Fren-zE (Playstation 2)

Vertical
Checkpoints OFF
1 Difficulty level
3 Stages
Ship speed fixed
- - - - - - -
Developed by hermitgames
Published by hermitgames in 2005

Going after the more obscure items is something that will eventually happen to all collectors if they continue digging deeper into their hobby. In my case, one of the most interesting shmup oddities I came across recently is Fren-zE, a little game inserted with absolutely no warning in a demo disc that came with the 55th issue of the Official UK Playstation 2 Magazine, released in 2005. By no warning I mean the game isn’t mentioned anywhere in the DVD-sized cover (since I only own the disc I can’t vouch for the magazine). Fren-zE is also present in the demo disc of the previous issue of the same publication (#54), and although normally hidden it can be unlocked with a simple controller button combination.

A rather simple homebrew vertical shooter with minimalistic design, Fren-zE has shades of previous independent works such as the ones delivered by ABA Games (rRootage, Parsec 47). Vector-based graphics establish the mood for your lone ship to go against a series of abstract enemies and bosses in three stages. We all know this visual approach has been beaten down to death by years of independent PC game development and tons of questionable similar games released through XBLIG, but nevertheless I’m thankful that this title exists in physical form for the Playstation 2. Despite its simplicity, Fren-zE is sympathetic enough and serves as a good exercise in micro-dodging and bullet pattern recognition. Plus I’ve finally found a shooter that rivals Score Rush in having just a single badass BGM playing during the whole game.

Opening screen

Once the disc boots you’ll find Fren-zE in the Comedown section of the main menu. There are absolutely no frills about it, no options, no special settings, just an opening screen waiting for the game to be started. Shapes of different colors and sizes convey the idea of spaceships and saucers while slow patterns of triangle and square bullets dictate the dodging flow. Lives and score display appear on the left, high score on the right. Destroy everything with button × and collect the blue dots left behind for points, each dot being worth 1 point only. Mid-bosses and bosses yield a yellow power-up, for every 50 points scored the player gains a new life and when you die you're respawned in the same place with no power loss. It’s that simple, so anything beyond this falls into the category of gameplay details.

Since every enemy leaves a single dot to be collected for score, the maximum amount of points a player can get from beating the game is 297. When a boss is defeated your performance is tallied and you're told if he was “unlocked”, a reward for getting all possible dots in the previously played level (55 in the first one, for example). Unlocked bosses return for a boss rush after the third stage is completed, and by defeating them again a brief message displays your rank status in a humorous fashion. There’s a very amateurish bug in the game that sends your score back to the one you had between stages 2 and 3 every time the boss rush starts, but at least the high score display keeps your performance up to that point. Since there’s no extra prize for getting through the boss rush, not even a few more points or a marginal increase in difficulty, it just comes out as a lame afterthought for an extra stage – the only real letdown in an otherwise competent little shooter.

Being so short naturally serves as motivation for one to try perfecting the score, and as soon as I had reached the end I decided to film a sample credit and refine my strategies based on it. The first level isn’t hard at all, but positioning gets increasingly relevant after that. Come the bullet spams of the third level it’s really hard not to lose lives in order to get all the blue dots. Speaking of which, dots are subject to the ship’s gravitational force, so you don’t need to exactly touch them to register the catch. This is very important because later on they come in flocks and it's pretty easy to lose them if they're spread around the screen. Using the gravity field of the ship to attract the dots is definitely needed if you want to score higher.

A brief look on the 3rd stage of Fren-zE on the Playstation 2
(courtesy of YouTube user Ejay444)

Fren-zE might be a curiosity reserved only for those willing to track down a demo disc, but I can’t deny it’s a nice one. It’s an excellent way to introduce new players to the wonders of the reduced hitbox in shooting games, after all the glowing square in the spaceship’s dead center is the only part of it that’s subject to damage at any given time. As for the red cores present on bosses, never mind them. Bosses have no weak points at all, their whole bodies are always subject to damage. Considering the fact that bosses time out and might leave the screen, it's important to concentrate fire on them in order to always get the power-ups they leave behind. Point blanking helps a lot, but overall the firepower and the built-in firing rate are perfectly balanced and evolve in harmony with the increase in bullet count.

A more accessible PC remake/revision can be downloaded directly from the developer’s website (although a relatively obscure developer, hermitgames also made the moderately successful caravan-styled Leave Home for XBLIG). The PC reworking of Fren-zE includes an extra stage, improved presentation and is graphically a little more fleshed out than its PS2 counterpart. However, the added reflect mechanic makes a significant dent in the challenge level.

Below is my final result on the Playstation 2 game: maximized score, all bosses unlocked for the post-stage and pilot status of CAFFEINE FUELLED NINJA CAT. I recorded the run but unfortunately my capture card wasn't able to deal with the PAL video format, thus everything appeared in black and white.

Galaga '88 (Playstation 2)

Vertical fixed
Checkpoints OFF
5 Difficulty levels
29 Stages
Ship speed fixed
- - - - - - -
Developed by Namco
Published by Namco in 2005

Vertical shooters where you dodge bullets along a fixed horizontal line represent a very special category in the shooting genre. Most of them fail to offer any valuable excitement for whatever reasons, be it for their simplicity or the lack of a final goal, i.e. proper ending. Within the series initiated by Galaxian in 1979 on the trail of Space Invaders, the first game to offer both a batch of innovations and a clear ending is Galaga '88. Coming after Galaga and Gaplus, it's still regarded by many people as the highlight of the franchise and a classic in its own right. A few console ports of the game were released ever since, including a much lauded PC Engine/Turbografx-16 version and emulation jobs included in more recent Namco compilations.

