ARC - Soldier Girl Amazon

Haiku-Review:

in the face of war:
blonde on a motorcycle
seeks male idiots

Additional Comments:

I've been so caught up in a few specific games for what seems like months with no foreseen end in sight - games like Fallout: New Vegas, Mad Max, and the surprisingly fun yet not so surprisingly addictive, Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, along with several other noteworthy titles that I'll cheekily fail to mention at this time. However, with the year coming to a close, I felt like tackling something different, something lacking complexity, and hopefully, something quick. Arcade games usually fit the bill as their purpose has always been to traverse a world filled with incredible challenge from point A to point B on a perfectly linear path. Beyond that, the game heralds little to no depth. After all, who wants to feed a machine twenty bucks in quarters just to read an hour and a half worth of eye-rolling context? Certainly not I. Though I must be grateful that those quarters are only theoretical thanks to emulation. Still, no need for time wasting plot lines mucking up an exquisite action shooter. A blonde, a bike, and a mission to.... A mission to what? Maybe just a smidge of story? No? Ok....

Soldier Girl Amazon is a typical top down shooter in the sense that you're shooting the crap out of some fantastic other-worldly lifeforms while they retaliate with their own barrage of machine gun candor. Yet, the game doesn't exactly feel like a typical shooter. It's more akin to the slightly misguided genre rebels, Jackal or The Lost Castle in Darkmist. Maybe it's because instead of the usual aerial machinery, you play as a bodacious babe out to kick some ass, all the while struttin' her stuff - at least until you hijack a futuristic motorcycle, that is until you lose it exactly three tenths of a second later. Perhaps, but at least she has a gun, so the feel of an aerial shooter isn't far removed. Or perhaps it's that awkward scrolling that I've seen before.

Much like Jackal, Soldier Girl Amazon places scrolling within the player's hands making use of a unidirectional manual scroll. When it comes to top down shooters, or any shooter for that matter, I've never been a fan of manual scroll. Unlike any other genre where auto-scrolling typically introduces a faux brand of difficulty, I find this to be the case for manual scrolling in shooters. Maybe it's the unnatural flow to the levels since you usually have to remain in constant motion. Unforeseen pitfalls always seem to prevail during manual scroll, especially when large obstructions may come into play. One such incident nearly occurred here where I thought I backed myself into an inescapable corner. True, the same could happen with autoscroll, but at least you'll be crushed to death by the invisible barrier within a few short seconds as opposed to spending an eternity in a tiny hollow.

Scrolling, however, may be of personal taste and isn't the true detriment of the game. Controls and difficulty easily win those honors. The controls are solid for what they are; unfortunately, they're far too clumsy for this particular title. Maybe if the difficulty wasn't turned up to eleven, I could overlook the lack of rapid fire or the use of a single stick handling all of the aiming routines. Except the severe difficulty only makes the frustration with the controls all the more noticeable.

How developers choose to ignore a rapid fire button in these kind of games is beyond me. Sure, I love hammering my thumb on the fire button incessantly for an hour or two without break. Ok, if I was on an actual cabinet, I'd be slamming my palm or tapping my finger on the fire button - not as aggravating a chore as thumb Olympics. Still. But what's more infuriating is the aiming physics. You shoot in the direction you face. In theory, it makes sense, and in a number of shooters, it works perfectly. However, when every enemy has the ability to home in on you and enemy fire appears to travel at a rate equal or greater than your walking speed, it needlessly complicates play technique. If anything, it forces you to go on the defensive more often than necessary because you consistently find yourself boxed in, preventing you from aiming at your enemy lest you walk headlong into their wrath. It's bullshit and nowhere was this more of an issue than the first boss, or rather after defeating the first boss and having to then kill off four of the most annoying enemies I think I've ever come across in any video game. First off, let's think about what I just said. The largest problem area is with the very first boss in the game. That's not a good sign for things to come. Level 1 - fuck it, we're done. Secondly, why do these little adjunct shitheads even exist? I killed the boss and rescued the first of many mysterious men (actually, I didn't, but more on that later). And why are they harder to kill than the boss itself? Can I only harm them by firing into their open mouth? I don't get how these little yellow fuckers function. Let's just move on to the next level already! Oh, it's just more of the same uninspired background and freak-show inhabitants as it is ten levels down the line.

