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Shmup Report 4

It's celebration time again, dear shmup addicts!

This new batch of beaten shoot'em ups is comprised of one game per console. It wasn't my intention to do this, it just happened naturally! Below, a few words about each one of them, from older to newer games.

The Adventures of Dino Riki (NES) – Regular vert shooter that's a little above the standard average due to some graphics gimmicks and a couple of catchy tunes. Who cares about the story of a caveboy who fights prehistoric creatures? This gets painstakingly difficult in the last stages (it's a checkpoint shooter!), demanding nothing less than perfection in the dodging for the player to see... the end? No, fellow gamers, no ending for you or me. The game loops with no end screen, no congratulation message, no flash or blip at all. Heh.

Aerial Assault (Master System) – A lone air fighter against a bunch of bad guys, starting on the shore and ending in deep space. WoW! Execution could've been better, but I can't complain about the challenge, which feels just right to me. Music is the standard non-memorable fare of the old 8-bit era, and collision detection can be irritatingly glitchy. There are cool graphical touches though, as in the clouds and the thunderstorm in stage 2 and the Gradius-like feel of the last stage. The wall here is the 4th stage, so be prepared for it if you decide to give this a chance.

Deep Blue (PC Engine) – Scary game. Scary because the eyes of the fighter (a somewhat bulky fish) go from blue to red as his energy fades, but mostly because the game is almost unplayable at first. Deep Blue is capable of repelling even the most dedicated players due to the amount of enemies onscreen and the excruciating slow default speed of the fish-ship. Everybody knows it's frustrating to die before even getting to the first boss... The catch with this is PATTERNS. And also knowing where to stand. However, like the abovementioned Dino Riki, the ending is a joke and is bound to make some people really angry.

Super Darius (PC Engine CD) – I'm probably one of the greatest Darius fans I know, for I don't know many. This is a proud heritage from playing lots of rounds of Sagaia for the Mega Drive. I believe that Super Darius is the only home port of the first game in the series. It's a nice little title, even when considering the improvement Taito made on the series in further releases. The Silver Hawk is bigger, the space fish horde is as wacky as usual and the difficulty is spot on. The level design and BGM repetition towards the end is disappointing, but real Darius fans won't care about it.

Air Buster (Mega Drive) – Known also as Aero Blasters, this colorful, fast and fluid horizontal shooter tricks you with an easy first stage just to rip you to shreds later on. The no-gravity passages are famous for making everything more difficult than it already is, and the lack of slowdown in 1-player mode (it allows co-op!) really pushes the action into some severe and sharp dodging maneuvers. It's not hard to beat using CONTINUES, but it's extremely hard to be 1CCed. I'll keep it on the shelf for some sparse plays, perhaps I'll nail it one day.

Silpheed (Sega CD) – Ambience and atmosphere sometimes is everything, and that's what Silpheed is all about. A rewarding dive into polygon worlds and planets, the only (minor) negative aspect about it is its uninspired color palette. Other than that, it's an amazing evolution of classic shooters like Galaga, blended with some great music/level design and filled with intense action provided by enemy formations that swarm on you from all sides. Dodging abilities are mandatory, as well as some strategy in the weapon selection. A must-have for every Sega-CD owner!

Kolibri (Sega 32X) – The less famous brother of the classic Ecco the Dolphin, which appeared first on the Mega Drive, Kolibri is an exclusive 32X release that puts a hummingbird against all sorts of odds from the environment (insects, plants, animals). It's a beautiful game that mixes exploration shooting with scrolling stages, while keeping a little bit of the puzzle solving aspect of Ecco. Due to the nature of the game, continues are infinite and passwords are granted after each stage. There's no scoring (one of the major sins in a shoot'em up), so the challenge consists of how far you can go into it without dying.

Pop'n Twin Bee (SNES) – This is the only entry on the Super Famicom of one of the most famous Konami series, a vertical cute'em up that's mainly known for the colored bells used to power up the ships. It's pretty standard fare, loaded with colorful backgrounds, lots of clouds and some curious design for the bosses. It's fairly easy on the default setting, so the available co-op feature comes highly recommended for a fast afternoon rant with a buddy. I'm just not fond of the struggle you have to go through with the bells in order to power up your character.

Radiant Silvergun (Saturn) – Regarded as the holy grail of Saturn shmups (and maybe of ALL shmups ever), Radiant Silvergun is an epic colossus that defied standards at the time of its release. And when people say epic they mean it. Still impressive to this day, it's an extremely difficult game to master, for you MUST excel in the chaining system or else you won't go very far on the highly pursued one credit clear. Graphics are amazingly sharp and creative, and the also epic soundtrack keeps everything pumping amidst dangerous enemy fire, huge bosses and a wide selection of weapons. Even though some people might be put off by its length and daring scope, Radiant Silvergun is an experience every shmup fan should try at least once in his lifetime.

Sol Divide (Playstation) – It's weird to have such a craptacular game following a masterpiece like Radiant Silvergun in any list. Probably the worst shooter of the 32-bit era, it's even incredible that this turd called Sol Divide was actually released in the arcades! And later in the PS2! The game has the shortest stages ever, even for Psikyo standards, and is a horrible mix of horizontal scrolling shooter and close-up sword action. You could say graphics are OK, but it's got absolutely no replay value and is prone to make you throw the CD out of the window in disgust. Believe when people say this is bad, really bad.

Zero Gunner 2 (Dreamcast) – Innovative and incredibly fun, Zero Gunner 2 is an example that Psikyo can actually make something good. It's an arena shooter with intense helicopter action, clever level and boss design, outstanding sound effects and rather cool features, such as the ability to record a complete game to replay it later. The difficulty scales the more you go on without dying, which turns the game into a fairly manic destruction spectacle in the later stages. Too bad this never saw a western release, which demands that you have a modded Dreamcast or devices such as a Game Shark CD in order to play it. It's totally worth it, I guarantee that.

This time the celebrating video comes in full YouTube size, because I finally managed to get a better video editing software! Enjoy and share your thoughts on these!

[It seems that the "high quality" feature on YouTube isn't working for the embedding function now... As soon as it's fully functional I'll revert the link to a "high quality" video ]

Text posted by Kollision in November 4th 2008