Atomic Robo-Kid Special (PC Engine)

Horizontal
Checkpoints OFF/ON
1 Difficulty level
25 Stages
Ship speed by icons
- - - - - - -
Developed by UPL
Published by UPL in 1989

Very few arcade games can actually live up to the being called unique, and Atomic Robo-Kid is undoubtedly one of them. While the game didn't fare well critically or comercially, it did make a few appearances as ports in the console market. The PC Engine Japanese version, called Atomic Robo-Kid Special, is more of a rearranged game than a proper conversion since it changes many of the original gameplay elements. Even though they're not substantial, some of these changes actually make the game more friendly and less dire, on top of providing a slightly different experience from the arcade or the Mega Drive port released at around the same time.

The central character in Atomic Robo-Kid Special is this chubby little robot that looks like a trash can with piercing red eyes and a big nose. He's able to walk and fly wherever he pleases, battling all sorts of weird creatures across 25 stages, or "acts" as the game puts it. No story is given this time around, so all you have to do is dive directly into the action, pushing your way through straight corridors and maze-like environments with perils at every corner. In every 5th level you must defeat a large boss inside a closed chamber, and prior to that also face a similar enemy robot in face-to-face combat.

While the graphics have faithful textures when compared with the arcade version and come off as extremely colorful, parallax is minimal and barely visible. A few new enemies and new behaviors for existing enemies were added to the gameplay. Apparently there are no splitting paths anymore, and in certain levels you're bound to find secret passages through walls. In some cases it's mandatory to go through these passages in order to advance. 

Act 1
(courtesy of YouTube user Arcade Forever)

Shooting is done with button II, while button I is used to switch weapon types. In order to extend and upgrade your weapon arsenal you must collect the appropriate capsules, which appear either floating at specific places or by destroying insect-like carriers. Hit the capsules to change their type/color before picking them up. Power-ups come as F (fission gun), 3 (3-way shot), M (directional exploding missile) and 5 (5-way straight shot with short reach). A golden capsule gives you a speed-up and successive blue capsules eventually add a 1-hit shield to the robot (take four of them to acquire one shield). Extra lives are hidden in the scenery and need to be shot at to appear in the form of a little white robot that flies to the right. White flocs that look like it add just a few more points to the score.

Note that trying to switch weapons when you're on ground level will make Robo-Kid jump instead, which means it can only be done when you're airborne. Moving about changes his firing orientation, but it's possible to lock and make him shoot in a single direction for the fission gun, the 3-way and the 5-way: all you have to do is hold the weapon switch button. Even though this sounds inconvenient since you need to plan your weapon switching in advance, in time it becomes more manageable.

So far the description of the gameplay is roughly the same as the arcade game or the Mega Drive port. The main difference in Atomic Robo-Kid Special is the life bar that allows you to take multiple hits before dying. Refilling this life bar is accomplished by taking the "life up" orbs that appear whenever you destroy mid-sized enemies and also during/after the duels against the small robots. Moreover, for each main boss you defeat a "life up / level up" orb also serves to expand the life bar. Just remember to get it before the screen fades to black.

Another aspect that's exclusive to this port is the fact that you can power up your weapons five times by taking successive capsules. The AP number indicates the level for the weapon that's currently selected (AP6 equals max power). However, cycling capsules more than five times will destroy them so take that into consideration when trying to upgrade. The most important weapons are definitely the 5-way and the missile, the first one for crowd control and the second one because it blocks bullets when exploding. The missile is, in fact, devastating against some enemies (try it on the third boss and see what happens). Unfortunately in this version the fission gun lost its ability to pierce through bosses, which makes it practically useless.

The super elephant!

If you see the merchant robot you can go to him and exchange one of your extra lives for whatever upgrades he's got in his stash. Deaths can be extremely punishing later on due to the excruciatingly slow default speed of Robo-Kid (which can make some boss fights nigh impossible), that's why it might be advantageous to use the merchant. Deaths also strip you off the weapon you're currenty carrying, so try not to die when using the missile or the 5-way. Lastly, touching bosses is lethal and can pretty much drain your life bar to a near-death condition.

Since Atomic Robo-Kid Special ditches the timer that required players to not procrastinate, there's absolutely no point in trying to score higher in this version. After all, you can go back and forth killing everything forever if you wish. In certain areas that's a litle bit risky though because you can be dangerously engulfed by many enemy clusters that might quickly drain your health.

If I had to choose one 16-bit port as the best option, I'd pick Atomic Robo-Kid Special. Autofire is implemented from the get go and the lenient life mechanic suits the game better as a whole, even though it packs a slightly tougher challenge on bosses and robot duels than what's seen in the Mega drive version, which on the other hand is certainly harder throughout the game itself. In any case I guess both ports are worth trying if for whatever reason you're into any of them.