Thing is, those now affectionately labelled "little yellow fuckers" are the sole reason why I hate the way the controls work in this game. After a short time of fumbling around trying to figure out how to kill them, they suddenly began to frenzy, rattling off quick-fire spurts of deadly energy so fast that I had no time to reciprocate my due hatred. All I could do was run circles around them; the slightest hesitation instantly killing me. How the hell am I supposed to aim any sort of return volley when I can't even pause for a nanosecond? If I had the ability to aim with a second stick, the game would actually be playable, but as is...forget it. Oh, I have a few bombs - maybe, if I didn't waste them yet - but they're next to useless.

Somehow, I bullied my way to the boss of the second level where I finally declared the game worthless trash given the insane difficulty. Thing is, there are games out there with insane difficulty that are genuinely fun to play. Any of the Touhous, or hell, most bullet hells in general come to mind. Yes, they're frustrating, but they're playable and have a certain Zen quality to them as you try to carefully work your way through a myriad of beautiful fractal patterns of death. Soldier Girl Amazon, on the other hand, is just amateurish design building proposed challenge with slapdash varieties of mutants with no real ounce of thought to placement. In fact, to create increasingly difficult levels, the game just creates more varied mobs with overall increased numbers. Why not? A group of gigantic bees wasn't enough to aggravate me; let's add some floral mouths, scurrying androids, and most surprising of the bunch, some human soldiers to the mix. The bullets will fly! And to top it all off, make sure the player suffers one-hit kills and we'll send him packing when he dies.

Honestly, it doesn't matter. If you can survive one level, you've essentially survived the game. In many respects, Soldier Girl Amazon reminds me of Exed Exes - in overall style at least. Difficulty, not so much as Exed Exes essentially had an infinite lives mechanic built in. But most everything else, it reeked of the same level of ineptitude. There's really only one level and you just repeat it over and over and over again. There'll be some additional enemies to heighten the action and a couple of new bosses, but there's really no point in venturing forth. There appears to be a rescue scenario at work, except it seems to be perpetual. Soldier Girl Amazon's work is never done, and as such, the game appears to be endless. Granted, an 80s arcade game, endless is appropriate. There's no reason to whinge over that, however, an endless game that's comprised of the same goddamn level over and over...what's the point? High Score? Yea, that is the point of most arcade games, so consider me eggfaced. Except, Soldier Girl Amazon doesn't seem like the game that would rely on such a petty design, and that's what bothers me about it. There could be additional backgrounds or enemies. Why manufacture a couple extra bosses only to recycle everything else? It makes no sense. It's nothing more than a grand illusion to trick idiot kids out of their middling funds injecting the idea that the game is filled with a vast selection of levels.

Now, to be perfectly honest, I can't attest to Soldier Girl Amazon being truly endless, but I'm 99.9% sure it is. After failing miserably at the boss on the second level, I succumbed to extreme measures to further investigate this game. Some people may find cheats immoral in the face of gaming, and most would likely express the use of cheating strips one of the right to call themselves a proper gamer. I could care less. Perhaps I should feel some guilt, but every once in a while a game comes along that's squarely giving you the finger right to your face. Soldier Girl Amazon is one such game and I don't feel a shred of guilt performing any sort of cheats. Frankly, the game doesn't deserve the time of day to play it legit. Thanks to cheats, I suffered through 20-something levels of repetitive tedium and rescued another 20-something jackoffs from the forces of who-the-fuck-cares. While I experienced ever increasing mobs throughout the levels, nothing else ever changed. I figure a simple equation was put in place to create the increasingly difficult mobs. Otherwise, why put in the effort to make several dozen levels only to change so little, if anything? Eventually, after 20-something levels, the game crashed on me mid-level. My first suspicion was something overflowed and began to eat into some additional data - the score perhaps? The way the crash occurred, it sounded reasonable except the Dec->Hex didn't exactly play ball with my hypothesis. Whatever. I consider it a fitting end to a shitty game.

