In addition to these things, I also feel that it's because there seems to be some mystery to what the game designers intended, and what may have would up being "happy accidents." Here something that strikes me as being a bit interesting about Bakraid:
ciox wrote:- there's a deeply ironic note to the soundtrack, the pilots know they've been hired into the "airshow" simply to sucker-punch a conniving two-faced enemy planning an invasion, but the music stays very pompous and cinematic as if the show is STILL GOING ON AS PLANNED which it clearly is not once live ammunition starts flying
This seemingly simple flavoring adds a very unusual sense of life and humor to an otherwise less stylistically rich game. There is something about the nature of this observation I find even more peculiar, and that's the fact that the game has managed to evoke enough imagination for ciox to detect irony, something I can't imagine most people would pull from any arcade game of any sort. As far as I'm concerned,
that's brilliant. Putting aside the discussion here about the deliberateness of Garegga's rank system and its exploitability, there is also an element of interpretation vs. intention here, however in a completely different sense. I'm sure it goes without saying that all "art" (I only hesitate to say "art" because I detest the term, and it often seems that using it causes unrelated discussions to occur. Maybe we'll open that can of worms eventually, but not right now) is appreciated by the appreciators regardless of who made it and why. In
this particular sense, the argument ceases to have merit from either side, as the "art" has affectively served it's "purpose."
There are moments in playing Garegga where everything I love about it emerges all at once, evoking the rare sensation that i'm a total badass and nothing can stop me. That bit in PLATEAU where the music drops and that tank rolls up on you from down the middle, firing out salvos of ammunition from every turret it has and you have to make a split-second decision of either quickly maneuvering your options around to take it out with normal fire, or bomb the damn thing into the ground stands among my favorite moments in any video game I've ever played. It gives me goosebumps every time. Can I say it was the creator's intention to give me the very specific sensation it inspires? Certainly not. In fact, I can't even say that moment should be particularly notable for other players. I can, without meaning to sound corny, say that it's a special thing for me. It's the kind of thing that makes me feel like I'm home, and I'm doing the thing I like to do most.
