not from memorization or sheer speed of reflexes, but from dexterity in threading your way through the bullet patterns or positioning yourself to ‘herd’ most of the fire into one spot on the screen so that you can maneuver yourself to a different spot. The ships or characters tend to have small hit boxes, the area on your sprite that can actually be struck for a kill by enemy fire. Other parts of the sprite will just pass the bullets on through. The games also equip the player with monumental amounts of firepower, with selectable ships trading off how wide your shot spread is versus striking power. Choose a ship with a wide, weak area of fire and you will have an easier time with the common ‘popcorn’ enemies. Choose a ship with a narrow, focused area of fire and you’ll have to move around a lot to kill all the popcorn enemies before they overwhelm you, but you’ll knock the life off the bosses or minibosses a lot quicker. The games also tend to feature complex or multilayered scoring systems. Keeping up sequential chains of hits, using certain weapons on certain enemies, or drawing out the boss battles, can all be features developed to reward skillful, knowledgeable players with higher scores than the scrubs can manage.

Batsugun's scoring was not particularly complex. The hitbox on your ship was not tiny. And a lot of the enemy bullets come at you pretty fast. But overall, playing the game you can see the shift toward a new style. The levels are brief but intense. Firepower from bosses and midbosses requires threading through waves of bullets or bullet herding. From about the third stage on, the smaller enemies become numerous enough for their firepower to become an aerial labyrinth. And in a display that may have yet to be equaled in video gaming, the ships in Batsugun spew out the most awesome swaths of pixellated death ever. Seriously. In a genre known for over-the-top firepower, this game from 1993 (sixteen years ago!) is still the top of the heap for equipping players with regular shots that surpass the badassedness of final boss weapons in most games. And once you are leveled up you get these weapons ALL THE TIME. Pretty much to the point you often can’t even tell what’s going on with enemy ships and bullets. That visual confusion aspect is probably why most shooters after Batsugun haven’t tried to match it. I won’t say Batsugun becomes unplayable, it doesn’t. But it might just be more than its worth for anyone else to try to find just the right balance of enemy elements and visual design to keep that shit workable. I’ve seen incredible player fire in modern STGs, but the unbelievable day-glo apocalypse of Batsugun seems unique. Nonetheless, whatever its excesses (or in the case of length, shortcomings) the game struck a chord with me (though this would take years to manifest) and shmup fans in Japan.

Maybe two years along from this I picked up the Sega Saturn. One of the reasons I love this machine so much… it might be my favorite console… is that it replicated the arcade games I loved so much. As stated earlier, I didn’t cotton to the 3DO, which was ahead of its time and did have some arcade-perfect conversions. If I recall right it came down to the expense really. A friend was generous enough to give me a NeoGeo that they didn’t want or need, and that really WAS an arcade machine. Being limited to SNK’s own games and a very limited circle of developers, the NeoGeo would only ever have the tiniest fraction of cool arcade games on it. Samurai Shodown is my favorite 2d fighting franchise, and that was no small thing, but it wasn’t enough of course. So when the Saturn came along it provided, for the first time really, AFFORDABLE arcade-perfect conversions. No real compromises apart from disk loading. It was awesome. Playing Capcom fighters like Street Fighter or Darkstalkers just like the ones down at the mall. The copy of Strikers 1945 at your local Chuck E. Cheese was just like the one on your bookshelf. I nearly shat myself with glee. Every game purchased for consoles prior to the Saturn was exciting (until a game turned out to be crap), but games purchased for Sega’s black box were fucking EVENTS, man! And I became the total import snob/whore too. Modding my Saturn happened in the third month of ownership. I was not missing out on any game possibilities just because of the fuckwit region coding. If you were a true arcade fetishist you probably could take each Saturn conversion and actually find details here and there where they differ from their arcade parent, but compared to previous console generations’ struggle to even get close, the differences amounted to nothing.

So it was and is really weird that I really don’t have all that many STGs on my Saturn. I have a lot of games for it, in all sorts of genres—2d fighters particularly. But not that many shmups. Not considering how popular they are with me, how popular they were when the Saturn came out, and how many actually got made for the console. Oh, I have some great ones. But considering how critical the genre is to my video game geekdom the small number is a symptom of a tremendous oversight.

