PCEngine shmup recommendations

[HardcoreOtaku]

Dunno if it has been mentioned or not, but Final Soldier is pretty great stuff too, especially for beginners.

I agree it would be good for beginners as it's an easy game but I think it's the weakest of PC Engine Soldier games.

[Pretas]

Final Soldier is easy on Normal but a proper challenge on Hard. The bullet count is upped dramatically.

[CIT]

Override is really good fun, picked up a copy myself recently. It's obviously Compile-influenced, with the busy yet forgiving pace and regularly delivered items oscillating downscreen. But its stages are generally more concise and it also has several fun situational weapons that recall Irem (your ship's jet blast during speed changing even damages stuff, Image Fight style). Maybe a bit of Toaplan too, some enemy behaviour brings Tatsujin in particular to mind.

It's all executed soundly and with unmistakable enthusiasm. Most impressive feature is its speed - it regularly throws tons of large sprites around without a hint of slowdown. Also has a monstrous charge shot that's hugely gratifying to unleash (let off the fire button for a couple seconds). The cool "flying tank" ship isn't just for show either - Stages 4 and 5 are ground-based with walls and tight squeezes galore, the former in particular having absolutely gripping design. Reminds me of Elemental Master. Another touch I really like is, rather than having to collect the same weapon multiple times consecutively to upgrade it, you can switch to another and come back later - as long as you've had a weapon previously, the next time it's equipped it'll have gained a level. So it's actually beneficial to switch around early on.

Unfortunately it's definitely way too generous with hitpoints+lives (takes three hits to die, with HP restore items occasionally given, and plenty of score extends piling up in the meantime). I highly recommend treating lives as credits, and limiting yourself to two or three before resetting - otherwise, you'll probably finish it in a few attempts. I never make raw challenge the ultimate priority with console originals, but the devs were clearly playing it safe by allowing such an enormous margin for error - the game's way more interesting with Elemental Master's more sensible rules self-imposed.

Override is actually a port of the X68000 game Last Battalion. Never played that version, but it looks and sounds ace. Would be great if it's more challenging as well.

By the way, here's my scorelolololol. Once you counterstop you get an extend for every kill.

[CStarFlare]

Is Override the game that gives you points for every second left on the boss timer but the timer rolls over when you hit 0 seconds so it gives you several millions of points at the end of stage 1?

[CIT]

Nope. Although whatever game this is does sound awesome.

[CStarFlare]

Actually, it's Last Batillion - I suspect it was fixed in the PCE port, but I ran into it while playing with the game the very first time. After a quick youtube search I found a video whose comments showed I wasn't the only one to run into it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfUcMv57rHQ

Though now I think it's funny that it's countstoppable even the bug to help.

[CIT]

Interesting. Override has tons of safespots and no boss timeouts, so I just picked one with milkable missiles, put the fire button on auto, took a shower, made myself a sandwich, ran a couple of errands, and returned to an unlosable game.

Does this work with Last Batallion too?

[CStarFlare]

I'm not sure, I only got as far as stage 2 and wandered off because the boss thing was too silly.

[BIL]

Years ago when I was first discovering import shooters, I tried Override, liked it, then discovered I could park the ship behind the first boss with Yellow subweapon firing downward and counterstop the game. Immediately ditched it. Didn't even know about the extend-o-rama result. Oh wellz!

I always had the impression Last Battalion came later on and was an expanded remake of sorts. I'd get it for sure if I were into the X68k, way out of my orbit for now though.