Mega Typhoon - Rare Toaplan/Seibu-style shmup from 1996

[louisg]

Check this game out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-iapekmpng

I just got a chance to try it on my Amiga 2000 setup. It's a pretty nice late-era Toaplan style game with an amazing ton of enemies and bullets, all moving along at a constant 50Hz and never dropping a single frame, from what I saw so far. I have a few nitpicks, like sometimes enemies will shoot from offscreen and there not being ingame music (there *is* a steady stream of loud explosion sound effects), but these aren't huge dealbreakers for me.

There's none of the nonsense you find in a lot of other Euroshmups from that era. The hitbox seems sane, there's no inertia, and it supports two-button controllers. Also, if you tap faster or use autofire with the laser, you get a wider and more powerful shot. I'd suggest using a Genesis controller with auto fire.

The game came out in 1996, which probably explains why it flew under the radar. Check it out, see what you think. I believe it's been released into the public domain now: http://www.back2roots.org/Games/Files/Mega%20Typhoon,2/ (Back to the Roots is strictly legal downloads). If you need an emulator, I'd suggest FS-UAE.

Anyway, yeah, it won't replace Batsugun anytime soon, but for anyone looking for more games in the Toaplan or Raiden style, give this thing a shot.

[BulletMagnet]

Interesting find: the weapons remind me of Raiden, though the movement speed here seems faster and the bomb seems more useful, heh. I'm not big into the Amiga scene, but if one is I doubt you could do a whole lot better than this for free, heh.

[RaidenViper]

Could the sound effects possibly be any more annoying than this?!

Graphically it looks really nice. Very Toaplan'ish. Nice find.

[louisg]

Yeah the sound is pretty awful I would've taken even some bad techno over the explosions-going-off-every-other-frame style of this and SWIV. Oh well.

So I played it a bit more tonight. I double-checked the hitbox, and it is pretty tiny-- I was able to graze some shots, though I wouldn't count on it. Then the weapons: The spread and laser are both pretty well balanced and there are uses for each. One unfortunate thing is that some turrets will point-blank. The ones that have to aim at you don't seem to fire when you're over them, but some of the others do. Another thing is that the shots don't blink, so they do get lost in the garish background if you're not concentrating hard. Eventually you learn to cope with it, but it's rough (not as rough as Last Hope, but maybe the shots are about as hidden as Battle Garegga's).

One thing I do dig a lot is the totally bizarre background style. It looks like they took these 16-color objects like craters and tree leaves, and then scaled/rotated 'em, and stamped them all over the scenery. It's really odd and I don't think I've seen anything else like it, for better or worse. That combined with the heavy shadows teamed up with the out-of-control bright colors really gives it a surreal tone.

There are some clever enemies, too, such as the guys in the second level who will cluster around but won't go for you until you break them apart with your laser. That's a part where it pays to aim and use some of your Asteroids/Pang strategy Grab the laser, don't tap too fast, and don't use the homing missiles.

The game is not perfect by any stretch. It's fast and furious, but I'm not sure it has a lot of lasting depth and the creativity might have peaked at stage 2 (though I haven't seen the last half of st4 yet). However, considering what it is (a made-for-computer release from '96), the designers were remarkably astute compared to a lot of their contemporaries. This is a time where a lot of inspiration was still being drawn from OKish non-arcade shmups like Blazing Lazers or, even worse, Xenon 2. And then these guys come out with this totally arcade-style shmup that does a remarkable number of things really right. This is *definitely* better than what I was playing around that time (Tyrian and Firepower 2000, haha!).

I don't think the game was originally public domain, but was probably cheap-- Amiga equivalent of shareware I guess. Pretty small scale production (1 coder, 2 designers, 1 musician for the title screen and hi score tune). I figure if you're making a game like this for an obsolete-at-the-time computer then it must be a labor of love.

Yep, I am totally bringing this to the next shmupmeet.

[Shatterhand]

This was a commercial release, *very* late on Amiga life, at this point everyone had already abandoned ship, and most released games were very amateurish (This does happen a lot with computers that live a long life, I saw the same thing happening on the MSX)

The graphics are ugly and the lack of music is really annoying.

But shit, this is Toaplan-esque with Raiden weapon system flirting with early Cave amount of bullets on screen, at constant 60 fps with no slowdown whatsoever.... in a 1985 system.

Looking what the Amiga had to offer on the genre before this, it's a huge achievement. I do have a very small, recent, experience coding for the Amiga, and it's just amazing they managed to throw so many shit on screen while keeping the framerate so steady and smooth.

This is just freaking awesome, and it's a shame it was released so late at the Amiga life and so, it never got the success it deserved.