A few years after the Saturn’s release and Toaplan’s demise, former staffers at Gazelle converted Batsugun to the Sega box for publisher Banpresto. I bought the Radiant Silverguns and the Soukyougurentais so well-known on the platform, but overlooked this one. I’m sure it was probably not so high-profile as other games, being Japan-only and in a genre that was by that time (1996) starting to drop off in popularity. It was also ‘old’. A version of a game long past its arcade debut.

But back in 1993, with Toaplan’s breakup, the artists and programmers went off to join other companies or form their own. Takumi, Raizing, and Gazelle all rose from the ashes of Toaplan. But the critical descendant in this post is Cave. If a gamer is at all a shmup fan it is likely they are aware of Cave. The company is world-reknowned today as the talented (but extremely focused) developer of complex (for the genre), meticulously-crafted, 2d shooting games. You really cannot have a shmup discussion of any length before this develper crops up. Love them or hate them (and their manic style DOES have it share of detractors), there is no doubt that Cave are the most influential shooter developer at present.

Donpachi

Before Cave rose to prominence though, they had to have started somewhere. Their first game was Donpachi, released to arcades in 1995. Donpachi continues a pretty tidy transition. Though the art style is markedly different, many of the concepts the ex-Toaplan gang still had in mind carried right on over to this new game. The ‘manic’ aspects had been even further developed in the two years between, so that Donpachi contained almost all the hallmarks of the manic shooter as we know it today. Donpachi’s graphics were not as distinctive (or as elaborate) as Batsugun’s. The promo materials were almost crude, with very simple images and design. Having just started, I doubt Cave had any kind of budget for the niceties and plugged everything they had time and money-wise into making the game itself as awesome as it could be. Interestingly, a hornet was the logo for some of the characters in Batsugun, and a bee became the symbol for Donpachi, establishing a winking continuity. A Saturn port was almost immediate, again with no money going to fancy packaging. Since it came out in 1996 and the Batsugun port was rather late, this had the interesting effect of putting a game and its sort-of sequel on sale at the same time. Apart from some puzzlingly lengthy disc spinning the Saturn version of Donpachi is really faithful to the arcade version just as expected.

In my halcyon days as a Saturn customer I didn’t know about Donpachi either. I was not on the cutting edge of shmup development and how I DID catch back up might be a tale for another post.

At any rate, to bring all this up the original desire fronting this post; when I saw the end of Odin Sphere was just a week or two off I knew I’d want to get back into short, sharp games for a bit. Between looking around my collection of unfinished games and shopping online for something new, I realized there was a seriously underrepresented ‘era’ in my shooters; late 80s and early 90s arcade ports or conversions. I played the hell out of the actual arcade games, why don’t I have that nostalgia trip covered on my shelves? Maybe I GOT enough of a fix of it then that I mostly bought different games. But I was missing it now. I decided to specifically target that moment of transition/revolution that ushered in the bullet hell shooter. I had a number of manic shooters in my collection, but I missed the beginnings. I rectified that by buying a copy each of the Saturn versions of Batsugun and Donpachi at the same time. It took a long damn time for these things to reach me from the seller in Japan. Donpachi was cheap, Batusugun not so much, though not up in the brutal ass-pirate price range that a lot of Saturn (or Dreamcast) shooters are. I got out some Saturn arcade sticks…no basic controllers for STGs boys and girls…and fired the games up.