Nano-Rant:

Is there even a point to having a nano-rant? Pretty much this entire post has been nothing but one giant rant. So what shitty thing can possibly top all the other bullshit? You can completely fail what I can only assume is your mission objective. Granted, it doesn't affect the game in any physical sense, but the sheer fact that it can happen and how it happens is just the icing on the cake.

When the game initially starts, nine futuristic soldiers run off into the distance to fight the good fight. Your mission, so I assume, is to rescue all these asshats as they somehow got themselves imprisoned immediately - quite possibly as soon as they negotiated the upper thresholds of the TV screen. Once you defeat a boss, a single captive is released. However, you have roughly two seconds to move Soldier Girl Amazon on top of the rescued prisoner before he decides to run off into the wilderness. Either he's an ungrateful fuck or duty calls. If this happens, you fail to rescue him. At first, I figured once the captive is shown on screen, everything's right in the world. Intuitive game mechanics for the win - yea. This isn't that big of a deal on the latter bosses, but on the first boss, thanks to those little yellow fuckers, you can't exactly focus on collecting the prisoner.

In the grand scheme of things, none of this matters since there's no ending and no real objective. They're just score fodder - 5000 points a pop. So honestly, there's no point in getting my panties in a wad over a device that is only there to further the overarching premise of a high score mechanic. I'll give it that, but it's little things like that that act as a reminder that Soldier Girl Amazon tried its best to be an actual game with actual substance but rather stick it's big ugly toe in the ocean instead of taking a plunge while giving the impression of the latter.

It's a pointless game. I can't even enjoy it for the simplicity of high score functionality. If that's what I'm looking for, I'll turn to Pac-Man or Fast Food or other such games that pander to the high score arcade phenomena. Soldier Girl Amazon, on the other hand, is nothing but a misleading Two Face.

It's been a while since I've had a game piss me off to such a degree. I suppose it was time for one such nightmare to come along. So much for hoping something from my arcade library would be a quick, enjoyable diversion from my working stock.

Rating: 0.5 wasted powerups out of 5*

*Yet another comparison to Exed Exes - powerups that you pretty much lose immediately because the game exists in a one-hit universe against the player's favor. Yet treasure boxes take a half dozen bullets to break apart. What the fuck is that about!?

ARC - Saint Dragon

Haiku-Review:

steel dragon in space,
unleashes a bullet spread
and fights congestion

Additional Comments:

I've been wanting to hit up another arcade game for some time but always found my attention drawn elsewhere, or simply never found a title that excited me. Maybe apathy just got the better of me every time I'd dare a venture in arcade territory. I love arcade games, but at the same time I feel like there's a certain air of condescension surrounding them - kind of like PC games. PC games are for the "true" gamers, arcade games are, or were, for the "hardcore" gamers, and us console gamers, well, we're just the unwanted runts on the family tree - the huddled masses, if you will. As such, I always feel like I'm wading out into the forbidden zone or like I need to successfully pass through some ridiculous hazing before I can accept the pure gaming bliss of the arcade menagerie. But then, once I buckle down and play one of these arrogant pricks, I question why I originally believed my will crumbled under the might of cabinetry, even if it's emulated cabinetry.

