Pocky & Rocky (SNES)

Arena
Checkpoints OFF
3 Difficulty levels
6 Stages
Ship speed fixed
- - - - - - -
Developed by Natsume
Published by Natsume in 1993

Even if by dint of small talk or Internet lazy exploration, many people are certainly aware to some extent of the praise Pocky & Rocky on the Super Nintendo gets from all sorts of sources. What a few might not know, however, is that the game is also a rare example of a console-designed sequel that improved and surpassed its arcade original Kiki Kaikai in every single way, exception made to the difficulty of course. Pocky & Rocky is not a quarter-muncher by definition, but it does offer decent challenge on top of a sweet colorful setting that makes for a great relaxed shooting time.

One could say the game is a cute'em up, which makes sense I guess. Most stage themes are dark but carry a fluffly design, kinda like Twinkle Tale on the Mega Drive, another sweet contemporary title that behaves like and arena push-scrolling shooter almost all the time. Much of the embrionary formula created in the previous decade is kept here, including the fact that you can't lock shooting direction and strafe, which on a first glance would require lots of moving around to escape bullets and hazards. The good news is that you have not only one, but two ways of safely dealing with that. And that's one of the reasons why Pocky & Rocky is such a joy to play.

But who are Pocky and Rocky, by the way? Pocky is a shrine maiden (a young priestess who takes care of a Japanese religious shrine) and Rocky is a racoon dog who comes to her in search of help because his siblings - the Nopino Goblins - have gone insane. And there they go, either separate or in co-op play, to discover what happened to the poor goblins and fight the evil entity who's behind everything. If you're into storytelling, Pocky & Rocky will certainly entertain you with lots of dialogue and panels that flesh out this story as the stages unfold, all of them properly written in the English language.

Pocky ascends to the skies at the end of stage 2
(courtesy of YouTube user A_alla_quarta Retrogames)

The multidirectional gameplay allows both characters to shoot (button A and Y for autofire), to wiggle a close-range attack (button B - the stick for Pocky, the tail for Rocky), to detonate bombs if available (button L or R) and to slide (button X). All these inputs can be remapped in the options. Right off the bat it's clear that the game allows much more flexibility than the dire conditions of original Kiki Kaikai. As I mentioned above, the only thing missing is the ability to strafe, which would help immensely with the diagonals of the SNES controller, but alas!

Discovering what Pocky & Rocky has to offer is, simply put, a delight. The game is gorgeous, the music is soothing and what seems to be insurmountable at first, such as the raft section that leads to the second boss, soon becomes more and more manageable with continued practice. Winning is pretty much a matter of patience and a little routing. Each life has a health bar that gets expanded for every level you're able to beat in the same credit, to a maximum of 8 hearts instead of the initial 4. Lose all hearts and lose a life. Lose all lives and the game is over, as you ascend to heaven with angel wings.

Items are found either by destroying a full wave of a specific enemy or by hitting chests. There is some randomness as to the items you'll find, but not by a significant margin. Weapon upgrades are given by colored balls: blue powers up the starting shot type, which evolves to a spread attack once three consecutive items are taken; red activates a fire shot that splits to the sides when powered up. Other items include extra bombs, a 2-hit shield, a magic drink (partial life refill), a magic snack (full life refill) and the mad dog (you'll ride it as he jumps and makes you invincible).

Although both main weapons are effective, eventually you'll end up leaning towards a specific one. I settled with the fireball during the first half of the game, but from stage 4 onwards I preferred to use the spread shot due to the amount of enemies approaching from off center. By all means, don't underestimate the ability of the close range attack to deflect regular bullets. Most often than not that's just much better than attempting to evade and dodge. And of course the slide move is there to help you escape long range or ramming attacks from large enemies, such as bosses and mid-bosses. Beware from falling off cliffs though, since it will take away a larger chunk of your energy.

Do you want to play me?

Besides the great arsenal at the characters' disposal, what many people often take for granted in Pocky & Rocky is that the close range attack can be charged for a more powerful move: Pocky will spin around to damage enemies, Rocky will turn into an invincible stone statue for a few seconds. This is very handy, especially because you can still shoot while this attack is charging (I confess I only learned about this after I had beaten the game... duh!). Much easier to figure out were the places in each level that conceal the hidden lucky gods that, once freed, release three random items (hit their secret spots). Besides that, a single item for an extra life can be obtained by hitting the shell of the first boss with the close-range attack after he's defeated.

Even though the temptation is there for greedy people who might want to keep going back and forth to amass more points, this is nicely avoided by the timer. If the time runs out a life is lost. A bonus is given for remaining time when a boss is defeated (10 points per second left) and for remaining energy hearts (500 points for each heart left). This means that in order to maximize scoring the recipe would be to take your time exploiting enemies while avoiding all damage, especially during boss fights. Regardless of how you decide to approach the game, the fun factor of Pocky & Rocky is undeniable. It's got captivating characters, impressive diversity, a great rhythm and a steady difficulty progression. A few bouts of slowdown appear in stage 4 when you come across those clouds shooting lightning strikes and also during the fight against the last boss, but that's it.

My character of choice was Pocky. Both characters are well rounded, but Pocky's bomb is definitely more powerful. Stocking bombs is a good way to take care of bosses, so if you have difficulty with any of them the best tip is to just drop bombs during the trickiest parts of the battle. I played in the Normal difficulty and got the 1CC result below, beating evil lord Dark Mantle on my last life. I did not do any milking throughout the credit.