There's no high score buffer or table anywhere, so you need to pause right after the last boss goes down if you want to take note of your finishing score. And here's the 1CC result I got, with no milking whatsoever.

Image Fight (PC Engine)

Vertical
Checkpoints ON
4 Difficulty levels
8 Stages
Ship speed selectable
- - - - - - -
Developed by Irem
Published by Irem in 1990

One of the many ports from the arcade game, Image Fight reached the PC Engine just a couple of years after the original came out. Just like most good ports of that era, it managed the tone down the raw difficulty of the arcade while keeping everything intact as far as gameplay goes. Often regarded as a vertical sibling to Irem's own horizontal classic R-Type, Image Fight shares much of its ambience, sound effects and graphical style, as well as the addictive old school lure that keeps you coming back for more no matter how difficult the game gets.

The story behind Image Fight is that you're supposed to prepare your combat skills across five stages inside a holographic simulator, only then proceeding to depart for the "real fight" against the alien menace in the game's three final levels. Graphics are crisp and colorful, the music suits the alien environments well and the sound effects indeed make you feel as if you're playing a vertically oriented R-Type. The player's performance is evaluated during the combat simulations, and in order to proceed to the actual mission you need to get at least a 90% average kill ratio at the end of stage 5. Failing to do so will make you play a penalty area before advancing, thus adding an extra stage to the journey.

The problem with the penalty area is that it's excruciatingly harder than anything else in the game, to the point it's practically not worth to play unless you're fierce on proving something or shooting for the highest score possible. Exploiting checkpoints is the normal device for scoring in Image Fight, which in this version is acceptable since you don't get more than two score-based extends throughout the credit. The good news in that on the PC Engine you have to perform really badly to not get the 90% destruction rate, so you definitely need to strive to access the penalty area.

Simulated combat at its finest

In order to make the most out of the two basic inputs (button II shoots and button I switches back and forth across four speed settings), the player needs to destroy item carriers and collect two types of power-ups. The first one is a colored orb that cycles between blue and red and generates a pod that floats around the ship. The blue pod fires straight ahead, whereas the red pod fires in the opposite direction of your movement. It's possible to acquire three pods: the first one appears on the left, the second one on the right and the third one on the ship's rear. Once you get three pods the next one will determine the orientation of all pods, so they will either all be blue or red.

The second type of power-up is a frontal attachment that gives you several different options for extra firepower such as spread patterns, lasers, side shots, missiles, etc. These attachments have a particular behavior though, in that they are destroyed when hit and can only be replaced for a new one if you get rid of the attachment you're carrying.

Cruising through the open areas or the cramped corridors of Image Fight requires solid memorization and at least a little strategy when it comes down to power-up management. There are two checkpoints per level, and it's perfectly possible to recover in all of them no matter how hard they are. Wide open spaces get considerably claustrophobic later on, and since the sprites are slightly zoomed in and bigger in this port there's a constant feeling that you're piloting a ship with massive hitbox. I never felt that the game is unfair with hit detection though, and just like in the original arcade game you can take advantage of very strict positioning strategies to dispatch certain enemies. Just don't rely on the same approaches you might have used in the arcade version, they won't always work here.

Image projector OK!
(courtesy of YouTube user ShiryuGL)

The importance of details in the gameplay can even be measured by how useful a few other resources are. The act of switching speeds, for instance, creates a blue flare of energy behind the ship that can be used to damage enemies. There's at least one moment in the game where I switch speeds as an offense strategy. Aggressive point blanking is also very useful if you're familiar with the gaps in the firing pattern of your enemies, especially during the last couple of stages.

Unlike most shooters developed by Irem, Image Fight on the PC Engine does not loop. It also doesn't show your life stock while you play, only when you die. Going by a characteristic sound cue, my guess is that the score-based extra lives are granted with 50.000 and 250.000 points. Besides playing with the OF-1 Daedalus default ship, it's also possible to pilot Mr. Heli (from the game Mr. Heli) with the following simple procedure: press SELECT on the title screen to enter the sound test, highlight "song C" and press down, select and buttons I and II together, then put the cursor over "Mr. Heli" and press button I and RUN. In order to enjoy the game in a faux arcade mode (cramped vertical resolution with borders on the sides), you need to perform a soft reset (START + SELECT) and then immediately hold button I.

The choice of difficulty (or "class" as the game calls it) is made when you start the credit, with Leader class being considered as the Normal difficulty. Then you can choose to activate auto shot / autofire if you wish. That's how I played this version of Image Fight (Leader class + autofire). It was quite a solid, entertaining ride, and the best news as far as the PC Engine goes is that it was also home for the CD sequel Image Fight II - Operation Deepstriker.