These games really are fantastic. They are addicting but exhausting too once you’ve broken into playing the later levels. The graphics are strictly old school in the sense of being hand-drawn sprites and no scaling or fancy effects. There isn’t even much in the way of parallax (multi-plane) scrolling. Instead, all the processing is going into having many enemies onscreen at once and about a bazillion bullets. That’s less than the kajillion bullets modern manic shooters throw at you perhaps, but still impressive. I’ve already noted the completely insane firepower in Batsugun, but Donpachi’s no slouch either. You can either tap the fire button to get your usual shots or hold the button down for an absolute geyser of destructive power. The tradeoff is that your ship slows down while ‘geysering’. Add in three selectable ships and two bomb types and you have all the makings of a shooter orgasm. I actually find Donpachi to be more spectacular than its 2002 sequel Dodonpachi Daioujou. Daioujou has more detailed rendered graphics, and is more polished and modern. But it is also somehow 'scaled down' and more muted. Daioujou is a great game, and I’m not saying it is less of a game than the first one. But the graphics, particularly the weapons, just don’t have the same eye-searing impact as Donpachi’s. Having played a fair amount of Daioujou, I kind of expected something of the same play and scoring system in its ancestor, but I was actually surprised by how much was already in place in this first game… or maybe it would be better to say how little has changed through all the Donpachi chapters through the years.

Its really been interesting and fun. On the one hand Batsugun looks like a Toaplan game superficially but plays like something much more recent. As if someone had a time machine that saw the shooters of the future and implemented what they saw as best they could on their hardware when they got back to their own time. Not understanding the balance between super-blasting weapons and visibility that characterises the modern bullet hell shmup, they just went for as big a weapons as they could.

Donpachi on the other hand plays like someone took a modern manic shooter’s code and built all the visuals and sounds out of old assets. Like it is a current Cave game clone that someone had to put old sprites on. In no way is that meant to be derogatory. I think rather it is a testament to how forward thinking Cave’s basic play idea was even in that first early game.

A great nostalgia trip. I'll be hacking away at improving my game on both of these shooters and probably continuing to play them together. I also need to keep filling in my Saturn shooter catalog, notably with the sequel Dodonpachi.
(pics mostly from Satakore)

Past Blast Continued

More video games from the past I’ve dug up from storage:

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the Sega Saturn. 2d platformer. Everything they say about this game is true. I’m not a huge fan of the Castlevania series (blasphemy!), though I can understand the greatness. THIS is the Castlevania game to own if you had to buy just one. So… uh, that’s why I own it. Just the one. I will probably fork some dough over for Rondo of Blood at some point, so I can play through this game’s nearly-as-good prequel. Still pics might make it look like ‘just a platform game’ but that doesn’t begin to describe all the cool items, amazing music, dark atmosphere, and intimidating boss battles. It’s the usual ‘versus Dracula and his minions’ plot, but its pulled off about as well as it ever has been and maybe ever will be.

Panzer Dragoon

Panzer Dragoon for the Sega Saturn. 3d rail shooter. Graphics for this game haven’t aged all that well. You can see how ambitious the images were for their time, and the design of the world is cool, but as is usual polygons haven’t held up as well over the years as sprites seem to. Sprites can manage ‘charm’… polys usually just turn ugly. Nonetheless, if you can get past the scruffy graphics the gameplay, sounds and music are pretty badass. Nowadays Oorta is the standard bearer for Panzer Dragoon games… and rightfully so. But this is where it all started, and its still pretty cool.

Mars Matrix

Mars Matrix for the Sega Dreamcast. 2d vertical shooter. Your go-to game if you want an STG that is so difficult you will want to throw yourself off a building. Perhaps only exceeded by Gigawing 2, Dodonpachi Daioujou, and Mushihimesama Futari. Graphics are pre-rendered sprites that simulate 3d objects but are kind of crude-looking, thought they move and animate smoothly. The more you play the more ships, credits, and power you can earn, but if you are a nutter for getting the 1CC you better be prepared to put an inordinate amount of time in on this. A manic shooter with unholy amounts of enemy fire, the gameplay system centers around a shield used to deflect whatever bullets you cannot (or don’t wish to for scoring purposes) dodge. With proper memorization, there is a rhythm to using the shield, and getting the enemies to drop the most ‘gold’ to max out your firepower and bonuses. This game is very fun, but the tenacity to keep playing enough to learn this rhythm… ehn, I probably don’t have that in me. This is one I will just have to admire superplayers on and never try to get the 1CC. I find Cave shooters (generally speaking) to be more involving, so my manic shooter mastery practice will mostly go there.

Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master. 2d platformer on the Genesis/Mega Drive. Wow, is this a good game. I’d kind of forgot how good the Shinobi games could get. Much of the gameplay, the controls, Joe Mushashi’s abilities, etc. have all been done a million times, but they all just come together really well here. Joe controls so well and so intuitively that you will be negotiating even the most complex screens with ease. The only tricky part, and I was brutally reminded of this at the first boss during a recent go, is that to use the double jump you have to time the second press of the jump button right at the apex… and this can be hella-tough when you are being pressured. However, if someone wants straight up ninja action without all the sneaky complexity of Tenchu or the frustrating difficulty of (old) Ninja Gaiden, this is your game.


Chu Chu Rocket for the Sega Dreamcast. 2d action puzzle game. You must lead your mice onto an escape ship while avoiding the cats. This incredibly addictive game has two major modes. One is a frantic move-or-lose action game similar in intensity and speed to the Bomberman games. The other is more akin to the Adventures of Lolo on the NES where you have a pre-set board with cats and other obstacles already placed. You must use the tools given, then activate the board to see if the mice escape safely. Graphically very simple, but distinctive. This game is a really good example of Sega’s vision for a cute and family-friendly party game, as distinct from the many examples we have from Nintendo. Sega really did have some great innovative games, even if that seems to have fallen away from the company in recent years. Segagaga, Space Channel Five, Virtual On… they weren’t just Sonic and Shinobi. Chu Chu Rocket really worked well online too, years before all the online console stuff we get from the Virtual Console and Xbox Live Arcade.

Alien Front Online

Alien Front Online for the Sega Dreamcast, 3d third person polygonal shooter. A vehicle based shooter really from a third person perspective behind your tank or walker. An arcade game ported to the DC, this thing was a real showpiece for the Dreamcast’s graphics and it is still pretty impressive today. The objects themselves aren’t incredibly detailed, but the action is so fast, and so BIG. Tons of vehicles driving around, shit blowing up everywhere, and all kinds of cool weapons both human and alien. They even have an honest-to-goodness usable nuke in the game, and I can’t say there are many more satisfying video game moments than when you get to pop one of these off effectively. The gameplay, as is typical with arcade games, is kinda shallow, at least for home video game expectations. But the arenas are varied and interesting, and you can choose to play either as the invading aliens or the defending humans. This game also had online play. For the most part it worked pretty well, especially considering the pioneering role the Dreamcast had in actually forging this concept for consoles. Remember, the standard at this time was dialup. DIAL-UP. And I still remember decent lag-free games. The game also came with a microphone that allowed you a short segment of voice input every time you activated it. There was one evening of play I will never forget. Everyone on my team was saying the usual stuff, ‘go here’, ‘get that guy’, ‘don’t shoot at me’, etc. But one guy used his voice interval to just babble or shout incoherent stuff into the microphone. He was so weird, and he made some really hilarious noises, but he knew it was funny, and he’d keep doing it. That made most of the voices that followed him nothing but laughter. I could barely see what I was doing half the time from laughing so much. I hope that guy is still out there having a good time.

Guardian Heroes

Guardian Heroes for the Sega Saturn. 2d beat ‘em up. You don’t have to play this game to see how incredibly over-the-top it is. Just dig up a YouTube video and gape in awe at the madness. It is this kind of game that has fomented Treasure’s reputation for good play mechanics buried under impossible visuals. At base level, this game is akin to Double Dragon, Final Fight, or even Golden Axe. You walk along sidescrolling screens (generally headed right) beating up enemies as they appear. Most beat ‘em ups let you work in a few throws or combos to break up the monotony of just hitting the punch button. This genre has all but disappeared nowadays, but in its heyday it was huge. Mostly owing to their popularity in arcades. They are a great cooperative play experience, rather like playing a fighting game where you are partners with someone as opposed to being their enemy. In Guardian Heroes, the setting is a medieval fantasy (with some technology) world. The game has command-motion inputs like many fighting games, and multiplane movement like Fatal Fury, but these things weren’t unheard of in beat ‘em ups. Not being an actual arcade game with their hustle-the-quarters-quickly time constraints, Treasure also added in extensive dialogue scenes, choosable branching story paths, and RPG-like leveling up and character management. Now the game starts to look pretty ambitious next to a typical beat ‘em up, but where Guardian Heroes really sets itself apart is in the execution. The sprites for the characters and enemies are simply-colored anime drawings. But this simplicity allows for dozens of them to be onscreen at once, and for some really huge shapes to move quickly about the screen wreaking havoc. It is common in the game for you (and your buddies) to frequently be attacked by six or ten henchmen, one ‘captain’ with special abilities, and some giant robot with a screen-filling laser ALL AT THE SAME TIME. The chaos is unbelievable. With all of this, of course some visibility, and therefore control, is going to be sacrificed. You can’t always see where your character is and what they are doing underneath all the layers of explosions, bodies, and mayhem. But that’s part of learning the game. You have to learn to deal with it. And positioning yourself so that you can do what you need to is half the game. Simply awesome.


