(MEGA)BLASTED AWAY
Blow up your video (sort of)
Time to check another B-Tier shmup from Taito.
This time is the obscure horizontal shmup Megablast.
Four ways to take an enemy down.
Megablast has unique features to differ from other games. The main feature is the use of pods not infront or in top-and-bottom of the ship, but in all the four positions allowing you to shoot and take down any enemy in the basic four directions addressing the traditional support units like the Options of Gradius or the Claw from Thunder Force II, and like in both shmups, the options fire in all directions simultaneously providing an effective offense. While in most shmups one power up upgrades all of them, here you have to pick orbs with each pod to upgrade one of the directions (example pick blue orb with the frontal pod) and this concept is exploited by multiple "Devices" which change their weaponry further increasing its sense of experimentation with the equipment and it does the concept very well as we have 6 weapons to give a try on different pods.
THUNDER BEAM (Blue Device): The standard laser shots. It fires small bullets in a rate of three on screen. Its your basic, but moderately strong weapon in the game.
HEAT LASER (Red Device): This weapon fires a large beam acting as the short lasting murderbeam.
SHIELD (Green Device): This isn't a weapon at all, but more of a defense. It wraps the pod on a spherical energy shield that protects it from enemy fire.
REBOUND SHOT (White Device): Like the Rebound from Turrican, this weapon shoots balls that bounce after hitting an obstacle.
DARK THUNDER BEAM (Purple Device): Fires a dark colored variation of the Thunder Beam. This weapon can only be found on Stage 3.
HOMING MISSILE (Yellow Device): Another Stage 3-only weapon. Shoots missiles that chase their enemies.
While having multiple pods is always welcome, there's things to criticize. To begin with, While pods like the Claws can absorb bullets, the pods in Megablast are useless as they only provide firepower, nerfing the concept. Also, you start the game with the four pods equipped. In a normal shmup, you have to pick them one by one (think Gradius' Options for example) while giving the main ship a default weapon to defend itself. Second problem is that there's no backup weapons like the Darius bombs or the Missiles in Gradius, relying everything to the pods themselves. With simple attack patterns from the average enemies during most of the game, your worst problem will be their homing missiles because they are virtually indestructible which counters a basic rule of shooting: Enemy missiles go down with one shot. and having four or five indestructible missiles causes problems such as letting the enemy escape and crashing with the missile. I've learned this the hard way on my first playthroughs.
Facing the boss already?
Stages are quite short, for instance level 2 is a 1 minute stage where after a few enemies and a sub-boss you're already facing the boss. Compared with Darius, Megablast is a short game already in terms of stage length. Boss fights doesn't fully exploit the premise of using all the pods since most of them require firing frontally. The few exceptions are stages 4, 6 and 7 take advantage of it with cores on top and bottom, a boss that splits in multiple parts before transforming into a robot and a claw with the ability to close the claws to protect the core requiring a "get on the top of the screen to make the boss go up" strategy. The rest is the basic stuff.
Revisiting Doh again.
Stage 8 is pretty much of a letdown 'cos its just a rematch with sub-bosses: Organizer, Doh, the alien cell organism, Chack'n and Bub before fighting the upper body of Big Robot, which ironically is a fast, somewhat unfair battle as it spams you with the multidirectional rings and homing missiles that take a lot of hits to destroy.
Industrial complexity.
This feel of incompleteness resulted in a failure for Taito at the point that the game was never ported home during the 16-Bit era and that was basically a synonym of disaster. The first port of the game was on the PlayStation 2 as part of Taito Memories II Gekan in 2007 and that was the only port since the company totally forgot about it again until 2023 when Taito, together with Hamster re-released it as part of Arcade Archives with the additional modes we're already familiarized: Hi-Score Mode which is the No-Continues "Survival Mode" and Caravan Mode, the 5-minute run in pure Star Soldier style. Even the manual fails on providing complete information, the game omits the Purple and Yellow weapons from Stage 3 for no discernible reason. I mean, if you're giving the players a sitrep about the ship's weaponry you should give it on its entirety.
A nice urban landscape.
Graphically is just divided opinions, with simple, very generic landscapes that feel like if Taito recycled concepts from previous games. Stage 1 is an Atlantis-like underwater landscape with greek ruins that feel like if they borrowed influences from Zone Z from Darius, the next three levels are absolutely generic as we have a high-altitude flight over a fantasy land forest with floating islands, a lava cavern with flying rocks as your first enemies and another boring coastline that feels like the precursor of Super Nova's Zones B and I. Stage 5 tries to add something different to the game with the arctic sea level specially with the aurora borealis in the sky, aside from that is just the same icebergs repeating in loop like in a cartoon. Stage 6 is perhaps the best one as it combines a well made night city background with the lights on the buildings on the distance while you navigate through the industrial-like pipe maze, and in Stage 7 is where the originality ends with the Thunder Force like scrolling of the level layout in this technological tunnel. Stage 8 is the "upper part" of the aurora borealis of Stage 5, killing the creativity in the premise of a final level.
Most of the bosses lack of full animations, being Big Robot the major offender in that section as it is a standing robot whose only animation is to open hatches on the legs and chest. I mean, if you're meant to be unanimated, better gave us a battleship or something. Looks like Taito didn't put in practice what they've learned on Darius. The only interesting effect in the game is the pixel scaling on the Stage 3 sub-boss and Black Hole who shrinks and grows in size as it takes damage.