Playstation 2 owners can enjoy Galaga '88 by means of the US release of Namco Museum 50th Anniversary. The only minor catch here is that when the disc is played for the first time you need to score at least 40.000 points in Galaga to unlock the game (don't forget to manually save your performance before turning off the console!). If you're playing the Japanese version of the compilation, titled Namco Museum Arcade Hits!, Galaga '88 comes unlocked right off the bat. I'm quite fond of the interface Namco came up with on these discs, the arcade cabinet arrangement and the songs from the 80s are a nice touch. Unfortunately there's no TATE option for any of the vertical games in the collection, so bigger TVs are definitely welcome (the other verticals are Galaxian, Galaga, Xevious and Dragon Spirit).

One of the nicest things about Galaga '88 is the scoring system. With 29 stages, the game has an organic structure and evolves according to the player's boldness. Play well, be aggressive and reach a higher dimension while scoring better along the way. Be shy, avoid danger and tread an easier game with lesser scores. That being said, I must confess I chickened out and chose the second path.

Boss Galagan in capture activity and a free-falling blue canister

Sticking to an easier game is pretty much a matter of choice. Advancing to higher dimensions isn't complicated, all you need to do is collect two of those blue canisters left behind by an obstacle or by one of those giant bugs formed from the fusion of two smaller enemies. By doing so a dimensional rift will open after the bonus level, granting a score bonus and sending the ship against different batches of enemies. Sure, the game gets increasingly harder no matter what, but sticking to lower dimensions keeps the odds more favorable to survival. But alas! I'm getting ahead of myself here!

Galaga '88 begins by allowing the player to choose a single or a double ship to start the credit (for the latter you get one spare ship only). Waves of outer space insect flocks dart into the screen in rotating patterns. They might shoot or dive into you while entering the play field, and once all of them have settled in formation they’ll start their specific attacks. Enemies come in varying sizes and in a multitude of colors, static backgrounds change for every level as you advance and there are even a couple of sections with scrolling backgrounds. The memorable sound design mixes a healthy gallery of bleeps and clanks with brief music snippets and longer BGMs, lending a nice, unique flavor to the twitchy gameplay.

Every once in a while, more specifically in stages 3, 7, 14, 18, 22 and 26, the message THAT’S GALACTIC DANCIN’ tells the player he/she is entering a bonus area, much like the challenging stage of the original Galaga. If you manage to destroy all 40 bugs in it you get 10.000 points (letting all of them live gives you a secret bonus of 10.000 points). The galactic dancing thing isn’t just a fancy name, the enemies really seem to be dancing – note how they always enter the screen at specific points of the music. Those who know where and when the bugs are coming from have better chances at grabbing the extra points in a bonus area.

As I mentioned above, after the bonus level the game checks how many blue canisters you have collected. Two canisters send you to the next dimension, one or none do nothing. Each dimension comes with different enemies in different formation patterns. For instance, if you keep advancing you’ll be facing inflatable bubble enemies and shielded bugs with progressively more aggressive behavior. The fifth dimension is the farthest you can reach, afterwards blue canisters serve only as source for a few more points. Such a branching system is quite unique and allows for a flexible management of the challenge level, since you just need to avoid the canisters to play an easier game. The only moment where you’re forced to advance dimensions is in stage 10, since you’re automatically sent forward if you haven’t reached dimension 2 yet. Because of this Galaga '88 comes with four different endings, one for each finishing dimension (2, 3, 4 or 5).

Probably the worst credit of Galaga '88 ever played
(courtesy of YouTube user Brian Dunaway)

There’s no doubt that this game is fun, and it’s probably one of the most accomplished old school fixed shooters. I do have some gripes with it though, such as the firing rate. In Galaga '88 (or any Galaga game for that matter) it’s not enough to shoot, you need to aim. Dying because you missed that pesky bug in its descending arch becomes more and more infuriating. Dying because an enemy dives on you and you have no firepower to fight back often comes with a “bullshit” exclamation, on my part at least. Of course memorization and dodging are still in order, but in a fixed shooter like Galaga '88 these skills are in a whole different league than the majority of the other games in the genre. And I suck at it... Having a turbo controller doesn't help much because bullets come out in bursts instead of a continuous firing stream. That’s why in order to keep the stakes at a favorable level 100% of the players prefer to start the game with the double ship, allowing a boss Galagan to capture it as soon as possible (they're the green bugs in the uppermost formation line that generally appear in the third or fourth incoming wave and take two hits to kill). One of these bugs always approaches and emits a tractor beam, so let yourself be taken when this happens. Wait until it leaves its resting place and kill it while in flight, without hitting the ship behind it. When done right, the released double ship will descend and merge with the spare ship to create a triple ship, with a larger hitbox but much more effective firepower.

Whenever the triple ship is hit you revert back to the double ship, get hit again and you’re left with a single ship. To regain another ship and make it double or triple just wait for the next tractor bug and do it all over again. That’s easier said than done, of course, especially in later levels. Speaking of which, later on the last enemy in a stage might leave a shiny pink canister behind: take it and get promoted to a triple ship at once, regardless of your current status. I’d say keeping the triple ship throughout the game is essential to survive in the long run, as well as to score better. By advancing dimensions scoring possibilities increase in line with the difficulty but there are also other ways to get more points, such as performing well in the galactic dancing or killing the lemon-like insects only when the bug formation has been fully assembled (destroy their falling debris, different colors award different points). All secondary forms of bugs that merge or split are also worth more, as well as all destructible obstacles.