Elemental Master for the Genesis/Mega Drive. 2d vertical STG. A really unique vertical shooter from Technosoft, the folks behind the Thunder Force games. Although your ship is actually a little sorcerer dude walking through the backgrounds, the scrolling is still forced and constant. So the game looks something like Gain Ground in still pictures but is really more akin to the plane/spaceship/flying person sort of shmup. You have a button that fires forward and back, along with a weapon change button akin to Thunder Force. Unlike most of that series’ chapters you don’t lose whatever weapon you have equipped when you get hit. In fact, you have a lifebar as opposed to three lives. This game just rocks. It is perhaps a bit too easy, but it has cool weapons, decent visuals for the 16-bit era, and an awesome soundtrack. In fact, the soundtrack is part of what elevates this game, for me, into the favorites tier. There are good tunes all the way ‘round, but when you first get to the bosses that transform from human to monstrous, the music and sound effects will raise the hair on your neck.


Cyberbots for the Sega Saturn. 2d fighting game. A flashy, if somewhat simple mech fighter from Capcom. Gameplay is a variant of Capcom’s standard six-button system, like Street Fighter or Darkstalkers. The robots are varied, and the artwork is decent… again pretty reminiscent of Capcom’s other fighting games. Although more serious than Darkstalkers, the robots can pull off the same sort of ‘impossible’ special moves, blasting or slicing with weapons their mechanical bodies couldn’t possibly contain. But it is all done very well, with lots of trash talking between the rounds. Looking at this, I’m guessing it was kind of the blueprint for higher profile mech fighters that came along like the Gundam Battle Assault series. The way damage, weapons, and movement are represented all look very similar. The hero/Ryu character in the game made his way to being an unlockable in the later polygonal fighter Techromancer (Kikaioh). A decent game, but it probably doesn’t compel anyone but Capcom fighting game completists or fans of mech-on-mech violence.

Zero Wing

Zero Wing for the Genesis/Mega Drive. 2d horizontal STG. This game is kind of odd compared to most shooters, but pretty typical of games from the developer, Toaplan. Famous for the bad Engrish that gave us, ‘All your base are belong to us’, this game plays in a slow-paced (R-type speed as opposed to Thunder Force speed) fashion with a conventional power up system. But like most Toaplan games it is solidly designed with a gradually ramping difficulty level, widely varying levels and enemies, and an weird, rough art style that makes for some strange and memorable bosses. The music is actually really good too. I kind of got hooked on this in an arcade, in some town I was visiting. I never got to play it to completion. So when I saw there was a Genesis version I jumped on it. The port is pretty good. It isn’t as detailed as the arcade version and it doesn’t have as many layers of background scrolling, but all the enemies and timing seem right (compared to what I remember), and the soundtrack is actually better… same tunes but less tinny arrangement and ‘instruments’. This game won’t win any awards for originality (apart from the ‘Weird Boss Award’) but it is a good example of an almost relaxing STG experience. Not easy per se… but not stressful either, even in the difficult sections of the later levels.

(as usual images stolen from HG101 and a few other sources)

Past Blast Froth Fest pt1

Some oldie-games cracked open for the first time in years. For a lot of these modern, spoon-fed, shovel-ware gamers need not bother. They can be harder than an angry black cock.

