Vintage Genesis action at its finest.
Ratalaika brought us a surprise this time.
Not another average indie game, but a Genesis classic, and it's no other than Advance Busterhawk Gleylancer. A Japanese Megadrive shmup now available for the rest of the world.
And let's not [EXPLETIVE] Cabrock. Your family name ain't the best in the Navy.
You need to be doing it better, and cleaner than the other girls, but what is it with you?
Looks like we're talking about "The Elite. Best of the Best" this time. Just like the Thunder Force series. That's right, time to talk about a good shmup, and you've really deserve a good game review, since there's more good shooters and games than bad ones, and Gleylancer is one of those good games that deserved a worldwide release since its original debut (Why Sega and Renovation Products didn't released it on the US like Gaiares and Vapor Trail just baffles me).
Stay Cool, the enemy is hot on your trail.
The core feature of Gleylancer is the Gunner System which allows the player to select 1 of the many configurations like the Shadow which can best be described as the equivalent of the Options from Gradius and the Search that auto aims for an enemy and its efficiency can be improvised depending on the weapon you pick. There's no Power Ups to improve the main shot of the Busterhawk, instead there's weapons to change the Gunner's equipment and you'll have to learn how to use them, since there's the basic fire like the Twin Shot and the Laser, short ranged weapons like the Saber and Burner, the slow but powerful Spread Bomb or the bouncing Bound, but my favorite is the 5-Way, because that weapon, combined with the Shadow formation is a lethal combination that can take down bosses quickly. Speed is also another essential in this game, since you'll be facing hazards like falling debris and blocks that move and require to navigate through them, even clearing your path in Stage 9 using the Rebound or the Saber. This is also where selecting the most appropiate Mover plays the key role in your mission. Some Movers have alternate configurations like "Roll 1" which aims outwards as a spinning vertical fire, but can be changed to "Roll 2" which changes the aim to an horizontal fire like the Claw/CRAW from the Thunder Force series and the Shadow can be locked in place like in Gradius V allowing you to shoot enemies above or below you, even keep those away from your ship.
If you play Gleylancer like if you play Thunder Force III you'll be killed. Yes, the "Roll" Mover can be adjusted to behave like the Claw/CRAW from Thunder Force and the E.D.F. satellites as well, but they don't absorb enemy fire, and that's where the game fires its difficulty exploitation: Lack of shield items. You might have an array of formations for the Mover and a switchable arsenal of weapons, but without a shield for the ship or a shield function on the Mover, you're completely exposed to enemy fire, kinda like in Metal Black. Unlike Metal Black, if you lose a life you'll be sent back to the previous checkpoint, that's where the game hits you with its second difficulty exploitation: "The R-Type laws" making the die and go back the standard during the playthrough, not to mention, if you die and continue you'll go back to the beginning of the stage. While odds seems to be against you, there is some hope for the player. You have unlimited continues and the option to select another Mover formation in case you think failure was because of picking a wrong formation. Also, you can get extra lives by either items or getting 200,000 points. The second one sounds quite tricky, but...
Want to know how to get 3 million points?
This is the secret.
...There's an exploitable trick in Stage 3. During the second form of the boss, you can destroy the popcorn projectiles fired, in the right angle and with the right formation, you can get a virtually endless amount of points giving you incredible chances of finishing the game in a single credit, of course, depending also on which difficulty level you're playing.
Stage 10: Saving Admiral Cabrock
Unlocking the Good Ending of this game is simple enough: In Stage 10 you'll see an escape pod chased by a enemy armed ship. You have to destroy the ship that shoots the capsule piloted by Ken (Lucia's dad, not the Mattel doll or the Street Fighter character). You can screw up a few times since its a multi-stage rocket being the boosters and a couple of parts of its main frame the ones to go without killing him until a small pod is launched. If that goes down, then he dies and you'll get the bad ending.
Gleylancer was re-relased on 2008 for the Nintendo Wii as part of the Virtual Console, but 13 years later, Ratalaika Games, together with Shinyuden released the game once again. This time for the Switch, PlayStations 4-5 and XBOX One and Series X|S. However, this release is more than just a translation; the classic Megadrive/Genesis is kept as the "Vintage" gameplay mode while the main mode is called "Modern". While "Vintage" has the original opening cutscene and engrishy bad ending, the Modern translates the cutscene and corrects the epilogue which is now used on both endings, but the most interesting of all is the new Mover configuration. While in the original game you can only choose one single formation, here you can switch between all of them, making it more similar to the Satellite formations from Super E.D.F.: Earth Defense Force. Rather than look like a cheat, it makes the game much more functional as this allows the player to adjust the Mover formation to handle a tight situation much easier. Also, you can rotate the Movers with the Right Analog stick for a custom aiming if you want to lock in other directions or fix the side shots in a different angle. This makes me think this is the way Gleylancer was intended to be played but the game was way ahead of its time since the Genesis wasn't capable of said features.