By default the player wins extends at 50, 140, 300 and 480 thousand points. Once the credit is over a map shows your progress across the dimensions, as well as stats on shots fired, number of hits and destruction ratio. The port of Galaga '88 on the Namco Museum 50th Anniversary starts at difficulty 1, but the setting should be changed to 3 in order to match the arcade difficulty. There’s no auto-save feature on the disc, so if you want to keep your high scores remember to always get out of the game and save before turning off the console. The 1CC result below was achieved on difficulty 3. I got the ending for the 2nd dimension, with the aid of a turbo controller for proper autofire.

After Galaga '88 the series continued with Galaga Arrangement, released in a compilation arcade game in 1995 (not to be confused with the 2005 PSP version of Galaga Arrangement).

Tekkaman Blade (SNES)

Hybrid (Horizontal / Fighting)
Checkpoints OFF/ON
3 Difficulty levels
7 Stages
Ship speed fixed
- - - - - - -
Developed by Interbec
Published by Interbec in 1993

We all know genre-hybrid titles have become more common as of late, but the mixture of a horizontal shooter with a fighting game is still very unlikely no matter how far-fetched the concept. If the idea sounds good to you then perhaps it would be worth to check out Tekkaman Blade, released exclusively for the Super Famicom in Japan. Enjoying the experience, however, isn’t guaranteed by any means, for both the shooting and the fighting aspects of this game aren’t engaging enough and leave a lot to be desired. It’s no wonder Tekkaman Blade is quite obscure even among shooter or SNES fans, and my guess is that most people that care (or cared) about it are in some way fond of the animated series, created by Tatsunoko Productions at around the time of the game’s release.

The story of the anime takes place in the future and involves a deviant hero name Tekkaman Blade helping the Earth to repel an outer space invasion led by other armored soldiers like Blade himself. This isn’t conveyed in any way by the game, the only hints to any story appear in the brief dialogue sequences prior to each boss fight and in the ending credits, all of them in Japanese. What matters for us is that Tekkaman Blade must fight his way through the horizontal levels to finally confront an enemy on the ground of several orbital stations, in pure Street Fighter fashion. A double-bladed spear is his weapon of choice, be it while flying or brawling.

Flying and exerting justice with a badass weapon is awesome, right? It kinda sounds as if you’re playing as one of the heralds of Galactus! Even the way in which the character arrives on screen in every stage supports this geeky association. Unfortunately the shooting side of the journey suffers from repetitive/clunky gameplay. The fighting engine doesn’t fare much better, actually it’s even worse.

Evil creatures on an icy planet

During six stages the first part of our hero’s quest consists of a straightforward shooting section (the 7th and last level is the only one with just a shooter style confrontation against the last boss). Use Y to throw a spear that comes back to you like a boomerang, use B to slash whatever is at close range (including most bullets). There’s a health bar that gets depleted as you receive damage, and once the health bar is emptied you lose a life. The good news in the gameplay is that you are respawned in the same place if you die in the shooting parts. The bad news is that there’s no health bar refill when it’s time to fight a boss. Since you have only three lives with no extends in sight, reaching the bosses with the maximum possible health becomes crucial if you want to stand a chance at finishing the game on one credit.

In general, performing decently in the shooting parts is enough to go a long distance, especially when you realize that the fighting engine is atrociously limited. As a result, bosses come out as retarded robots waiting to be annihilated. The same inputs of the shooting parts apply here, but the spear isn’t thrown as a long-distance weapon anymore: Y makes him stick it forward and B performs a slash at closer range. Crouching, jumping and blocking enemy attacks is accomplished as in a Street Fighter game. Whenever one of the fighters receives a certain amount of blows he/she loses the weapon and has to rely on punches and kicks only (in the case of Tekkaman Blade these replace Y and B, respectively). If this happens, avoiding further damage will make the weapon materialize again after a while.

Don’t be envious of the bosses when you see them fire long-range laser attacks. Provided you haven’t lost your weapon, you can also do it by pressing A and X at the same time. The problem is that this attack is unresponsive and quite slow, and as a rule of thumb the best “strategy” against most bosses consists of approaching, beating them so they lose their weapons and slashing them to death, preferably in a corner. Never mind the few punches they might land on you, keep going and don’t let them breathe. I used different methods in just two bosses because they were more retarded than others: in the case of Tekkaman Axe (stage 3) and Tekkaman Sword (stage 5), just retreat to the left and block; as soon as they jump and bounce back hit them with any of the two attacks at your disposal.

Stage 3 and a desperate fight against Tekkaman Axe
(courtesy of YouTube user penguinpanda0)

In order to get through the flying levels the player needs to get used to the slow speed of the spear throw. Some enemies tend to cruise the screen faster than the return of the spear, and the only remedy around this is either welcoming them with a slash or moving out of their way. The pair of mid-bosses prior to the actual boss fight requires some patience to be dealt with, but once you’re used to their moving patterns much of the danger is gone. Crystal power-ups appear when a particular drone wave is destroyed: the green one refills the health bar partially, the blue one makes Tekkaman Blade invincible for a little while and the red one adds one smart bomb to be triggered with button X during the shooting section only. Don’t try to save the smart bomb for the next stage, it will only be available during the level you’re currently playing.

