And it`s a great one! It was by pure accident that one day I played Kuru Kuru Kururin and noticed that the game was actually made by Eighting. So this is ONE shmup connection.
But it would be cheap to start a new topic just for this. The game is, though not a shmup, the kind of game that demands intense hand-eye coordination and very precise controlling. Basically you controll the center of a stick that slowly rotates clockwise through a labyrinth full of obstacles, moving objects and sometimes very tight passages.
So you need to reach the goal while avoiding to hit anything in your way. You can speed up your stick via buttonpress, but you can NOT stop it from slowly rotating. Sometimes there are springs that let your stick bounce off and rotate anti-clockwise. The earlier levels are a piece of cake, but the later ones get really hairy - with paths that get less and less obvious, with metallic balls shooting in your direction.
So as I already said, the game needs a hell lot of skill to be completed in the normal difficulty setting. Every stage saves your records, and there is also a mode that has dozens of mini-courses to be completed within a certain time.
Once you hit something, you lose one heart (you`ve got three from the start) and 3 seconds are added to your time as a penalty. This usually ruins your time so you`ll try every stage multiple times if you want to set a new record.
So this game has a lot in common with what you`d expect from a good shmup: Very tight controls, easy to learn yet hard to master, extremely fun and intense, and can be played for two minutes and for hours as well. Every time I start playing it after a month without I have to really concentrate NOT to die every ten seconds. Its pretty hard, but its your fault every time you die - an aspect that every good shmup shares.
It is one of the very early GBA games, it even has got a seemingly more action-packed follow up thats only released in Japan (though I am thinking about importing it), and I got it really cheap a year ago.
I really recommend it to anyone who has a GBA and wants a fun, challenging, and precise controlled game for it - especially when the extremely small selection of shmups consist of crappy ports of good games (R-Type III), crappy ports of crappy games (Phalanx), great games with shitty scoring system (Iridion 2) and great games with extremely pissy music (Gradius Galaxies).
And don`t worry, you don`t have to crash into walls on purpose to keep the rank low
(happens elsewhere too, name enter, etc, but that's what first got me about this game)