In The Hunt

In The Hunt- Sega Saturn. Graphically incredible 2D (sprite graphics) submarine shooter from Irem. Development team formed Nazca and made Metal Slug for the Neo Geo. So if you are familiar with that game you should have some idea what this looks like. In fact, Metal Slug in a submarine is probably an apt description. Mostly a shooter, it has the player controlling the scrolling like the run 'n' gun that Metal Slug is. The pacing may be off-putting for gamers expecting the forced scrolling of a typical horizontal STG, but I think the game's other details more than make up for it. Unbelievable animation and detail. Gobs of destructible scenery which is atypical for any 2D game, let alone a shooter. A game that shows all the Saturn's strengths. Only five levels long with the last two-thirds of the fifth level (the fucking volcanoes and beyond) really putting the stones to you. There's probably some trick to getting past all the lava chunks without losing a bunch of subs, but I haven't figured it out yet.


Assault Suit Leynos 2- Sega Saturn. Sprite-based sequel to Target Earth on the Genesis and Assault Suits Valken (Cybernator) on the SNES. A run'n'gun with platforming elements like those games. Unlike the other two games, the production values surrounding the game look shite. The FMV intro and the manual art look totally second rate. Check out the man-breasts on the protagonist! The game even feels truncated with only seven pretty short levels, which for a shooter would be typical, but for a run'n'gun is pretty weak. If you're going to have so few, they need to be longer to make it your money's worth, ie the aforementioned Metal Slug, which has levels that might be too long. Leynos 2, the game itself mostly makes up for all these shortcomings. You pilot a mech-suit with abilities lifted straight from the anime series Mobile Suit Gundam (plots and scenarios largely lifted too, in all the games in the series). The graphics are pretty decent (sprites) with occasional huge bosses (like Gundam mobile armors), and a really neat weapon and suit customisation menu. It is an import only game, so plot details and conversations will be lost on the non-Japanese speaker, but the controls, though complex, are not difficult to figure out since the menus are in English. I could recommend this to Gundam fans or people who enjoyed the other Assault Suits games. It is easier than the earlier games because I think the idea is to play through it multiple times, getting better grades each time because you've earned better weapons and suits. There may be some additional level or ending when you earn everything, but I'm not that good at it yet. Internet info on this thing is bloody scarce, especially since it is a robot action game and not an effing dating sim.


Ultraman Fighting Evolution Rebirth- PS2. 2D fighting game with polygonal graphics. Bought this one mostly for my son, based mostly on Youtube videos since, again, internet info (in English at least) is really lacking on gameplay details. Fortunately this turned out to not only be better than a license like this has any right to be, I found it to be fun enough myself to see it all the way through to the end. Which was good because my son is totally intimidated by fighting games, primarily because he doesn't feel up to the task of managing command inputs like the so-called dragon punch from Street Fighter, and with my going through the game first, I was able to coach him through finishing the game himself. There are no command inputs for this game, but it was still a hurdle to overcome his reluctance, despite the subject matter which he loves. The game does a really good job fitting in the particulars of the various Ultraseries which is no small accomplishment. With episodes and characters spanning forty years of television, plots that change the characters powers and weaknesses at the writers' whims, and all kinds of abilities like firing beams, transformations, wrestling, and super-strength, it was herculean to make a game that was even playable and somewhat balanced. I won't say it IS super-balanced, it isn't a 'formal' tournament-ready fighting game, but it works surprising well. The controls are slower to respond than the Street Fighter-type games (I'd say its more 'tactical' like early Samurai Shodown) but it conveys the giant size and massive impacts of the characters... much like the recent Godzilla console games Atari distributed. The TV episodes almost always end with a huge finishing move, and they've worked those into the game, even giving finishers to all the monsters, because unlike the shows, HERE the monsters can win. To help ease things for younger players, and because the game IS rather tactical (with a detailed plot for a fighting game) the game saves after every fight in story mode. The battle mode is more like the conventional fighting game, shedding the plot pauses and the saves. The overall sheen of the game lets the older Ultraman characters fit right in with the new ones and its really fun (if you're a fan) to explore these sorts of 'crossovers' between the series. Many of the characters and backgrounds need to be unlocked, so there's a lot of replay incentive. I'm letting a huge bias cloud my opinion, I realize. People who have no interest in Ultraman will likely not see any draw to this game. But Ultrafans will find this much cooler than they would probably expect, and shows what the license could be like taken seriously... well, as seriously as it could be. The game is somewhat easy, and experienced gamers should have no trouble getting to final boss... but that's when black cock strikes, and you fight what might be the award winner for most frequently regenerated lifebars/most transformations in a game. The final chapter goes on for scadloads longer than any of the other chapters and unless you figure out a certain secret for one of the the boss's forms, it WILL go on forever until your character just wears down and dies.