Had Tekkaman Blade received proper technical attention, I’m sure it would be a terrific game. I already mentioned all elements that make the concept such a cool idea. What holds it from being even an average game are the abundance of star-dotted backgrounds, the average music, the slow shooting action and the stupid AI in the fighting sequences. Okay, at some point the music of the first level started growing on me, but when I noticed it appeared again towards the end of the game I was reminded of how modestly designed the whole product actually is. In fact, from the little I researched about it the anime seems to be quite amusing, so I guess I must be thankful to Tekkaman Blade on the SNES for bringing that to my attention. For those interested, the game also has a Versus mode where two friends can select their favorite Tekkamen for some awful mindless brawling. Remember Justice League Task Force?

After the end credits the game lets you take note of your final score in the screen below. As you can see, I played it on Normal. No lives were lost on this run.

Forgotten Worlds (Mega Drive)

Arena
Checkpoints OFF
2 Difficulty levels
7 Stages
Ship speed by icons
- - - - - - -
Developed by Capcom
Reprogrammed and published by Sega in 1989

In a planet devastated by war against an alien race, two unknown soldiers battle the enemy to restore Earth to its previous glory, before it started being called a “dust world”. Fitted with flying gears, they tread the wastelands armed with rifle cannons and advanced weapon satellites, with the ultimate goal of dethroning and defeating the evil emperor Bios. As we can see, the story perfectly matches the Forgotten Worlds title. Originally created by Capcom for the arcades, on the Mega Drive the game appeared by courtesy of Sega themselves, with relatively faithful graphics and altered controls designed around the stock 3-button controller.

For those who are new to shmups or to 16-bit gaming in general, Forgotten Worlds for the Mega Drive comes with a prank that has unsurprisingly frustrated many people (at least for a brief while) and held a few unwary ones from actually playing the game. Case in question: fire up the cartridge on a console that has a 6-button controller attached and experience instant GAME OVER after starting a credit. Holy shit, talk about a hard game! Jokes aside, this is a rare case of a 6-button controller incompatibility with an “old” title. To bypass that just press the Mode button on the controller as the console is turned on and voilá! I know it seems stupid to mention this, but I’ve seen quite a few people go really mad thinking the game was damaged somehow.

Holy shit, talk about a hard game!
(courtesy of YouTube user wackywikivideos)

As a hint of how easier this port is when compared to the arcade game, the player starts with both the basic gun and the V-cannon satellite (there was no starting satellite originally). The satellite is an option that fires the currently chosen weapon and shields the player against most enemy bullets. Multidirectional shooting is accomplished by firing with button B and rotating the aim with buttons A (clockwise) and C (counterclockwise). Shooting direction follows what’s determined by A and C, but as long as you’re pressing B the position of the satellite is locked in place. Therefore, in order to rotate the satellite and park it in a desired position you need to stop shooting. Even though controls seem complicated, it takes just a little practice to get used to them.

The options screen allows you to tweak the speed of the satellite in three steps (slow/normal/fast). There's also a special “auto fire” switch that doesn’t correspond to the regular idea that we have of autofire because the game naturally has it. This “auto fire” just makes the characters shoot non-stop as if the B button was permanently pressed, but if you decide to use it do it as soon as you start to play the game since it kinda messes with the dynamics between the B button and the rotating inputs. I prefer to play without it because there are moments where shooting isn’t really a good idea, such as the parts with the oil pipes in the first stage or the gates that determine progression in the Egyptian levels (hitting the wrong gate triggers a different path than the intended one).

Enemy galleries of shooters starring flying people tend to be filled with other flying people. In the case of Forgotten Worlds these include strange lizard men, indians, ninjas, severed heads and the iconic final boss. Drones, laser turrets, giant snakes, crawling heads and a wealthy amount of weird bosses complete the package. Upgrading the arsenal and increasing the chances of success against them is possible by collecting the blue orbs left behind by some enemies or found in hidden areas – called Zenny, they’re the currency to be used inside the shops that appear once or twice throughout each stage. Beautiful Sylphie (or Mirabella, according to the manual) offers the player a wide assortment of upgrades and enhancements, from which the most important are the flying stone (speed-up, buy it only once), life pack, health treatment/refill, potion of resurrection and booster. Satellite upgrades should be chosen carefully, since you can carry only one and some of them are clearly more effective than others while being cheaper. Buying armor (protection against 3 hits) is important only until you discover hidden armors than can be uncovered in key places (by the way, watch out for more strange items). Abusing health treatment can lead to tricky situations in the end because for each purchase it gets increasingly more expensive.

Unknown soldiers are on the move

With the exception of two absent stages, all elements of the original game made it into this version of Forgotten Worlds, from the desolate wastelands of the first stages to the upward scrolling section leading towards the false god, two of the Egyptian levels, the cloud stage and the tower with the final boss (the cave with the twin bosses was left out). The three-way spread gun of player 2 was removed here, so both characters share the same straight gun type. Other than that the graphical and aural adaptation is decent but could’ve used a little more color, losing to the PC Engine CD port in this regard. At least the Mega Drive preserved the pictures showing the nameless ones blabbering in between stages. The difficulty is considerably toned down since the game has less enemies and allows blocking of many types of attacks by the soldier’s firepower. On the technical side, a crowded screen can lead to brief bouts of slowdown, but that’s it. I believe this might get a little worse when the game is played in co-op, but I didn't have the chance to check that.

Some of the items from the shop were downscaled or excluded, but the sheer amount of them offers lots of opportunities for experimenting. My favorite weapon for most of the game is still the napalm bomb (I used it a lot when I beat the port for the Playstation 2). On the Mega Drive the napalm bomb behaves a little differently, being fired in a straight line instead of a downward arch. In the end the homing laser still kicks lots of ass, and is even capable of blocking the attacks from emperor Bios. The "dress" item in the last shop is unique to this port, and its sole purpose is to grant a bonus of one million points once the game is completed.