Like most compilations it includes a Save State function. Like the Forza series, it includes a rewind function if you messed up and don't want to use save states. A minor change is the way to unlock the Mania difficulty which it requires to finish the game on Hard to unlock it rather than using a cheat. Speaking of cheats, there's a Cheater Mode which unlocks autoplay and invincibility. This mode, honestly, it was unnecessary since it turns a great game into a 40 minute Gamerscore/Trophy Milker and that's not the way this game is intended to be played.
Yeah, the Ratalaika release incudes Achievements/Trophies for the sake of a little Trophy Hunt and 1,000 challenging enough Gamerscore points since the game's difficulty will pull some challenge up to Stage 4. Vintage Mode disables the achievement unlocking for the sake of classic gameplay.
Action Packed!
Graphically, we can say Tecno Soft inspired the whole game, as the game's graphic aspects are in-between Thunder Force III and Thunder Force IV/Lightening Force as the game relies multiple parallax scrolling in the majority of the stages, being Stage 1 and 2 the most notorious as the asteroids and rivers move on their own speeds resembling tides on the distance and the speed of the asteroids on Saturn's rings. The ship and the Movers have a glowing aura surrounding them and changes its color based on what weapon the Movers are equipped. The use of "gradient" effects on the fonts are a point above Thunder Force's plain colored fonts in the status bar. Only the somewhat "dark" color palette of the Genesis is the giveaway hint to realize this is a Genesis game, otherwise anyone would believe this is a SNES or an early Neo-Geo shmup.
Your lovely, sweet lady.
No shmup is complete at all without the Anime style. Unlike the common 80-90's popular styles of Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball, Chrono Trigger), Masami Kurumada (Saint Seiya, BT'X) or Naoko Takeuchi (Sailor Moon), Gleylancer's character style is more influenced by the style of Gainax/Hideaki Anno "Pre-Evangelion" era (Daicon IV, Gunbuster, Royal Space Force) and Studio Pierrot works (mostly Area 88). Even if for today's anime standards look old, they are unrivaled up to this day and show they can survive the pass of time.
You don't own that plane, the taxpayers do.
Throughout a few stages, you'll be watching cutscenes where the story is explained, and thank goodness for the localization/translation because unlike the standard localizations where they removed and renamed things, they kept names and characters "as is" like in the original japanese release.
The "Drawing-to-Pixel" transition faithfully rendered.
In a curious fact, the game artwork was rendered into pixel art in a very well made level. For instance, this promotional illustration which looks like a screenshot of an anime, it was used on the Stage 3 cutscene.
If you hear the music is obvious that Tecno Soft was a heavy influence in the game as the FM Synth reminds a lot of the Thunder Force series which this game tries to look like along with a hint of Air Buster to complete the fast paced, anime-like style. There's voice samples for the in-game navigation and weapon names, being "Stick to it and believe in your power" and "A huge enemy stands in your way" the most notorious of all.
ADVANCED CURIOSITYHAWK TRIVIALANCER
- Since Ken Cabrock's eyes are brown, it implies that Lucia's green eyes are an aspect inherited from her mother.
- The term "sunk" is quite incoherent for space use since there's no water for the ship to be effectively sunk. It is possible that the term was used as a way to censor the word "Destroyed".
It's good to know things ended just as everybody expected.
While Thunder Force III, Thunder Force IV, Vapor Trail: Hyper Offence Formation, Battle Squadron and After Burner II were good enough reasons to own a Megadrive, Gleylancer is also among them. The recent ports of XBOX, PlayStation, PC and Switch are more than just a simple re-release of the original game with the extra features that greatly improves the game making it look more like how it was really intended to be, a "Complete Edition" if you want to call it like that.
This time, Ratalaika made an excellent job bringing this Japan-only Megadrive shooter almost 30 years since its original release. If you missed it back then and missed the Wii release and you don't like to play it on emulators, then this is the closest and best option available.
Need to say more? It's a must buy.
P.D.: Looks like this Ratalaika, Shinyuden and Masaya team-up is planning to re-release more classics with the upcoming release of Gynoug (Wings of Wor).
Now, if they should consider to bring a translation of the original Assault Suits Valken so we can retire Konami's butchered-censored Cybernator and forget the horrible Psikyo/X-nauts PS2 remake...