To date, including Saint Dragon, I've only completed four arcade titles for Beat All Games, however, I've yet to be proven the might of these titles, albeit I will concede that a majority of my arcade experiences are not for the faint of heart, especially Saint Dragon. Since my love for STGs has blossomed, I've played some ungodly difficult games. What is it about shmups and hardcore action that goes so easily hand in hand. When it comes to difficulty, Saint Dragon is no slouch. The first half of the game is more than doable, though the bosses up the ante a bit, but the second half of the game comes out swinging. But they seem to come out swinging with a suitcase full of dirty tricks - looking at you level six.

Before I berate level six's close quarter's claustrophobic action, let me see if I can scale up to the issue targeting several key areas along the way. Upon diving into the game headfirst, that is after diving headfirst into the dizzying options and help logs surrounding MAME since it's been a couple years since I've used it and I've forgotten a number of ins and outs concerning the emulator, I found Saint Dragon surprisingly...easy. In fact, the first level seemed sickeningly easy. What's the catch? For being labeled as a tough as nails shmup, based on my minimal internet research, something felt off. Even after I inadvertently smacked the ground, thus killing myself, or foolishly ran headlong into a stray bullet, I was shocked by the good graces of the game to dump me further afield. Seriously, I don't have to start from the beginning again and I get to keep all my weapons. Are you kidding me - even continuing after a loss of credit I get to reap the fortunes of such generosity? Challenge averted it seems. Oh, how naïve could I be?

I was quickly put in in my place as I studied the first boss's movements, as I awkwardly suffered a thousand deaths. The fear further intensified as I struggled to understand the third level's boss, or lack thereof. As I've stated before (ahem, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance anyone?), long corridors of calm relaxation following heart pounding action always creates an eerie unease. But wait.... Was that..? Is that..? Was that the boss? That's a rather odd turn of events, especially after level two's boss which stood up against an incredible volley of firepower. Sadly, no. I've read there is a boss to level three, but for reasons unknown, he can be coerced into not triggering. Um, ok. Just because he chickened out, it's not my problem. Too bad some of the latter jerk-offs didn't feel like taking a holiday as well.

Of all the levels, four stuck out as an anomaly, playing rebel to typical theory regarding casual difficulty flow. It was strangely unbalanced placing extreme emphasis on the level while half-assing the boss, to the point where I genuinely questioned whether the boss was indeed the boss or not. However, given level three's mysterious, boss-less run through a pride of laser-emitting tram cars, hunkering behind a blockade of damn near invulnerable space junkards seemed like nothing more than another aloof boss replacement. This hypothesis was further reinforced by how little room was left for proper maneuverability as well as the sheer amount of time spent navigating around those insufferable behemoths. After fighting tooth and nail through wave after wave of enemy fire while being constricted to such tight quarters, I was shocked to see a proper boss appear. Seriously, the end gauntlet was equal to any other level in length easily, or perhaps it only seemed so considering how many theoretical quarters I had to feed the machine to finally get through the area. But then, the boss was such a pushover. What the hell!? Considering the atrocities I faced just getting there, I suppose I should only feel an overwhelming sense of alleviation, but come on.

Level five fell into a similar trap - a level, while certainly unique, pushed the player through some seriously tough areas but then fell short when it came to the boss. However, I will admit that most of level five's difficulty may have been artificially created since I couldn't enjoy the game using a true arcade style joystick. I only bring this up because the key specialty weapon for level five can be aimed using the main directional controls, which is great, but I feel comes off a little spongy using a simple d-pad on my usb controller. Ah well.