Flink

Flink- Sega CD. 2D platformer, sprites. Another amazing graphic masterpiece. Games like this and In The Hunt were the real catalysts for my 'No Love...' post from several days back. This is a thoroughly European game, contrasted against the overwhelming majority of Japanese games and a smattering of American ones. The style of this game brings to mind the detailed, characterful artwork of Brian Froud, Arthur Suydam, or Patrick Woodruff. Every leaf, every blade of grass delineated in loving detail. An amazing soundtrack to go along with it, partly owing to the CD format of the game. The gameplay is pretty basic, jumping, bouncing on enemies, or throwing objects at them-- standard Mario-style-- but additionally, there is mildly RPG-like magic system involving finding and mixing ingredients. Some of the more involved precision jumping sections can get frustrating because Flink's jumps cannot be controlled quite as well as say Mario or Sonic. But the immersion factor is just huge because of all the care lavished on this game. The opening intro alone will tell you the designers poured everything they had into the details, and the intro doesn't use any FMV or anything... it is the same sort of graphic design used in the game itself! Awesome game if you are one of the few (or the insane) who actually own a Sega CD.


Soul Star- Sega CD. 3D shooter, sprite-based graphics. The Sega CD was supposed to be a huge leap in graphics and sound from the Sega Genesis, but apart from more elaborate FMV intros and CD soundtracks they didn't really live up to the hype. Especially when so many of the early games were 'cinema adventure' games that set new standards for suckage. Eventually some great games did come out, and they had the expected super music quality, but only a select few like Flink above, or this one, Soul Star actually LOOKED like a big step up from the Genesis. Again Soul Star's gameplay, like Flink's isn't revolutionary, but it does it what it does pretty well. You pilot three vehicles, a spaceship, a hovercraft, and towards the end, a walker. Each vehicle has a different type of playfield with the spacecraft a rail shooter (see Space Harrier or Panzer Dragoon), and the other two working in more free-roaming areas. The graphics are pretty amazing. Smooth scaling, relatively high speeds, and cool enemy designs, particulary the mechs and bosses later in the game. Planets and ships in the distance gradually scroll forward as you play to become the site of the next level. The control scheme for the hovercraft takes a helluva lot of getting used to, but I enjoyed the game so much I stuck with it. The music is almost haunting in places. This is another game where the designers were obviously enamored with their idea and really went to town creating an immersive experience. I'm not a huge fan of films that are hung up on just their special effects, but occasionally a strong setting or artful cinematography can elevate a mundane story. The interactive nature of a video game means this sort of successful world-building can be even more successful.

Vampire Savior

Vampire Savior- Sega Saturn. 2D fighting game, sprite-based graphics. Third in the DarkStalkers series. It is not hard to find heaping piles of praise for this game on the internet, but its been a long time since I played it, so I'm adding my own droppings to the pile. Saturn version, arcade-perfect, playing to the Saturns strengths. Absolutely jaw-dropping art and animation especially when seen on today's flat-panel TVs. The gameplay is deep with an elaborate and satisfying system for the specials and supers. One of Capcom's best. Not as perfectionist-technical as Street Fighter or King of Fighters tend to be... its more for fun. But not as retardedly over-the-top as Marvel vs Capcom either. A good balance. With some of the greatest, but decidedly underappreciated characters in all of gaming. My son's lack of patience for games like this makes me want to sell him to the gypsies.