Unless you have a potion of resurrection, once the health bar is gone it's GAME OVER, no continues allowed. While that's good to add replay value to a fairly manageable challenge, it's just unfortunate that Sega didn't include any type of high score display, not even when you beat the game. Since it's shown for approximately one second only, you have to be very fast to see your final score when the 1CC comes. Was I fast enough in the picture below? It's a crappy photo that should read 1.627.300, a result of playing the game on Normal, player 1 side, auto fire OFF and satellite speed set to Normal.

Let's Go! Burunyanman Portable (PSP)

Horizontal
Checkpoints OFF
3 Difficulty levels
9 Stages
Ship speed fixed, selectable at start
- - - - - - -
Developed by DigitalCute
Published by Alchemist in 2012

Originally a mini-game included in a Japanese PC visual novel called Musumaker, Let's Go! Burunyanman was beefed up by developer DigitalCute into a full-blown shooter. Heavily bent into a risqué anime style, the Portable version for the PSP is probably quite tame when compared with its PC counterpart, which bears the Hardcore!! subtitle and aims at adults with its +18 eroge rating. In the case of the PSP, character design is incredibly cute yet daring at the same time, maybe inappropriate to some but never explicit in any way. It’s definitely reminiscent of Parodius in the way it looks, but it plays with a mild bullet hell atmosphere that’s actually very attractive gameplaywise, especially for beginners.

Attractiveness relates to the ease of entry into the game mechanics, which involves focused firepower, grazing and medal collecting, three well-known staples in the danmaku subgenre. Bullet density, however, does not get taxing until much later in the game. Burunyanman slowly builds up steam by luring the player with a few easygoing levels, then starts demanding more from our dodging abilities as soon as the most visually audacious boss appears (the chick with the laser-firing crotch). It’s a well designed difficulty slope, and one that benefits from the presence of a proper practice mode that allows training in any stage that’s been already reached in the regular game. The only problem is that the game is entirely in Japanese, from the menus to all the spoken/written dialogue, so if you somehow care for the storyline you’d better understand those kanji for great justice.

Following one of the most catchy intros I’ve ever seen in any anime-based shooter (it’s really awesome), the first option in the start screen of Let's Go! Burunyanman Portable sends you directly into the game. Type your Japanese name, choose the difficulty level and select one of three cat-girl characters: Burunyan (slowest + spread pattern), Sukunyan (fastest + very wide spread pattern) or Maynyan (middle speed + straight pattern). All of them are rather balanced in firepower, so the choice criteria falls pretty much over movement speed. Somehow I adapted better to Suku, the other girls are too slow for my taste. They’re all invested in a fight against rat enemies, and this old rivalry is what seems to drive the story from start to finish.

Deadly spirals in the cemetery

All characters are able to use a normal shot (∆), a hold shot (○) and a bomb (×). While normal shot differs for all of them, they all share the same hold shot, a focused attack that reduces the character speed while deploying a thick laser beam (actually tapping hold shot results in normal shot). Whenever you get close to an enemy bullet (grazing) the action slows down and firepower gets boosted to new levels: normal shot is upgraded to an "adrenergic" shot and the laser from hold shot is thickened even further. The act of grazing also discloses the character's hitbox (the mouth in a heart-shaped form) and allows for better inch-dodging. Bombs make the player invincible, damage every on-screen enemy and generate coins at random in small explosions. Coins, by the way, are released by every single defeated enemy and head directly to the character’s hitbox in a straight line. If you’re close enough to them they are absorbed and increase in value from 200 to 2.000 points in steps of 2. However, if you lose at least one coin this value is reset to 200 and you have to build it up all over again. This is the bane of the scoring system, so a score-driven player will always strive to fully "chain" a stage without any coin loss.

As a rule of thumb, the larger the enemy the more coins you get from its demise. Large explosions convert all nearby bullets in coins, and whenever a boss form is defeated all bullets will turn into coins. Bosses are all gigantic and have three forms each, with the exception of the fifth karaoke boss and her single health bar (much like the karaoke girl-boss in the arrange mode of The Game Paradise). Every form of a boss has a specific behavior/pattern, and the first one generally enters the screen throwing stuff all around as if coming from below the ground: buildings, knives (!), houses, trees and tombstones are some of the things thrown at the player. Mid-bosses are smaller and closer to the character’s size, sometimes you can’t even see them well because they’re engulfed by the glow from the focused laser.

Given the nature of how weaponry works, the absence of power-ups in the game comes as no surprise. You do get options though, in the form of up to two cats that follow you around in a trailing fashion (normal shot) or in a character-specific formation (hold shot). Option cats, extra bombs and extra lives, as well as cat food cans for a few extra points, are released by killing specific enemies. All items keep bouncing around the edges of the screen, so there’s no need to rush to get them. Once the stage is over you get a few bonuses based on the amount of lives, bombs and options you’re currently carrying. However, these bonuses are kinda irrelevant when compared to the rush you get from coin chaining. If you want you’re better off detonating those bombs for the extra coins rather than keeping them for any final bonus.