Note: remember to pause as soon as the final boss goes down, or else you won't be able to take a record of your 1CC score.

Microcosm (Sega CD)

Rail shooter
Checkpoints OFF / ON
1 Difficulty level
5 Stages
Ship speed fixed
- - - - - - -
Developed by Psygnosis
Published by Psygnosis in 1993

Ever since I watched Innerspace and Fantastic Voyage I had wondered about a video game based on the idea presented in these films. We always see vehicles and spacecrafts flying above ground or sent to outer space, but what if they would instead travel into the inside of living creatures? Granted, games like Abadox, X-Multiply and Wings of Wor were partially or fully designed around this premise, but weren't exactly what I had in mind. Microcosm, on the other hand, owes a lot to the abovementioned films, and could actually pass as a video game adaptation had the story been given a distinct treatment.

Originally created for the FM Towns computer system and later ported to other platforms, Microcosm is a very early take on full motion video used as backgrounds for a shooting game. As one of the most important pioneers of this style, Psygnosis did quite a bit of experimentation when developing it. One of the results is that Microcosm plays with a different point of view across the systems it came out for. The Sega CD version, for instance, is a pure third-person rail shooter, whereas the FM Towns original adopts a first-person cockpit perspective.

Meet first boss Torus

Since FMV was all the rage back then a fully animated introduction was almost an obligation for lots of CD-based video games, and Microcosm is no exception. Of special note is the fact that the developer purposedly kept the color palette at an even lower limit than the Sega CD is capable to deliver, which lends a grainier and slightly surreal aspect to the animation. Sending a miniaturized vessel into the body of a living person is of course the main part of the story, which begins at the cephalic vein and ends at the brain. Even though there seems to be no stage separation in the game, there are actually five areas to play through.

The entry into different areas is signalled by a change in the vessel you're piloting. All of them use the same inputs though, with A for shot, B for weapon switch and C for special attack, which can be either a smart bomb (stages 1, 3 and 5) or a brief invincibility period, here named as "sonic shield" (stages 2 and 4). Odd levels unfold as exploration missions with a boss waiting at the end of the organ, followed by a brief portal section that leads you into the next areas (except for level 5, which has two tunnel stretches with two bosses). Even levels, on the other hand, consist of high speed pursuits after escaping enemy capsules. The bad news is that if you fail to destroy them in time the credit is immediately lost, no matter how many lives you have left. In this particular case it's best to take damage, die and play it again from the start than to see the game end all of a sudden.

Microcosm has no continues, so getting a game over like that says a lot about how weirdly the game behaves when it comes down to lives and such. Another strange feature is that you're not able to pause at all during the gameplay itself. You can only pause when some of the intermediary screens between levels are being displayed. A cryptic password made of moving symbols is shown when you lose all your lives so that you can access later levels directly from the start screen. 

I believe the lack of a pause function and the sudden loss of all lives aren't much of a hassle, what's more aggravating is the flimsy hit detection and how it slowly undermines the experience proposed by the game. Sometimes it just takes more than the usual share of shots for enemies to die, as opposed to how easy it is to see your energy depleted by confusing incoming bullets. A full energy recovery is possible by taking the ship-like item, but just like all other pick-ups you need to destroy the enemy that's carrying it first. The item gallery also includes double shot (2), triple shot (3), laser (L), missile (M), orbiter (O) and smart bomb / invincibility (SB). They are all limited, the only unlimited weapon in the arsenal is the default single shot. Well, for all it's worth it's actually the most efficient weapon in the game.

Complete intro for Microcosm on the Sega CD
(courtesy of YouTube user SegaCDUniverse)

Another way to fully recover your energy gauge is by advancing to the next stage. There are no extends of any kind, no matter what the instruction manual of the Sega CD says (by the way, much of the information in there cannot be trusted at all). Note that despite the cheap hits everywhere, in Microcosm you receive absolutely no damage when touching walls. This of course can be exploited whenever you're low on energy and need to play safe. There's a vertical health meter for all bosses and the capsules during the pursuit stages on the left side of the screen. Hint: try to get to the bosses with smart bombs in stock, then trigger them to take away large chunks of their health.

Padding Microcosm with lots of cut scenes makes it seem longer than it actually is, but most unplayable parts can be duly skipped if you want to. The few ones that can't are quite short, and just like the nice atmospheric soundtrack they contribute positively to the cinematic feel of the game. Unfortunately the lousy gameplay does take its toll in the overall appreciation, yet Microcosm on the Sega CD is still more engaging than the versions that use a cockpit perspective such as those released for the PC and the FM Towns (in technical terms it's of course not on par with the 3DO port, which is also a true rail shooter where you see the craft from the outside and actually get to dodge stuff). Psygnosis improved their approach on the spiritual sequel Novastorm / Scavenger 4, a game that shows refinement in pretty much all aspects that matter.