GigaWing 2- Sega Dreamcast. 2D shooter with polygonal graphics. Flashy, somewhat cute-seeming blast fest... until about thirty seconds in. Then it initiates you into the world of manic shooters (aka danmaku, 'curtain fire') with all the subtlety of a rigorous fisting. The manic shooter is a relatively modern variant on the old 2D STG, usually vertically-oriented. It is characterised by a small hitbox (collision area) for the ship (often just the cockpit), massive streams of firepower available to the player, and screen-filling amounts of neon-colored projectiles. I'll probably devote more 'blog space to specifics of manic shooters (or bullet hell shooters as they are often called) in the future. But suffice to say this one is right alongside the notorious difficulty level many manic shooters lay claim to. It has a shield/reflection system similar to Mars Matrix (another game by the same house, Takumi), but using it well enough to survive is an exercise in practice, practice, practice. Short, intense, difficult. It took me a long while to warm up to this game, so unlike the shooters I've been used to. Now I'm a manic shooter devotee. I'd say the biggest strike against the game is the unlimited continues. It doesn't matter how hard a game is, or how worthy of practice, if you can just 'credit feed' your way through it. I wish this had an option to limit the continues. There's no incentive to really work when the temptation to just hit continue (again) exists. I really like the method used by Ikaruga, Radiant Silvergun, and Border Down of 'earning continues' through play time. By the time you've earned enough continues to finish the game your need for them should have dropped. Gigawing 2 is not even close to being one of my favorite shooters, but its decent.

Cool Cool Toon

Cool Cool Toon- Sega Dreamcast. Rhythm game with polygonal graphics. I am definitely NOT a fan of rhythm games. The only one I even have near me is some chapter of DDR that I got for my kids (complete with dance pad). So I cannot claim to be any sort of fan or expert. This game, however, struck me as interesting when I first saw previews for it on import sites. It has a very quirky art and music style. The graphics are polygonal but in a very cartoony solid-color style, that sort of looks like a precursor to cel-shaded graphics. The music is equally offbeat, cover a lot of different musical styles. That could be plus or a minus for the game depending on how closed-minded you are about your music... all of it is sort of 'dancey' as you'd expect. No beat, no game y'know? Its a pretty cool as the title say. There's nothing else really like it. But the game incorporates analog stick movements in addition to button presses (no dance pad, its more akin to playing an instrument than placing dance steps), and therein lies the game's main problem. Control. Odd thing to say if you place it in context of most other rhythm (or music games like Guitar Hero) since control is the last thing you worry about with simple button presses. Cool Cool Toon requires precise exact movements of the Dreamcast's analog stick though, and this proves incredibly difficult and frustrating. There are no detents or 'clicks' as you guide the stick in the clockface directions during the game. So no aids to your the exact placement. You just slide around rather loosely. At first this is no problem, the pauses between beats allow some correction, but as speed and complexity ramp up, you'll wish abominable tortures down upon the designers' children. I guess like a lot of other activities it takes practice. But this control scheme seems needlessly difficult, literally problematic to the goals of the game. There are already grueling memorisation tasks in other parts. So this one gets a lot of points on style, but only people absolutely in love with that style, and so willing to tackle the incredible learning/practice curve should seek out this game. Note: the clearest screenshots of this game seemed to come from the Planet-SNK site, so that's where I filched this pic. The huge 'nexgam' logo is NOT in the actual game.


Street Fighter III: Third Strike- Sega Dreamcast. 2D fighting game with sprite graphics. As most people know this game is basically a clinic on how to do shit-hot 2D animation. The sprites are huge, move fluidly and are cool updates on the classic Street Fighter characters. Fans are split on whether this game or the concurrently available Street Fighter Alpha 3 game was better. I tend to fall in the Alpha camp. That game is just more fun. This one is much more restrained and technical, and I do think it is a great game, I just prefer the characters in Alpha and the greater number of options for your super bar and special moves. If you want a Street Fighter game that 'feels' realistic, this is your boy.

Okay, that's enough for now. More later.