Complete intro and first stages of the PSP version
(courtesy of YouTube user HCKStudios)

What makes Let's Go! Burunyanman a neat little title is the lighthearted tone of the game and the juxtaposing intensity you can extract from it when playing for score. Give it some time, understand how it works and soon enough you’re leaving enemies survive only to graze their bullets for more coins and more power to defeat tough enemies (such as the cute girl who throws candies in stage 5). Bosses do not time out and some of them offer lots of opportunities for extensive milking, but be warned that they start firing different patterns after a while. When things get out of hand bombing is definitely needed, after all the game does get harder than what it shows in its early levels. Fan service reaches its peak when bombing because you get six successive special background images of the character for six successive bombs used if you don’t die. Note: the later the bomb the more risqué the image.

Fact: high quality cartoony animation abounds in Burunyanman. All cat heroines move their tiny legs when flying, bosses attack with varying degrees of liberty across the screen and something’s almost always happening in the tiled backgrounds. Tiled backgrounds aren’t as bad as it seems here because everything’s very colorful, parallax is all over the place and there’s a lot going on at all times (graphical themes include highway, beach, cemetery, flower fields, an amusement park, volcano, rainy forest/above the clouds and rat city). For a shooter with such good animation, the soundtrack definitely matches the overall cuteness of the package. Although uneven, it’s really outstanding at certain points – the opening theme is awesome, some boss themes are great and most songs with singing are unexpectedly fitting. The gallery of sound effects is equally decent, with several different in-game voices alongside the impressive amount of dialogue that takes place during character interactions (skip them all by pressing ×).

Click for the option menus translation for Let's Go! Burunyanman Portable (work in progress)

In quite an original twist, once the game is beaten the player can destroy the end credits for more points as they scroll up. Beware though, those kanji start shooting after a while and can kill you (the first time I got there I died). Since this credits section unfolds like a regular stage and you can die there, I guess it's okay to consider that Let's Go! Burunyanman Portable has actually 9 stages of fun horizontal shooting action. Beating the game with different characters unlocks various extras in the album and replay galleries, as well as a series of short animations which unfortunately are totally in Japanese. The three tutorials are also rendered useless if you can't understand the language, but at least the option to remap controls is a little easier to find and use.

The limited edition of the game comes in a DVD-sized package that also includes a soundtrack CD, a booklet and fan cards. I even received a large poster showing Burunyan and Sukunyan taking a feline bath! My final 1CC result with Sukunyan is below, playing on Normal.

Raiden II (Playstation)

Vertical
Checkpoints OFF
4 Difficulty levels
8 Stages (loopable)
Ship speed fixed
- - - - - - -
Developed by Seibu Kaihatsu
Published by Seibu Kaihatsu in 1995

A little after I started playing Raiden II on the Playstation I caught myself imagining a developer conversation at the Seibu Kaihatsu headquarters. “So people thought Raiden was easy?” “Yes, they did say that, boss.” “That’s inadmissible!” “Some people said the first loop is a piece of cake, boss.” “Nooooo…” “Don’t worry, boss, we’re working on making Raiden II much harder.” “Harder??? These people don't know the meaning of harder yet!” And then I resumed getting slaughtered over and over... Long story short, I have absolutely no doubt that Raiden II is one of the hardest shooter sequels ever designed, comparatively speaking. The increase in difficulty is so steep that going back to Raiden right after beating Raiden II made the first game look like child’s play, with everything running in slow motion. Therefore, if you ever hear people complaining about the over-the-top nature of today's bullet hell shooters, tell them to go play Raiden II. I mean it.

The above comparison is restricted to the titles contained in the US release of The Raiden Project for the Playstation when played at full defaults (Colonel). There are lots of shady information about different difficulty settings even in real arcade boards for Raiden II, so I’ll just assume that whatever we get in the Playstation port should be at least close to the original experience, especially when the game is played in real TATE. Note #1: the “TATE” option that’s present in the disc isn’t actually the real deal because it also rotates the controls, so in order to get real TATE you need to insert the following precious cheat code with a Gameshark device: 80050BAC 0003 (it works perfectly for both games and can be permanently saved in the memory card). Note #2: real TATE is included in the Japanese version of Raiden Project, but that one is botched because it comes with mandatory checkpoints for Raiden and for the blue ship in Raiden II, and that alone is reason to go for the North American version. Note #3: if you still want to have checkpoints in the US disc, set "start back mode" to ON in the options.

Really, what a mess, Seibu! Everything considered though, The Raiden Project is simply a must have title. It comes with an animated intro, two soundtracks for each game (original and remixed) and several configuration/display options. And if you can input the special code above for TATE you pretty much gain access to an arcade at home.

A desperate fight against the Cranassian armada

Raiden II is in several ways similar to the first Raiden. There are eight stages, five of them taking place on Earth and three in outer space. The ships are still the same, mk-II (red, player 1) and mk-IIb (blue, player 2). The mechanized aliens are still the enemy, I just don’t have any idea of the story behind everything. Even though the themes in all levels reflect those of the original game, in Raiden II graphics and explosions are noticeably more detailed. Shrapnel and debris fly all over the place, and you can even see pieces of enemy aircraft falling to the ground with varying impact sizes. Additions to the basic gameplay appear in the form of a brand-new weapon, a new bomb type and a few tiny differences in how scoring bonuses are applied.