In order to get the picture below I had to film the end of my credit. Once the last boss goes down the final score appears for less than a second only! Then you're treated with the ending animation and sent back to the start screen.

Bokan To Ippatsu! Doronbō Kanpekiban (Saturn)

Vertical
Checkpoints OFF
4 Difficulty levels
8 Stages
Ship speed fixed, selected at start of level
- - - - - - -
Developed by Banpresto
Published by Banpresto in 1997

Even though on the outside both versions of this game are the same, there are actually a few differences between them. The Playstation title was the first one to be released as Bokan To Ippatsu! Doronbō, whereas the Saturn one came out the next year with Kanpekiban added to the title. For all purposes the latter is a slightly enhanced port of the former.

If you're a fan of the 70s anime Yatterman, which was a part of the long-running Time Bokan series, you'll feel quite astonished by this awkward little game especially when you realize that you take on the role of the villains instead of the heroes. Two buffoons and their sexy blonde leader pilot strange-looking vehicles and face off against mecha bosses controlled by several protagonists from the Time Bokan franchise such as Yatterman, Zenderman, Rescueman, Firebird (from Yattodetaman), Gyakuten Ippatsuman and Itadakiman. Of course that bears no weight at all on the actual gameplay, I just wanted to stress how much fan service Time Bokan / Time Fighters aficionados will find here.

The good news is that the gameplay, albeit offbeat and weird, offers enough substance for fans of the shooting genre to have some fun. While it doesn't push the envelope on any aspect whatsoever, it does strike a peculiar balance between risk and reward. In short, play safe and enjoy a laid back ride, or get cocky and risk losing the credit in a flash.  

Intro and first stage half of Time Bokan Series: Bokan To Ippatsu! Doronbō Kanpekiban
(courtesy of YouTube user Japanspel)

Three inputs need to be used in order to play Bokan To Ippatsu! Doronbō Kanpebikan: shot, bomb and dash. By default these work respectively with buttons A/C, B and L/R, but you can switch to a couple of other fixed configurations if you go to the Options from the start screen. In each level you must chose one vehicle from an initial assortment of six (after the third level another three become available), but you can't select the same vehicle twice in a row. All vehicles have specific abilities for movement, shield and firepower, with their own unique shot patterns. Bombs, on the other hand, have only two variations for all of them and behave in a very special way: a press of the button arms the bomb, and once it's ready another press releases it. Whenever you're on ground level they come out as arching exploding blasts, but if you're underwater or you're flying they come out as straight missiles. Bombs are also unlimited, and are the most important feature for scoring.

Using bombs for scoring is quite simple actually. The more enemies you destroy in a single blast the more you score. In a nutshell, it all comes down to identifying the best moments for bombing. Now for the catch: besides not granting any invincibility to the player, whenever you have a bomb armed and you get hit all your energy is lost, the vehicle is destroyed and the Doronbō gang is forced to ride a weak bike armed with only a pea shot, one hit away from GAME OVER. All is not lost though, since you can recover the vehicle form if you can survive long enough either to enter the next stage (the health bar is replenished at the start of every level) or to get to the next skull item carrier (it will release a shiny helmet icon that brings back the vehicle with the energy level you had prior to losing it).

Other items you might get from these carriers or by destroying random enemies consist of power-up (D), health refill (birds), temporary turbo speed (pink cat), power down (a dark helmet), point bonus (diamonds) and extra credit (potion). Most of the items you'll come across, however, will be golden and silver skulls that fill up a meter on the top of the screen. If the meter reaches 100 the vehicle will turn into a huge invincible mecha as the meter decreases towards zero. Besides becoming invincible, you will also recover all your energy level when this happens. The only downside is that you'll be unable to use bombs, which makes collecting skulls only really useful for survival (strategic or not). Skulls aren't worth any points whatsoever.

A rematch against boss Gyakuten Ippat(s)uman in stage 7

Most of the time the game is rather easygoing. Reaching max power makes the ride even easier, but you need to collect all three Ds to achieve it in every level. There are a few parts that do incur in inevitable perils though, and stage 5 is notorious for having almost all of them: the screen scrolling sideways faster than you're able to move, exploding mines, beams that fall over your head if you destroy them at the wrong moment and also one of the trickiest bosses in the whole game. However, when the going gets rough don't forget that you can always use the dash input in order to literally get through any hazard. This short lateral move makes you invincible at the cost of some recovery time, but it does wonders against some of the most threatening attacks from bosses. Unfortunately, if you've been knocked down to bike form you can't use neither the dash nor any bombs.

