A HERO FOR THE EARTH
40 "Danger Zone" reviews.
To celebrate that, let's check the second entry of the Cresta series: Terra Cresta on the Arcade Archives line.
A little bit like Xevious.
Terra Cresta breaks with the Galaxian influences of Moon Cresta and brings us something more advanced, challenging and dangerous. To begin with, the game ditches the single screen to a constant, non-stop scrolling stage packed with both air and ground targets. For the first time in the series, the game throws ground based targets against you, but unlike Xevious, you don't need an Air-to-Ground weapon to destroy them. When the enemy sends you missiles, drones and even dinosaurs against you, you expect one thing: Have more firepower. Here's the good news: You're no longer the 1 bullet on screen ship anymore. As the gameplay evolved, so does your ship. To begin with, your firepower has a much better fire rate allowing you to be at the game's new pace. But what's more important and becomes the "game changer" are the use and merge of ship parts. While the idea of adding parts to your default fighter was already applied by Data East on the FX-1 from B-Wings (1984), Nichibutsu takes that to a higher level with the Winger (Unit Alpha) in Terra Cresta, since you can combine not with one or two, but with four parts. Each one providing different powers: Unit Beta grants you a double Twin Shot for frontal attacks, Unit Gamma is the back shot, giving you a chance to attack enemies behind you, Unit Delta grants you a powerful thick bullet, increasing the offensive firepower on your full frontal offensive and Unit Epsilon which acts like a shield emitting a short ranged wave, but also acts as the failsafe when the Wing Galiber takes a hit, being the first part destroyed preventing the destruction of the full combination. Another hit and all the combined parts go down. But getting all five parts doesn't mean just firepower, once they're combined, they turn your ship into a phoenix or like the flyer said "Sky dominating Firebird", making you invincible and limiting your firepower to twin shots, but you can ram against anything while being the invincible bird. Keep in mind, you can only transform into the Firebird once, to do that again you have to lose all your ship parts and pick them again.
Merge, split, fire, repeat.
You can do this regardless if the ship's complete or not.
At first you might think Terra Cresta's key gameplay is picking up ship parts, but that's only part of the whole gameplay. Merging with your components and turn into a Phoenix isn't just all, the best part of the game is that you can split your compoments to unleash a new attack feature called "Formation Shots". Based on how many Wing Galiber parts are combined with the Winger, the attack will differ.
MOON FORMATION (Winger + 1 Unit): The connected unit will detach and provide more power to the Winger shooting crescent shaped beams
EXTEND FORMATION (Winger + 2 Units): When two connected units separate from the Winger, their attack will divide into a triple twin shot backed up with twin diagonal side shots. They might look like weak twin shots, but they're quite strong.
CYCLONE FORMATION (Winger + 3 Units): If the Wing Galiber detaches after picking three units, they will combine their power firing spiraling bullets that cover a large area of the screen, useful for multi directional attacks.
CROSS FORMATION (Winger + 4 Units): When all the 4 components of the Wing Galiber detaches from the Winger, they will fire spread bullets that cross their trajectories with each other and the Winger's shots. Despite its weak look, they're indeed powerful
Keep in mind, splitting the ship acts as the bomb of the game as they consume 1 Formation Point and when they're separated, only the Winger is vulnerable to enemy fire. Since splitting acts with the "bomb format", you will have to be very tactical about when to use it, even if that means burning a formation attack to save the integrity of your ship. The game is quite short, since it only has two bosses (Chubo and Daicon) and the final boss, Mandler itself. After defeating Mandler, the game loops until you run out of lives.
The damage dealt to enemies is on the considerable levels, except for the Eleking who looks like it takes almost forever to take it down even with the Wing Galiber combined, forcing you to split the ship in order to destroy it quickly.
You're powerless against Mandler. Fail and you're dead.
Win and you'll see Mandler going down humilliated by a weak fighter.
Terra Cresta had a few home ports. Being the Commodore 64, the Sharp X68000, the NES and ZX Spectrum the lucky ones on bringing home the fight against Mandler. While the X68000 port is the most arcade accurate port, it was the NES the most common since it had both Japanese and American releases. But it was until 2005 when the game was released on the PlayStation 2 as part of the Oretachi Gesen Zoku series where it had not just an arcade perfect por of the game, but a plethora of bonus content for a physical release like a soundtrack with remixes, collector's card, marquee replica and a DVD with a superplay. After that release, the battle with Mandler on Earth was put to sleep until 2015 when the game was re-released on the PlayStation 4 and Switch as part of Arcade Archives.
Graphically, it is far more advanced than Moon Cresta. According to Nichibutsu's flyer, it utilizes "16-Bit 68000 Hardware High Tech" which means its core/engine is based on the Sharp X68000, and that means a major, vast and bright color palettes that rivals and even matches most of the mid 80's arcade games. If you think Terra Cresta looks like Xevious, then Terra Cresta is a super improvement of what Namco did with Xevious. But the sound department is the best part of it, since the explosions and dinosaur roars are more like digitized sounds rather than chiptune sounds just like the music sounds, which sounds ahead of the 80's since it has the same quality as the Sega Genesis. Yes, this is the first Cresta game that has full background music, which has some superhero-influenced paces in the style of both American and Japanese hero flicks of that era.
TERRA CRESTED FUN FACTS
Be Wing Galiber, and fight against Wing Galiber!
- The arcade flyers called the Wing Galiber as the TC-1, however in Sol Cresta, that designation number is never mentioned.
- It was also depiced with a more bird-like design.
- While the flyer calls the Phoenix as "Firebird", in Sol Cresta, the Phoenix transformation is known as "Phoenix Blaze".
- The game description in Arcade Archives website calls Mandler as "Mandora".
- As an Arcade Archives title, it is the first Nichibutsu game in the collection and fifth game overall.
- The Wing Galiber made an appearance on Sol Cresta as part of the "Legendary Fighters" DLC, as an NPC support character and as a Mega Zofer/Sol Mandler enemy called Wing Galiber Replica.
- According to Sol Cresta's Dramatic Mode, Noburo Tendo was the pilot of the player's Wing Galiber.
- The manuals in Sol Cresta wrongly call the Wing Galiber (and Wing Galiber II) as "Wing Galibur".
- While Sol Cresta wrongly writes the ship's name, the Arcade Archives manual writes it correctly.
- The formation names of the Wing Galiber were carried on the Yamato / Fusou / Musashi's formation attacks.
- An illustration of the Wing Galiber done by Izmojuki is currently used by Hamster as the header pic on their Twitter account.
Three Fingered T-Rexes had institutional origins.
- The "Dragon" is actually a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
- The three fingered depiction is based on the early reconstructions, specifically the old AMNH5027 whose skeleton was completed giving it arms based on the Allosaurus since T-Rex's arms were unknown.
- The tripod pose of the Dragon is also based on early theropod reconstructions (Mostly on the Allosaurus, Megalosaurus and T-Rex).
Someone had to teach Mandler a lesson.
Terra Cresta is a classic in arcade shooters as it featured an entirely new concept which was the formations and the change of scenery switching space for a more in Earth shooting experience.
If you're a Cresta fan or a simple shmup gamer who wants some vintage action, you should give Terra Cresta a try.
Positive results, just as everyone expected.