Arcade Archives: Dangerous Seed (PlayStation 4|5 - Switch)

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Sturmvogel Prime
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Arcade Archives: Dangerous Seed (PlayStation 4|5 - Switch)

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DANGER ZONE (PART IV)
THAT'S RIGHT! ICE...MAN. I AM DANGEROUS (SEED)


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HIIIIIIGHWAY TO THE DANGER ZONE!
RIIIIIIDE INTO THE DANGER ZONE!


The Danger Zone keeps going on. Once again, Arcade Archives contributes a dose of intensity with Arcade Archives: Dangerous Seed.
Yeah, the Hamster-Namco-Bandai team-up threw this missing gem to us, making this release a surprise for all of us.



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Enemies are toobin' around and is up to you to take'em out.

At first, Dangerous Seed looks like your average vertical shooter, but the gameplay shows its twist on the basics as soon as your ship hits the screen. The first thing we notice is that rather than having lives with the same ship, each life is an unique ship: Alpha, Beta and Gamma Ships.

ALPHA SHIP (3 HP): This is the Full Frontal firing unit with rapid fire. Starting as a weak Twin Shot, it levels up to a powerful six bullet wide fire, but its rate slightly decreases. Its special attack is the Ring Laser, which fires ring shaped lasers to the sides. It is also the ship with the lowest HP.
BETA SHIP (4 HP): The Semi-Wide fire ship. Fires two shots with a slight diagonal inclination. The strength and size increases as they power up. Its special weapon is the Melt-Missile which fires homing missiles that generates an explosion upon impact. This ship has a middle armor due its average HP levels.
GAMMA SHIP (5 HP): The Power-Spread type machine. Fires a vulcan shot similar to the Alpha Ship, but its backed by ring shots that fire diagonally. Its special weapon is the Hyper-Bomb, a circular fire blast that damages enemies and destroys nearby bullets.

One of the major changes of the game is how your ship powers up. While most games require you to take an item, Dangerous Seed levels you up by killing a certain number of enemies, while the Items are meant for the Special Attacks, refill your energy and even skip part of a level (although this one is less convenient if you want to power up your ship). You can get a "Special Bonus" item that grants you an energy recovery. To get this one you have to rack a total of 4 Special Attacks and don't use them.
This was one of the first games to include a life bar, breaking with the tradition of being a "One Hit Wonder" of take a hit once and you're dead. However, since this was one of the first games to feature this concept, your ship doesn't have an afterhit invincibility, making it prone to instant death by physical collisions like in Turrican (Turridamage), and the game will use that disadvantage against you, being Tube 4 the absolute worst of all as we have these red enemies that swing a blade which will take you down in one hit along with the zako fire spam of Roller-Snail on Tube 3 which will result in the loss of the Alpha Ship 90% of the times. Also, losing a component will send you back to a checkpoint and getting a Game Over and continuing will result in restarting the level all over again.
Another detail that is not mentioned throughout the game is that the boss battles are timed. I've learned that during the fight with Hunter-Moth (Tube 4) as it escaped before I could damage it further. The reason is that the Alpha Ship's rapid fire even on its maximum, can't take all of the purple worms threw by the boss and hit it in time. This also happen with some of the enemies of the game that shoot bullet destructible projectiles to defend themselves, acting more cowardly than they should be.



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You can decide to go back at the beginning or restart where you left off.

This game is generous enough with the player on the continue. Allowing you to continue where you were killed or go all the way back to Tube 1 to power up and rack up a higher score. The game saves your score and raking name before hitting the continue screen. But here's a catch: Once you reach Stage 8, the game will disable the continue function, resulting in an inevitable Game Over, forcing you to go back to stage 1. For average gamers, this is where they pull the plug on the game.



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By your powers combined, I am Moon Diver!

Surviving with the three modules (or at least two of them) is important since the game will throw you the main feature: The combined ship "Moon Diver". This ship combines the total HP of the ships up to a staggering 12HP and utilizes the Hyper-Bomb of the Gamma Ship. This is clearly Namco's response to Nichibutsu's Terra Cresta and it is great to see how this concept was considered by a competitor. But there's a small problem in Dangerous Seed: If the ship goes down, there's no extra lives. You can continue up to Stage 7.
On a bright note, before the ships combine the remaining HP and Bombs add bonus points.



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When a few words feel like a reward is something to be appreciated.

So, you've made it to the end. Then you're tougher that I thought. With the Danger-Seed destroyed, this means one thing, go back home. Now you're a hero. An expert. Yeah, surviving this game was certainly tough and you've really deserve some rest after this.



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He can't just accept defeat...

After the mammoth task of clearing the final stage without dying, while you make your way back to Earth during the credits, an unmentioned enemy (clearly the Mastermind of all this mess) swears that peace will not last for long and throws the "To Be Continued" sequel threat which up to this day was not realized. I could say Namco should put the brakes on Ace Combat and The Idolmaster for a while and continue what they left off in this game, but there's one thing to mention. The Genesis port of Dangerous Seed which lacks the cliffhanger. My best theory about this is that the console version which added more levels seals the whole thing up.



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A game equipped for old school orbital warfare.

The graphics are the major achievement of this game since this was one of the first arcade titles with parallax scrolling. This is heavily noticed on the first four stages as we have a floor scrolling in a different speed than the background. Also, the artificial surfaces break with the "Linear-block" tradition and they become curved on Tube 4. While the Tube sections are the best part of the game, things quite fall apart in the planet-based levels as they take place on the black void of space, making them more "Orbit-based" and become repetitive as well. The music is a suspense-sci-fi mix that feels appropiate and fitting to the game's atmosphere, mostly on the tube sections that give them an sense of confinement and isolation, while the planet stages are more upbeat. While the majority of the game sounds uses the chiptune part of the soundboard, the explosions and alien death growls are digitized to make things more realistic.


DANGEROUS FUNFACTS

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In 2022, The Moon (Diver) will come to them.

- The development name "Kristallkern" was kept in the game's credits.
- The player death explosion sound is the same as the missile impact from After Burner II.
- The Arcade Archives version is the first arcade perfect port of the game and second console port overall.



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YOU! You're still dangerous!
You can be my wingman anytime.


Yngwie Malmsteen's song "Fury" said "I'll make you love the pain". If those words could be translated in game form, then Dangerous Seed is the closest thing to it. A furious, fast hard shooter for those who want to get hammered by the game's overwhelming adversities. While the combining ship feature is interesting and obviously an answer to Terra Cresta, the life bar flaw and the no-continue rule in Stage 8 will probably bring average players to their knees. You may want to pick it for the trophies, but if you're gonna play this for challenge, remember: It takes more than just fancy flying.



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The "Lea Scale" ranks it as neutral due to the difficulty.
Shizuka also agrees on that.
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