A few details are bound to bother some people such as the consufing firing patterns of a few vehicles, bullets being dangerously engulfed by explosions or the intrusive animations that pop up all the time in the lower display (left for player 1, right for player 2), which impair visibility when you least expect it. Other than that it's just a matter of adapting to the strange rules of the gameplay, coping with the abundance of silly dialogue/voices and enjoying the goofy art design, which ranges from clunky to deliciously creative.

Click for the option menus translation for Bokan To Ippatsu! Doronbō Kanpekiban

The biggest difference from this game and its Playstation counterpart is that Kanpekiban comes with one more stage prior to the final level, an urban area at nighttime with suspended bridges and parks full of trees. A few extra animated sections and minor tweaks applied to the presentation and the sound during boss introductions complete the package. Nothing changed in the actual gameplay, which still does not reset your score if you decide to continue (automatic save is implemented by default though).

My 1CC score shown below was achieved on Normal difficulty. The sequel Bokan Desu Yo is only available on the Playstation, so that's where I'll head next in order to see beautiful bad lady Doronjo in action again. After her win against the good guys in Bokan To Ippatsu! the poor thing still doesn't get to celebrate victory. On the contrary, you almost feel sorry for what happens to the trio once the final boss goes down.

Fantasy Zone (Playstation 2)

Horizontal
Checkpoints ON
3 Difficulty levels
12 Stages
Ship speed by icons
- - - - - - -
Developed by Sega
Published by Sega / 3D Ages in 2003

When Sega decided to bring its most famous games back to the spotlight with the Sega Ages 2500 discs for the Playstation 2 in Japan, fans were not exactly sure what to expect. The 3D remakes proposed by the series were promising on paper, yet didn't always reach the standards everybody was hoping for. I still can't vouch for the quality of the rest of the games in this collection, but what I've seen so far is enough to agree with the opinion that Vol. 3 is probably one of its best regarded outings. It presents a nice makeover of Fantasy Zone, the classic torus cute'em up we've all come to know and love.

For those who might be a little confused, there's also a Fantasy Zone Complete Collection, which was the last Sega Ages 2500 release as Vol. 33 and consists of a compilation of all major games and ports in the series plus a few arrange modes that are quite interesting on their own. However, Fantasy Zone as presented in Vol. 3 is a standalone game that's not included in Vol. 33, and a mandatory one for lovers of the franchise because it comes with four brand-new exclusive levels and bosses. Another highlight of this particular title is the cell-shaded redesign applied to all graphics and the nice 3D sections and transitions it allows during the game itself.

Note: this edition of Fantasy Zone also saw release as part of the Sega Classics Collection compilation, which came out in different regions other than Japan.

Meet new boss Skarotten of the Dawndusk stage

In the start menu you can select from three different modes. Normal is the main game and includes all new material exclusive to this port. Arcade is a faithful rendition of the original arcade game, only retouched by the cell-shaded graphic overhaul. Challenge mode is a special section where you're allowed to play individual stages in order to collect gold coins and use them to purchase new options, weapons and stages (this is how you unlock the extra levels for Normal mode only).

Controls are the same for every variation of the game. One button shoots and another drops bombs. Each stage consists of a closed area where ten evil generators spawn most of the enemies and hazards. The player's mission is to destroy all generators by flying left or right and then kill the stage boss. Scrolling speed can be affected by how close you are to the sides, but you can also land Opa-Opa on the ground and completely halt scrolling. Enemies will, however, approach from all sides and in the most diverse formations, so there's no fixed behavior for anything you see except for the fact that most enemies will leave behind gold coins when destroyed.

Gold coins collected are to be used in the shop accessed by touching a floating balloon that approches from the top of the screen. Some items are essential, such as twin missiles a choice for speed-up. Others might have timed ammo (20s) or are limited to single use only (you can buy more of the same though). Before leaving the shop you can still choose which item within a category (speed, shot, bomb) you'll be using. Dying strips you off of everything you might have purchased, so you need to buy them again – just note that except for speed-ups all items suffer inflation and increase in price for each consecutive purchase. Gold coins and extra lives are converted into a huge bonus upon completing the game, so the main objective when playing for score is to get to the end by no-missing with lots of gold collected. This bonus totally outweighs any milking you might be inclined to make during the levels, unless your idea of scoring higher is to spend countless hours shooting and dodging stuff for peanuts.