Besides the vulcan (red) and the laser (blue), a third new option to use as main weapon is the latching laser (purple), also known as the infamous “toothpaste” laser. Upon initial firing it works like the blue laser, but then the streams merge and the magic happens: whenever this weapon connects to one or more enemy it bends, ricochets and rebounds all around, creating a spectacle that can be directed but not really controlled by the player’s movement. Some people believe it has homing abilities, but the truth is that it will only fulfill its purpose when the player directs it to a proper target. Weapons are selected by collecting a power-up that cycles colors in a fixed sequence (red → blue → purple → red), and in order to increase the weapon’s power you need to stick to the same color. As for bombs, in addition to the regular nuclear bomb (red B) we now have the cluster bomb (yellow B), which is less powerful but is deployed with almost no delay, covers a wider area and lasts a tiny bit longer. Player 1 (red ship) starts with three nuclear bombs in stock, whereas player 2 (blue ship) starts with three cluster bombs. Released by little ground buildings, missiles can be straight nukes (M) or homing (H). And that’s it, use one button to fire and another to drop bombs (all controls are configurable, autofire included).

Scoring devices haven’t changed much. Gold medals are still worth 500 points, with new blue medals worth 3.000 points each. The number of these medals multiplied by the bomb stock × 1000 corresponds to the bonus at the end of a stage (watch out for the last hidden medal that appears one or two seconds before the stage ends once the boss is destroyed). Sometimes a miclus appears instead of a medal, giving 10.000 points but being excluded of the medal count. Once you’ve maxed out power, every extra power-up item is worth 5.000 points. Extra bomb bonus: if you manage to max out bomb stock with bombs of the same type (all nukes or all clusters) every extra bomb of the same type results in precious 50.000 points.

None of the above requirements for higher scores is worth the risk if you die. Raiden II is a cruel shooter, and the lack of checkpoints has no bearing at all in difficulty. There’s no breathing room whatsoever upon dying. Mercy is a term that has no meaning here, enemies are out to get you from every possible position/angle and every foe will fire at least one bullet before biting the dust. Unless you know what you’re doing, standing still is a free pass to end the credit horribly - however, flying around desperately won’t help either. Once the player has memorized enemy placement and established a safe route, slow tapping is probably the best strategy during most of the time. There’s a “rhythm” according to which enemies will fire, dictated by a characteristic reload window, and moving back from a sweeping maneuver must take place during that time when enemies are not allowed to shoot. Getting the hang of this rhythm is essential to survival because you need to squeeze that ship within dangerous spreads from bosses, amidst sniping floaters and across barrages of tanks coming from below. Raiden II stings, and it stings hard. Maybe more so than any other shooter, it taught me to be more humble and less greedy. Being sniped at the peak of a great run is devastating, if I had been photographed every time this happened we could write a tragic comedy with the pictures.

Mission accomplished for the 1st loop of Raiden II

Persevering is half the battle of beating Raiden II. The other half comes from adapting to the merciless gameplay and exploiting a few little advantages here and there. One of them is the fact that every enemy needs to be seen to fire anything against the player, so leaving them out of your sight is a good – and sometimes necessary – move. Beware though, those floaters are fond of sniping you from the sides blindly if they have already crossed the play field in one piece. There are no score extends, only two 1UPs that require some ability to be obtained (3rd stage: when you’re leaving the harbor don’t destroy the silver box, instead let the tank coming from below do it; 6th stage: blast the central bunker that guards the crystal quickly, bombing helps). Uncovering and taking fairies (10.000 points) in stages 1 and 4 guarantees a wave of power-ups upon death. Unfortunately since the game is so punishing, most of the time extra lives or fairies aren’t really useful unless you’re already facing the last boss. Trying to make some sense of the power-up shower brought by the fairy while being massacred from all sides is almost a bad joke. There are also other consequences when dying, such as the screw-up of the item spawning routine. Depending on where you die the game starts mocking you by sending bomb after bomb after bomb when all you need is power-ups or that precious P for maximum power (it only appears from stage 5 onwards).

In my opinion, entering the sea area of the third stage marks the first difficulty spike, which culminates in one of the toughest boss fights in the game (the only one where extra enemy ships appear to make matters even worse). The second difficulty spike is in the fifth stage, where enemy shots get crazy fast and gaps between them become even smaller. Sniping hell awaits those who let flying enemies live long enough. Stage 6 is pretty much the same, stage 7 is kind of a breather provided you don’t get greedy for medals or power-ups (these keep floating at mid level, teasing the player all the time) and stage 8 resumes the final phase of the onslaught. My favorite weapon for the stages is the toothpaste laser, but I do switch to laser (blue) on the 3rd, 6th and 7th bosses for its sheer power and fast destruction rate. I feel sorry for the vulcan weapon, in Raiden II it’s just a shadow of what it was in Raiden. Since homing missiles are so weak below maximum power, I only take them prior to the fight against the second boss.

With so much going on to make the experience such a hard one, is the game actually any fun? Hell, yes! Raiden II is such an incredible challenge that every stage won feels like a victory in itself. Whenever I’m playing it I’m on my toes all the time, senses on the tips of my nerves, eyes all around the area looking for snipers. Let’s not forget about the music, which starts in a slightly corny tone but evolves to some rather epic BGMs in the last half of the game (so epic that they served as basis for the soundtrack in Raiden IV).

I need to thank the wonders of emulation for allowing me to practice the game, without it I would never be able to accomplish the 1CC. After completing the first loop I reached stage 3 again and went out in a blaze of greed with the final score shown below (Colonel difficulty). Unlike in Raiden there’s no advantage in choosing the blue ship here, so I went with the classic red mk-II. Note about my TATE experience: the resolution on Raiden II was a little too wide for my screen, so I couldn’t see a span of approximately the ship’s width when leaning against the sides (Raiden was okay though). Aside from that, I should note that in later levels a fully powered toothpaste laser causes slowdown in key areas, such as the last boss.