And with that, we come full circle to Saint Dragon's final level - a balls hard trek through space age Armageddon. What really grates my nerves about this level is the various walls you need to shoot your way through in order to advance. Unless you're packed with an appropriate special weapon, which isn't exactly difficult to bungle, the task is nothing more than a study in futility. Unfortunately, unless you purposefully go out of your way to avoid the special weapon that can be manually aimed, you're in no better shape when it comes to necessary demolition. Trying to avoid all of the extraneous homing missiles invariable leads to meticulous maneuvers that will reroute all of your desired aiming - i.e. I found myself performing embarrassing face plants more than anything. One particular grouping of walls proved to be the most diabolical area in the whole game where I may have easily lodged over a hundred deaths, and I swear, obtaining that stupid ass special weapon which was placed ever so conveniently right in the fucking way caused more deaths than anything. With the close proximity of each door to each other, I knew I was finished if my good old reliable fire breath was suddenly repudiated by supposedly superior weaponry. Fuck it! Throw in a few hundred more theoretical quarters. What's the harm. Thankfully it no longer impacts my wallet like it would have back in the golden age of arcades. Truth be told, I would have just walked away and instead fed my small bounty of coins on either Virtua Racing or Turtles in Time.

Still, Saint Dragon was a fun little side-scrolling STG - when I wasn't pulling my hair out over ridiculously unfair areas that is. But for the most part, the heinous difficulty is part of the fun, and for the most part I enjoyed it. In all honesty, the final level is the only level I probably could have done without. I had the same thoughts about the final boss at first, but once I got past his initial pattern, I really have no problems with him...er, it? Not sure.Whatever the case, it suffered from some of the same claustrophobia that most, if not all, of the final level suffered from, but only for the first few seconds of battle. Again, far too many projectiles with little to no room to hide. I suppose it's the final boss, but still, that's no reason for potential leniency. There's a distinct difference between difficult but fair and difficult and unfair. Cramped spaces and maximum firepower unfortunately leans on the latter.

And finally, for good measure, some music. I didn't find the soundtrack memorable, and this particular example: Metal Planet, can attest to that. If it wasn't for the fact that the video reads Saint Dragon (Arcade), I'd never guess this theme was in the game, despite playing through the final third of the first level multiple times because I kept dying on the boss. Unmemorable music is unmemorable, but then, shooters have always had an uncanny ability to mask a lot of the background music with an incredible sound explosion of incessant firepower.

Nano-Rant:

Why is the auto-fire so unbearably slow? Considering how glacial the auto-fire is, one has to question why it was even implemented in the first place. Under no circumstances would anyone rely on such nonsense given how manic the levels become. Useless!!

Rating: 3 metal tigers out of 5

Arcade - Sunset Riders

Haiku-Review:

saloon girls, guns, gold
face stampedes, redskins and Rose
so...Contra goes west?

Additional Comments:

I came across this game a few months ago. Knowing nothing about it, I looked it up on the net and it sounded interesting - an old west shoot 'em up - so I figured I'd give it a chance. Upon seeing the Konami logo, and based on the few screenshots I had seen, I had some good feelings about this game. And surprisingly, just one level in, I wasn't let down. It immediately made me think of Contra, albeit not as strong out of the box, but still warming up to that very distinct Konami-style shoot 'em up platformer. The levels impressed me right from the start and only got better as the game continued, each containing a myriad of creative traps and gimmicks relative to the setting. Not only that, but the graphics are just stunning. After all, it's rare to find a game that actually pulls a western theme off with finesse, and I think this game did just that. Oh yea, and check out some classic arcade-style, orchestra-hit filled goodness that can really get some gun-totin', hootin' n' hollerin' excitement happening with the theme from Simon Greedwell's Stage.

However, I do have some gripes. First and foremost, I wish I could have played the game multiplayer. Just like Contra, I could tell that the fun factor would jump exponentially with two or more players tackling each stage. You just sort of feel a tad lonely having to plow all these gunslinging, roughhouse clones down on your own. But I guess that will have to wait for another day. And so it goes....