The main differences of Normal mode, which is the main game mode of this Fantasy Zone iteration, consist of a brief special entry for Opa Opa in every level and the game switching to a rail shooting point of view when bosses are defeated. They will then spit out gold coins for 20 seconds before exploding into coins as they would in the original game. Every extra weapon and resource unlocked in Challenge mode will also be available here. However, if you haven't still unlocked all extra stages you'll get a bad ending when beating the game. Another important feature of Normal mode is that it doesn't loop.

Plaleaf redesigned
(courtesy of YouTube user MorayAbiss)

Extra stages in Normal mode match the tone of the original game perfectly. Graphics, music and bosses are colorful, catchy and original. It doesn't take long to unlock them in Challenge mode, and that's equally the case with other very precious unlocks such as "auto rapid" and "barrier". Auto rapid gives you a fixed autofire rate that lets you breeze through the game if you're familiar with it. That's great to amass the highest amount of gold possible because the longer you take to destroy your enemies the lesser value you'll get from them gold coins (I almost felt guilty for wielding such a copius firepower level though). Barrier appears as an extra item in the shop and is self-explanatory: it gives you a shield that can withstand 3 hits from regular bullets. It doesn't protect you from collisions though, so watch out for touching what you absolutely shouldn't.

As a glorified arrange mode of Fantasy Zone, I can definitely say I had great fun with this port. I particularly liked the fact that Normal mode ends after you beat the final boss. Once I unlocked the extra levels and got barrier and auto rapid I didn't bother with Challenge mode anymore. You can still get other stuff like "continue" and "infla", which does away with all the inflation when purchasing items the shop (!). However, if you fancy extras such as design and character models, watch out for red coins when playing Challenge mode. Each red coin unlocks one game character in the Gallery mode. Everything is automatically saved to the memory card, with high scores duly registered in separate tables for both main game modes.

My general strategy for Normal mode was to get the jet engine and twin bombs in the first stage, 7-way shot in the Pocarius level and 3 heavy bombs in the boss rush of the final level (one for boss KobaBeach, another for boss Pickon and a final one for last boss Opapa's final minion). The best results I got on Normal mode are below, playing in the normal difficulty with game region set to Japan, auto rapid activated and barrier unlocked:

And now for my final results on Arcade mode, Japan setting, normal difficulty. I reached stage 3-4 (round 21) and adopted pretty much the same strategy described above, except for boss Pickon.

Fullblast (Playstation 4)

Vertical
Checkpoints OFF
3 Difficulty levels
12 Stages
Ship speed fixed
- - - - - - -
Developed by UFO Crash Games
Published by Ratalaika Games / Red Art Games in 2019

Another low-budget title released digitally for multiple platforms, Fullblast also landed on the Playstation 4 in retail form to deliver twelve stages of shooting action. While flashy enough to provide fun for children and newcomers to the genre, it will probably make everyone else snooze when playing, as it honestly did to me a couple of times. In short, don't expect any sort of real excitement if your idea of shmupping is being challenged with exhilarating dodging as you fly through lots of varied environments.

In the world of Fullblast the player is sent to battle in order to fight alien invaders that have infested planet Earth. Each one of the three environments (city, forest, ocean) gets increasingly more wrecked by the creatures across four levels: in the first three regular bosses appear to stop you, whereas a giant alien creature awaits at the end of every fourth area. It's a very straightforward structure whose best feature is certainly the basis for the enemy gallery. Pretty much all enemies are insects, with a few marine creatures thrown in amidst the expected assortment of mandatory turrets. Other than that, every once in a while the scrolling halts so that you can face a turret mid-boss surrounded by regular minion waves.

A river raid over the jungle

Before delving into the actual gameplay, it's interesting to note that the game visuals are somewhat decent. Graphics are clean and quite detailed in the way they try to convey terrain raided by alien creatures. You see cars going back and forth, boats and ships adrift at the mercy of the wind, bridges and facilities destroyed by derelict motherships. The only problem is that the game is very repetitive and never picks up the pace, so no matter how cool the graphics look soon you'll get tired of them. Repetition is also the main issue with the soundtrack and its generic hard rock themes that make no lasting impression on anyone.

Shot and bomb are the only commands you'll ever use in Fullblast. Once the ship (or ships in co-op play) takes flight and enters the first area, items will start appearing at random as you destroy your enemies. The pea shot can be upgraded by taking the appropriate icons for straight shot and spread shot. Pick up three items of the same type to max it out, and watch as a slow automatically firing heat-seeking missile appears in the last upgrade. Other items include extra bombs, extra lives, energy refills (heart), temporary score multiplier (2×), temporary rapid fire (arrow), temporary shield (S) and a bogus pick-up that lowers your firing rate for a brief while (a spiky red ball). Some of these items tend to get mixed with the colorful backgrounds, so keep an eye out for them.