Next: Pocky & Rocky 2.

Jamestown+ (Playstation 4)

Vertical
Checkpoints OFF
5 Difficulty levels
7 Stages
Ship speed fixed, selectable st start
- - - - - - -
Developed by Final Form Games
Published by Limited Run Games in 2024

Culmination of a truly interesting labor of love in independent gaming, Jamestown+ or (Jamestown Plus) is the final iteration of a game developed four years earlier. While maintaining a firm grasp on pixel art and tried and true gameplay mechanics, it also encompasses several aspects of more modern functional design, namely a wide range of difficulties, single stage progression and unlockable side quests, as well as a special mode for those willing to play it as a true arcade-like experience. In essence, it has everyone covered in terms of how to have some shooting fun.

The game has a deep backstory that develops amidst a mix of ancient culture and advanced mechanical technology, in a steampunk setting that uses planet Mars as battle grounds. You take the role of a soldier who flees from a death sentence on Earth and goes on a quest to clean his name in the dangerous environments of Mars. It's all conveyed in quick panels between stages that can be regularly skipped, but you still get an idea of what's going on just by the stylish intro panels shown prior to each level. It all trickles down to the whole design, from floating islands to enemies and large bosses waiting at the end of every stage. Hint: enable Farce mode in the options for a more humorous take on the story. 

In the somewhat fractured structure of Jamestown +, everything starts with only one stage available for play in any of the four initial difficulties. By beating each consecutive stage you'll earn money (ducats) to purchase the access to ships and extra game modes/challenges. The game limits progression on purpose as things are unlocked and players have the possibility of trying out the different difficulty levels. As expected, ship selection is rather limited in the start, with only two of them available: Beam and Gunpowder. However, it doesn't take long to get the full armada, which consists of 10 different ships and two randomized choices.

Teaser trailer for Jamestown+ for the Playstation 4
(courtesy of YouTube user and digital publisher Playstation)

Each ship has three inputs available: shot, special and "vaunt". By default they're assigned to buttons ×, □ and ○, but prior to any gaming session you can easily rebind them at will. Styles vary a lot between ships with regards to firepower, special weapon and speed, so it's definitely recommended to try all of them and see which one works best for you. My favorite ones were Beam (for its DDP-style similarity), Charge (that big orb is extremely powerful) and Treason (fast + cool homing missiles). The Lazar ship is also very cool with its customizations, too bad the laser is weaker than Beam's. What's common to all of them is that there are no power-ups or enhancements of any kind. The only items you'll ever come across in Jamestown+ are those nut/gear-shaped gold tokens that provide extra points.

That's where the vaunt input comes into play. By collecting enough gold you fill up a meter that allows you to use it. Once activated, the meter starts to deplete while a multiplier of ×2 is applied to everything you score, destruction and new gold alike. The simple act of collecting more gold helps to refill and keep the meter full, with larger gold providing more recovery than small ones. Triggering vaunt has the added benefit of giving you a few seconds of invincibility while converting all bullets caught into its blast radius into points. Vaunt is lost either by allowing the meter to deplete or by pressing the vaunt button again, upon which you get blocked from activating it for a few seconds. No block is imposed if you let the meter deplete completely.

Even though vaunt is used primarily for scoring, it is naturally a very good resource for survival. After all, purposefully stopping vaunt mode also grants you another brief invincibility window, so going in and out of vaunt can be suitably timed to come out unscathed against some of the nastier enemy patterns in higher difficulties. That happens at the cost of some more points, considering that the longer you remain in vaunt mode the higher the bonus you'll collect is. From what I could check, the most points come from keeping long vaunt chains. Needless to say, keeping vaunt mode on for as long as you can requires some basic routing with timed destruction and smart item collection. When that's not possible it's of course always good to squeeze whatever you can from gold fountains, such as easily milking the first boss for example. Don't worry, all bosses time out after a while.

Forests and bullet-spewing spores in stage 3

It took me a little while to warm up to Jamestown+. It's an enjoyable game, but I guess I needed some time to cope with the painfully slow speed of my ship of choice (Beam). The game is very nice to look at, visually original, full of detail and quite varied from beginning to end with a superbly fitting soundtrack. It draws inspiration from many sources but mostly Cave, Konami and Compile, while successfully building a character of its own. The mission-based core game is a no-brainer for most people in terms of fun, with the added possibility of climbing the difficulty ladder at your own pace and having four players joining forces in local co-op. However, if you fancy a more "arcadey" experience the advice is to just head into Gauntlet mode as soon as you can.

Gauntlet makes players go through all levels in sequence in customary arcade style, with just one single extend granted with 2 million points. Gauntlet mode is comprised of five stages, while Super Gauntlet adds two extra levels which were developed after the initial Jamestown title came out (these extra levels and the complete ship set are the reason for the Plus in the title). A slight catch is that in order to go through all stages of Gauntlet or Super Gauntlet you need to at least play it in the Legendary difficulty, which is two levels above Normal. Legendary is sort of the expected standard of a manic / bullet hell hybrid, with Divine and Judgement reserved for those who feel comfortable with something that might resemble harder 2nd loops of famous arcade titles.

My main goal in Jamestown+ was to beat Super Gauntlet mode in the Legendary difficulty with the Beam ship. I pulled it off without losing lives, which seems to give you a substantial completion bonus as seen in the screen below. I just didn't get to know the exact rules to this bonus. I didn't care for the "challenge" modes, but they're there for those who have plenty of time to try everything this excellent independent shmup has to offer.