But unfortunately, I have some other mud to sling: the controls. Now maybe it's just my particular set up I'm using - a Logitech Rumblepad 2 G-UF13 controller (what, did you think I was actually tracking down full-size cabinet versions of these games? Ha! Although, I won't lie, I certainly wish I had access to an old coin-op of Sunset Riders), but the jump control just felt sluggish, which really began to hamper my progress during the later boss battles where easy bullet dodging proved embarrassingly difficult. The progression from ducking to jumping felt to crawl at a snails pace so much so that I had to find alternate evasion strategies, especially during the Paco Loco battle. But what's odd is that everything else control-wise was spot on. Movement and shooting had no issues, even without the auto-gun, which by the way was a very cool feature. Typically in arcade games, especially any sort of shooting game, button mashing just to fire a weapon is, for lack of a better phrase, fucking stupid, but here, it worked. The fact that you had to earn a gun or set of guns with auto-fire capability was very cool.

I do, however, have to complain about the lack of bullet spread. Overall, the rate-of-fire from the enemies seemed depressing compared to that of Contra's enemy force. Again, maybe it's on my end - perhaps I should have looked into some dip switch flips regarding difficulty, but other than the late level bosses and Chief Scalpem's stage, the game came across as too easy. Seriously, outside of the boss fights, I was lucky to see maybe 10 bullets in a given stage with the addition of some dynamite here and there. For the most part, my in-stage deaths were mostly attributed to foolishly walking off a cliff or falling victim to a trap that I didn't see until it was too late. Although, like I said, Chief Scalpem's stage proved its worth and then some, harassing me with an endless volley of flaming arrows.

Other than that, and honestly, as sluggish as the jumping felt at times, the game is tits - the stiff control is just me being nit-picky more than anything. Now granted, it's not as amazing as the Contra series, which is definitely the most comparable game, it's great nonetheless. Really, and this seems to befoul Konami every now and again, it's just a shame the game is so short because I wanted to keep playing when it looped back around after the staff-roll. I guess I'll have to try and track down either the Genesis or SNES port and see how they stack up - or should I say so I can get some more SSR playtime in?

Nano-Rant:

I just have to know, who the fuck are these people that can endure a 100 rounds, yet it only takes one bullet to kill me? Ah, video games, how I love thee....

Rating: 4 saloon girls out of 5

Arcade - The Lost Castle in Darkmist

Haiku-Review:

ever endless loop
where strategy is questioned -
is there strategy?

Additional Comments:

Well, with the closing of the year, I wanted to see if I could knock out one more game beaten. I knew any attempt to finish any of the games I'm currently in the middle of was pretty hopeless, so I figured I'd pick something quick and easy, but at the same time, something remarkably different. Hmm, I thought, arcade games are usually pretty short, but which one shall I play? After doing some quick research online regarding the few arcade games I currently have access to, Lost Castle sounded intriguing. So I decided to give it a whirl.

Holy crap, I certainly got what I was looking for, something remarkably different. This is one of the most unique games I've ever seen. The best way I can describe this game is that it's the long forgotten bastard hybridization of an old school, top-down hack n' slash and a fantasy STG, except when it comes to gameplay, it unfortunately got the short end of the stick, on both counts. And therein lies the problem. Because of its funky DNA jamming up what could potentially be a fantastic game, this game is a confusing mess that is hard as fuck. Seriously, this is one of the hardest games I've ever come across - harder then some of the modern day Danmakufu-born STG's. Off the bat, I played this game for a good 20 minutes or so before I could really even grasp what the heck was going on. And being that there is literally zero information regarding this game on the net, it made it all the harder.

Eventually I got the hang of the game, but I was still lucky to make it through one or two levels tops before loss of life - and oh yea, you only get one of those. Thankfully, being an arcade game, I could keep it well fed with a heaping pile of theoretical quarters, and damn, did I ever go through a lot of them. Even still, I was pretty confused as to the nature of the game. In one hand, you face level after level of auto-scrolling STG madness, albeit I use the term STG ever so lightly since your main weapon is a freakin' sword - that's right a melee weapon in a shooter. What!? Yea, you have a magic shot, but in my opinion, it's pretty useless except when fighting the Grim Reapers since you want to keep your distance from those guys. But then, in the other hand, you have these non-scrolling death labyrinths filled with hordes of nearly invincible creatures that easily sap over half your energy in a single hit. The yellow-gem lightning shield is your best hope for tackling these areas - too bad they only last about ten seconds. But that's not all - every now and then you'll come across a town replete with shops and a church where you can heal, but there's a catch: they auto-scroll. You have got to be kidding me!