The energy refill mentioned above recovers part of the health bar that comes with each life, which takes a lot of beating to get depleted. The levels themselves aren't much of a threat, but the ramming and spraying attacks of some bosses can take you by surprise the first time you get to them. It takes only one encounter to memorize patterns though, so the little pressure there is soon disappears and gives way to more boredom. Speaking of which, stretching out levels in order to obtain a longer game is what Fullblast unfortunately does best. The game allows you to select a starting stage from those you've already reached, but what's the point if two thirds of them are essentially the same?

Multiplatform trailer for Fullblast
(courtesy of YouTube user and publisher Ratalaika Games)

A valid way to describe Fullblast is that it's a slightly improved take on the style pioneered by developer/publisher Phoenix Games, who were the European kings of crappy releases during the PS2 era. Those who know what I'm talking about will immediately recognize the similarities. The game's got many long levels with little to no variation in the enemy gallery, as well as repetitive design and completely forgettable music.

I was expecting the creature from the box art to be one of the bosses, but he's just a spore-spitting worm that appears halfway into the jungle area. It's the same attack from the carnivorous plants, in what's commonplace behavior for many other enemies. At least the scoring system isn't stupidly broken, and exploiting the time given by the 2× score multiplier is the only way to actually try to score higher.

The picture below shows my best completion results when playing on Normal difficulty. Beware of pausing: I had the game freeze on me once when I paused almost at the same moment the pre-boss message appeared. It was impossible to unpause or even to close the game through the PS4 interface!

Raiden Fighters (Xbox 360)

Vertical
Checkpoints OFF
7 Difficulty levels
7 Stages
Ship speed fixed, selectable at start
- - - - - - -
Developed by Seibu Kaihatsu / Gulti
Published by Success in 2008

No matter how famous and admired the games from the classic Raiden franchise were in the world of arcade shmupping, many people were also critical about the slow speed of their ships and the way it affected their whole perception of challenge. Perhaps in order to address this, a couple of years after Raiden DX came out developer Seibu Kaihatsu decided to shake things up by releasing a spin-off title that boosted the action considerably while retaining the general feel of their quintessencial formula. And so a new series was born with Raiden Fighters, a shooter that for all purposes is like a regular Raiden game, only on steroids.

Raiden Fighters appears on the Xbox 360 library alongside its sequels in the Raiden Fighters Aces compilation, which saw release both in Japan and the US. It's a mandatory item on its own, but the Japanese disc is the best option if you need to choose one simply because it also comes with a special DVD that contains superplays for all three games. The interface is all in English, which is great, and includes a plethora of visual tweaks (TATE obviously included), local/online leaderboards and the ability to record your own runs. Speaking of the first Raiden Fighters, you can even change its name to Gun Dogs, which was actually the game's working title before the developer decided for a change prior to the arcade release.

That said, I must confess my history with Raiden Fighters isn't beautiful at all. Upon first contact I hated the game with a passion, a reaction that's quite common once you realize how unfriendly it is to unaware players who enjoy the scoring aspect of a shoot'em up. The entry ticket to the scoring techniques in this game is just too high, hence the reason for my giving up on it several times. Long story short, it took me a great deal of resolve to finally get serious about clearing it.

On the surface Raiden Fighters isn't any different from its classic roots. Choose one of the available fighter crafts and face seven stages of pure, relentless shooting action. Each fighter has defined characteristics for attack, defense and speed, as well as specific firepower variations according to the L or M icons you'll be picking up along the way. Controls consist of shot, bomb and rapid shot, fully configurable as you see fit in your joystick, as well as other more uncommon inputs such as rapid bomb (why?) and quick restart (very useful). Quick, in fact, is the middle name of the game here, since loading times are pretty much non-existent and you'll certainly be restarting a lot when trying to score.

My Raiden Fighters 1CC with ship Aegis on Raiden Fighters Aces for the Xbox 360

Keeping with the tradition set forth by Raiden DX, this game is full of unintuitive secrets that range from trivial to extremely tricky to pull off. Some of the trivial ones relate to the selection of special ships and stage order, but fortunately the Xbox 360 port makes things easier by having (almost) all ships at the start screen and allowing you to choose a stage order before the credit is even started. This way you can define the order for stages 1 (forest) and 2 (airfield), as well as 4 (arctic zone) and 5 (railyard). Stages 3 (ocean), 6 (thunderstorm) and 7 (fortress) will always be fixed since they are actually the main goal of each one of the three missions you must complete in order to defeat the military forces of an evil dictator. This military motif, by the way, is the main design change from classic Raiden titles, which used to propel you to outer space in the second half of the game.