The plot is a display of wackiness and oddity; Women gets kidnapped from the Earth because the aliens from planet Zancs need them to breed and keep the Zancs population alive because their female population was apparently sterilized due to a mysterious disease and is up to you to rescue the female population of Earth and bring them back. But strangefully, there's no signs about that, not even a single cutscene between levels to tell you about this story and it feels more like if the action is taking place on Earth rather than Zancs.
Bub-o-tron 5000
For a Taito shmup, it adds nostalgia and nods to their past works in form of sub-bosses. Stage 2 has a giant version of the Organizer from Raimais, Stage 3 features Doh from Arkanoid, Chack'n from Chack'n Pop will be the sub-boss in stage 4 and in Stage 7 you'll fight Bub from Bubble Bobble. For some reason they're depicted as metallic-like beings rather than the colorful characters we're familiarized with and most of the times they're unanimated as the bosses of the game like the Organizer, while Doh opens its mouth and Chack'n moves its wings. So much potential wasted already.
The soundtrack is considered "weak" compared with other Zuntata's works, but let's talk about the positive aspects of the game before going to the weaknesses. The Taito logo-title screen begins with a guitaring tune that evokes the hard rocking of Data East's Vapor Trail and some Amiga shmups. Stage 1 is a fast upbeat sequence of rhythmic keyboards that feel like if the music tried to take cues from the first stage of U.N. Squadron rather than following the space trippiness from Darius and when the boss alarm hits the scene the pace goes more Tecno Soft-esque in the style of Thunder Force II with a fast percussion beat, but the wailing alarm kinda blocks the music. Stage 4 is another guitar paced track, while not as slow as stage 2, it is fitting enough on the stage. Also, this sounds a lot like the "Darius Twin guitars", so we can say that game uses the "Megablast Guitar" rather than the "Capcom Guitar" I guess. Stage 5 is a synth-like melody that feels like an unused Darius track as it has some of the space oddity of the first game. Stage 6 homages the music style of the 80's with that "Dum dumdum-dudum-dumdum-dudumdum" action-thriller beat that is accompanied with some additional instruments in order to fit with the night city theme of the level and it works quite well. Round 7 is perhaps the best song of the game, as it fulfills the requirements of a shmup: Fast, with energetic drummings and a rocking pace. It is interesting the idea of using a flute as accompaniment and curiously, the flute segment reminds me a lot of Cusco's tracks from the Apurimac album, especially "Inca Dance". Yeah, Zuntata pulled a Cusco in this game and a damned good one that anyone who likes that group will think the band collaborated with Taito. Stage 8 is quite weak but not bad with the suspense-action drumming in the style of an incoming final battle, appropiate for the final level of this game, but it could be a little better. Now let's talk about the weaknesses in the sound department. While the game has good themes in the soundtrack, it has their dose of lazy ones. Stage 2 and 3 for example feel slow paced and off-synch with the action. The reason of this is the calmed music of the second level which clashes with the aerial battle that takes place there and stage 3 is a generic "tribal" music that it might fit on a prehistoric-themed game, but not on a sci-fi shooter. These are like the failed prototype of Metal Black's "Waste Days" which was enigmatic and calmed, but fitted on the mystery of the alternate dimension setting of the fourth stage of the game. When the game utilizes classical music you know someone went too lazy to compose a theme. Megablast utilizes Frédéric Chopin's "Fantaisie-Impromptu" during the attract mode and the ending is Beethoven's "Symphony No. 9" (Ode to Joy). For a Zuntata work, that's a Do-It-Cheap move, considering the great work in the original level tunes in this game and in the Darius series and sadly this became part of Megablast's criticized flaws. The stage length is also a critical flaw since the music gets cutted off due to the alarm and the boss theme that follows, ruining the musical experience and something that we would see later in Aero Fighters 3 and Thunder Force VI as well.
MEGACURIOSITIES
A vast improvement on the ice scenery.
An instance of "Megablast got Megablasted" indeed.
- The "Mission Completed" epilogue was borrowed from Darius Zones V and Y endings.
- Stage 5 is somewhat referenced on Darius Gaiden as Zone Q.
- The original idea of Megablast was to utilize four buttons to fire on each direction rather than having one doing everything.
- The boss Three Head is very similar to Babylon from Nichibutsu's Magmax.
- The premise of women being kidnapped by aliens predates the Duke Nukem series of games and the book Mars Needs Moms! by Berkerly Breathed.
- While the game's organization is named "Defending-The-Earth-From-The-Outside", the Arcade Archives manual renames it as "Earth Defense Bureau".
- The Arcade Archives release is the second home port of the game and second Arcade-Perfect port simultaneously.
- Symphony No.9 was frequently utilized in other media such as movies, commercials and TV shows as well.
Just another B-Tier game to deal with.
I've noticed how other reviewers consider Megablast as a dud and one of the worst Taito games out there. It's quite bad and it feels incomplete, but honestly is not garbage as Dino Rex or any crappy indie shooter that you've may find nowadays, but more like an obscurity with potential that wasn't exploited at all. An attempt of being "Taito's Thunder Force" since I've noticed Thunder Force II vibes and predates the velocity of Thunder Force III, but it wasn't fully exploited for Only-God-Knows the reason. Budget, time, I don't know.
In terms of gameplay it's no Darius, but its not like let's say Deep Blue, one of the worst shmups out there. but still quite fun to play once or twice for both shmup and obscure game enthusiasts.
Eda's expression clearly says "This could've been a lot better".