Anyways, the next thing that struck my curiosity was regarding the game's length. After fighting my way through hordes of enemies, I was greeted with my prize - which I can only assume was the lost castle itself. However, there was no Staff-Roll to follow, just another level. But it was a whole new level. Huh? I began to suspect foul play was afoot, something akin to an endless game loop common to most early era, score-based arcade games, especially after the second lost castle, followed by a third. How many lost castles are there in Darkmist? But every new challenge I faced was visibly different: new settings and new, more powerful enemies, so this couldn't be the case. And then, a fourth lost castle emerged. Please let this be the end, I cried. Dammit!!! Another level!!! But wait, this one looks familiar. Finally, the game looped, and so my original suspicions proved fruitful. So it appears this game has no formal end. That's a shame, but I suppose it should have been expected.

The interesting thing about this game though: it could have been a truly stellar game. It definitely has potential, and you can see faint glimmers of this potential everywhere you look, but somewhere along the way the wires got crossed and fried any hopes of an amazing game from fully emerging. But, at the same time, it's not a bad game either. It's got some cool graphics, especially considering it's from '86, and some pretty catchy music. The controls are fairly descent and although there's no turbo feature, being an STG and all, it doesn't even matter. However, the in-game mechanics are a tad funky. Although, if you didn't have to rely on the sword so much, it'd probably be a different story. And the fact that the game is as unique as it is definitely makes it an interesting play.

Nano-Rant:

Besides having an STG where your main weapon is of a melee nature, the other thing that really stuck in my craw was that it began to become apparent that the best strategy was to just avoid everything. Kill nothing until you get to the boss. What a stupid tactic for a shooter.

Rating: 2.5 Flying Sabers out of 5

Arcade - Hotdog Storm

Haiku-Review:

what a misleading
name for a sweet STG -
but where's the turbo?

Additional Comments:

From its quirky name to its surreal title card, there is surprisingly a nicely done STG tucked away inside, albeit it felt to be on the short side. Whatever the storyline or whatever the heck is going on, it doesn't even matter because the game manages to deliver exactly what it needs to: shooting down planes, tanks, spacecraft and other strange, flying apparatuses just for the fuck of it. However, by the time I really got into the groove of the game - properly handling bombs, dodging bullet spray and learning the various boss patterns, the game was over. Dammit, and I was just starting to really enjoy the game. And on top of that, it seemed as though that it sucked up a rather minimal amount of credits. Well, that's more money in my pocket (yes, even pocketing theoretical money is a plus).

Aside from the feeling that the game was over before it even began, my biggest gripe was a lack of turbo fire. Having to consistently punch the fire button in a non-stop canon-fodder STG is bullshit. Now, if there was a turbo fire option available without having to remap the controls, then I guess it's my own stupidity for overlooking it. But nevertheless, considering a release of 1996, I would think that the genre would have been around more than long enough for a game company to realize that on any form of STG, turbo should just be standard, if not an easily applied option. But what do I know, I'm just a player.

All in all, a cool little shooter that's unfortunately marred by a lack of turbo, though I suppose it is fortunate that the screen isn't amassed with countless thousands of enemies at all times so you are able to sneak in a rest here and there - for about a quarter of a second. Maybe in that short span of time you can enjoy some of the soundtrack, or you can just listen to Stage 1 here. Oh, and one last thing, not sure why, but I just loved the interesting landscapes that the early stages contained.

Nano-rant:

Did I mention no turbo = bullshit!?!?

Rating: 3 credits out of 5