Graphics are crisp and extremely colorful, with an enemy gallery that encompasses all sorts of terrestrial and aerial opposition. Tanks and ships of all shapes and sizes, sniping turrets in every possible configuration, slow moving bombers, kamikaze plane formations and furious bosses with multiple forms/patterns. The music, on the other hand, is a collection of accelerated techno tracks that in my opinion severely undermines the game's appreciation. One might argue the soundtrack matches the pace of the action, but most of the time it just comes off as grating noise that evokes continuous desperation. The song in the railyard level is kinda nice towards the end, but that's it.

Playing Raiden Fighters as you would any other shmup is fun, but quite challenging. Shoot, dodge, bomb, pick up items along the way, fire charged attacks by holding and releasing shot when the ship glows. Survival play is as simple as that, but once you dig a little deeper into how to score better the game becomes a completely different kind of beast, and that's where secrets start to become important. In a nutshell, you won't get anywhere unless you learn how to boost the value of those tiny little medals. In order to do that players must follow very strict rules and routes. It's totally useless to try to figure out these rules on your own, even if you have a lifetime to spend. The best advice I can give is sit back, relax, choose a proper superplay to watch and read this awesome webpage with great attention.

The first rule to increase medal point value is that each medal must be collected before the next one appears. If you don't do that all subsequent medals on screen will have the same value as the first one. That said, a short recipe to proceed is this: increase medal value from 10 to at least 80, then grab the S icon to summon a slave (an option craft that flies beside the main fighter); increase medal value from 100 to 900, then grab a second S so that you have two slaves; without letting any slave die (they die from taking too much damage), increase medal value from 1.000 to 10.000; at this point all medals will be large and of a golden color; in order to break the 10.000 barrier you must have 10 medals on screen at the same time, which will then cause a big explosion and activate the final medal scale, which goes from 10.000 to 100.000; afterwards all medals will be worth 100.000 points provided you don't lose any of them with no other medal on screen, a situation that resets their value to 10.000 points and requires you to increase them back up again to 100.000 (with each medal reset at least 450.000 points are lost).

Aside from keeping both slaves alive halfway the process above, the trickiest part is to get ten 10K medals at once for the break explosion. The easiest way to do that is by uncovering a miclus. Some micluses will only appear if you fulfill certain actions, but luckily most of them will come out just by hovering at specific spots. With a miclus uncovered, shoot it and watch as the required shower of medals fills up the screen (micluses are also worth 100.000 points). The side effect of unlocking high medal values is that once you do that the game's difficulty skyrockets, with bullets coming twice as faster at you. The good news is that deaths don't affect medal values and considerably decrease the ongoing rank. The bad news is that Raiden Fighters has no extends at all.

Chaser's missile curtain of death

Even though medal chaining is the most important aspect of scoring, there are lots of other ways to score higher. One of them is uncovering fairies. Besides being worth 100.000 points each (if you don't kill them), almost all of them will hand out an extra bomb. Other bonuses can be gained by bullet grazing/scratching, speed killing medium-sized enemies, destroying two parts of them within one second from each other and even "defending" certain parts of the scenario (the houses close to the boss in the forest stage). No matter how well you have planned your routes – and you definitely need to plan ahead – there's always room to uncover a new secret or to squeeze a few more points from the game.

As if all those secrets weren't enough of a hassle to learn, different ships will certainly require distinct approaches to uncovering them. All original default fighters have specific attacks for Missile and Laser, but the ones originated in previous games behave differently. The Raiden mk-II (from Raiden II) and the Judge Spear (from Viper Phase 1) have only one firing pattern, no charge shots and drop their original bombs instead of the new firestar shrapnel bomb. They also start with three bombs in stock instead of two. There's also the extra Slave ship that can be selected by pressing shot + bomb over the fighter craft whose speed and color you want to inherit. Slaves are great because of their reduced hitbox, but they have only one firing pattern and no charge shot whatsoever.

The main game mode in Raiden Fighters is Arcade, which also comes with a Boss Rush variation for those interested. In Score Attack mode you have 100 seconds to achieve the highest score possible with no medals and different places for secrets. Finally, in Training mode players can adjust every aspect of a run in order to practice individual stages. It's a very helpful and flexible tool if you can't resource to emulation for training. I used it extensively to get better at the final levels.

I chose to beat Arcade mode with the Aegis fighter, and accomplished my mission in Arcade difficulty with the final result shown below (note that Normal doesn't match the original arcade difficulty). It was a tough but very fulfilling ride, one that helped me lift my grudge against the game. Now let's see how long it will take me to man up towards the sequel!