I've had the MD version of Tatsujin for about a year now. Initially, I didn't much appreciate it. It was one of those games that, growing up as a Nintendo kid, I envied; it looked so cool in EGM (even though they gave it bad reviews). Plus,
Truxton. That name sounded so badass. And of course years later, Classic Game Room always made it sound like a stone cold classic.
But when I finally got it...enh. It seemed okay. Decent enough shooter, but with supremely bullshit checkpoints that demotivated me to play it. It was Same!³ that ended up being the Toaplan MD that grabbed me.
Fast forward to me finally getting an RGB SCART cable for my MD, so I could at last run it through my OSSC.
Holy. Shit.
My primary issue with the MD hardware has always been its colour palette limitations, only letting it display a fraction of the shades the PC Engine & Super Famicom can. So while RGB is a definite improvement, games often don't benefit from the separated component signals as much as they would on something with more intermediate shades.
But an artist with a skilled understanding of colour juxtaposition can make the MD work. And with Tatsujin, RGB makes that mofo's colours explode off the screen. The second I saw it my brain just went "whoah," as I wasn't expecting anything in particular.
Excuse the crummy off-screen iPhone pics, as I don't have a capture device. But hopefully you get the general impression:
Suffice to say this rekindled an interest, and I've spent hours with it the last two nights. Getting into the game's pace and its internal logic removed the frustration and made it a lot more enjoyable. This is a memorizer as much as anything, and learning it actually feels very Dark Soulsy in a way that other memorizers like R-Type don't.
I don't want to overcorrect and suddenly put it on my best of all time list (especially when I haven't touched any Toaplan stuff from '90 onward), but safe to say, I appreciate it.