Raiden DX, the next installment in the series, seems to be an even greater challenge than Raiden II. We shall see!

Gunbird (Saturn)

Vertical
Checkpoints OFF
7 Difficulty levels
7 Stages (loopable)
Ship speed fixed, selectable at start
- - - - - - -
Developed by Psikyo
Published by Atlus in 1995

Ah, comebacks... Aren't they sweet? I still remember when I first fired up Gunbird on the Sega Saturn, one of the first shooters I got for the system, and how I hammered the game with a slew of continues until I was able to get to the end of the first loop. By that time I was just starting to learn what a 1CC is, therefore Gunbird was also one of the first 1CCs I achieved ever since I got back to gaming in my adult life. A few years down the road certainly made me a little more experienced with the genre, so this time I took the chance to play the game in TATE.

Wow, has it been that long already? I mean, those days when I thought I wouldn't miss much by playing vertical arcade games in YOKO...

Story summary: a magic mirror was stolen and broken by a giant Gremlin creature, and five anime-styled characters take flight in a mission to recover the pieces of the mirror and defeat the evil enemy and his henchmen. The extra intro in this version shows this (it's not present in the arcade original), and dialogue intermissions tell the rest of the story as it unfolds. Most of the interactions between characters are awkwardly comical, but since they're all in Japanese it's impossible for me to understand what the pedophile (Ash) or the homosexual elderly (Tetsu) are actually babbling about. If you don't care about these bits of dialogue don't worry, they're instantly skippable.

Saturn's Gunbird complete 1st loop with Marion - watch for great tips on bosses!
(courtesy of YouTube user bamboo69rock)

My objective while playing Gunbird again was to top my high score with Yuan-Nang, the monkey-girl who controls a floating cloud. I'll describe how gameplay works with her, the rest of the characters have similar control inputs: by default, you can shoot (C/R), use a charge shot (A) and bomb (B). Yuan-Nang's main attack is a straight green shot with slower side swords, her charge attack is a short range blow with a bo stick and her bomb consists of several shadows of her own self that get propelled forward and also help to nullify bullets. Yuan-Nang's bomb isn't really good for panic defense, since a few enemy shots can get through the appearing shadows (moving while bombing can also lead to deaths because it might create further gaps within the bomb pattern). Even though she isn't the most powerful character in the game, her biggest advantage in my opinion is the short recovery time of her charge shot, whose power is only surpassed by Valnus's electrified discharge (on top of that, Nang's charge shot can also block bullets!). I'm also fond of her speed, which is close to Marion's - not as slow as Tetsu's, but not as fast as Ash's either.

For such a naive control scheme, the amount of strategy you need to apply in order to survive is considerable. Power-up capsules (P) and extra bombs (B) appear from carriers and selected enemies or boss parts. Three Ps are needed to max out the character's strength, but after a while firepower is degraded one level and you need to acquire a new P to get full power again. Every power-up collected while at full power is converted into 2.000 points, and that's the main source of scoring besides milking cannon fodder from boss fights before they time out. It's always good to let power-ups bounce around before taking them at the correct time in order to always get 2.000 points from every P, just remember that all items eventually leave the screen if they're left floating around for a long time. As for bombs, six is the highest number of them you can carry, so any extra bomb taken after that also results in a bonus of 2.000 points.

Rank is intimately related with strategy in Gunbird, because the longer you survive the harder the game gets. That means faster and denser enemy bullets/patterns. The first three stages are always randomly selected out of four (one is always left out), and then you go through the final four in a fixed order. Due to the random nature of the first half of the game, any of the initial stages might come with three different difficulties. The hardest third level in my opinion is the train stage, I'd much rather have the castle or the forest instead of the train. The factory as a third stage is also tricky because the first phase of the boss comes with very claustrophobic overlapping patterns. In any case, you pretty much need to learn how to handle every starting stage in three different ways. Getting rammed by an enemy doesn't result in death, but one power-up will be expelled from the character's body and instantly drift away. Rank is slightly reduced when this happens, but it's not such an advantage as in, let's say, what you get in Sengoku Blade. Significant rank drops only take place when you die.

Choose your destiny

Gunbird's graphics are decent, and if the boss animations aren't on par with Psikyo's own contemporary Strikers 1945 they aren't shabby either. The action is reasonably intense and there's never any slowdown, so aggressive players will be more comfortable with the overall style of the game (well, I’m being redundant here, we all know that’s the harsh truth about all Psikyo shooters). There's only one extend to be taken at 400.000 points, and every continue from stage 4 onwards sends the player back to the start of the stage instead of resuming play right away. Continues used are added to the score in order to separate 1-credit achievements from credit feeding results (note that these inflated values are still logged into the high score table).

The Saturn port comes with save functionality and the extra intro I mentioned above, but this intro is only shown in Original mode - which corresponds to YOKO with vertical wobbling. Excluding the ending sequences, all voices created for the dialogues in the port are also exclusive to this mode, and you won’t hear them if you play the game in Arcade mode (TATE) - which by all means is an exact rendition of the arcade original with regular attract animation and no voice work. Slightly rearranged music is the same for both modes, but high scores are tracked separately. Other goodies on the disc consist of sections for character index and a few art galleries. Compared to the Japanese Playstation version, the Saturn one wins due to the save functionality and the presence of a TATE option. Note: Gunbird was never released for the Sega Saturn outside of Japan.

Here’s my new high score with Yuan-Nang (+10%), playing on Normal (difficulty 5) in Arcade mode (TATE). As expected, I couldn’t survive the onslaught of stage 2-1.