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Which shump to prevail? All or most well known games / games I already know plenty or enough about are not included, because they are not hidden. These games are all relatively hidden by being import only or no name, but for a reason? That I will find out, after playing each for at least 30 min. to an hour.
-Caravan Shooting
-Cosmo Gang
All of the games on Caravan Shooting blow. They are 8-bit. Cosmo Gang is a decent Galaga rip-off that reminds me of the style in Space Bomber. Winner: CG
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-Blazeon
-Bio Metal
A difficult match. Blazeon is a really old-style clunky and seems like a bad early Genesis shooter, like Arrow Flash. Its redeeming feature is the ability to capture mechs floating out in space (three different types?) and harnass some special power beyond cartoon ship's non-power-uppable single shot. Second level lasts an eternity and they programmed 45 second Dorrito breaks before the bosses, which I cannot stand for. Restarting a 15-20 minute level is not cool, so I don't think I have a reason to play this one again.
Bio Metal has the worst soundtrack ever. I never made it past the 1st level before since I was so disgusted, but to be fair I kept playing. It seems like a plain Air Buster type of shooter with its most distinct feature being a clumsy shield when the enemies try shooting bullets haphazardly all over the screen. It's pretty fast paced and has some decent graphics, so I think that gives it the edge over Blazeon. I could definitely use some practice in this one. Would rather play more, thus winner.
Blazeon - 3/10
Bio Metal - 4-5/10
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ALL VERTICAL BATTLE!
-Imperium
-Flying Hero
Imperium I had never heard before. That is until I turned it on lol. It's MUSHA!
Look at that. Well, a poor man's MUSHA and a few additional ideas. One, scores are gone and an EXP level up system is in, which is a good (edit: not a bad, rather) idea since playing 16-bit shooters for score is
. You get four different types of weapons including MUSHA's basic shot and MUSHA's green laser. They level up one at a time in succession and level down as you get hit using them. This is pretty annoying since you can't choose to level up any particular weapon. Level designs are really flat with whack-a-mole school prevailing. Bosses suck, overall pretty lame despite initial excitement at seeing a MUSHA clone.Flying Hero is a fairly standard cute 'em up and its got all of the subgenre's fine points: large colorful sprites, "crazy" bosses, and easy. The best part is being able to tilt the line of fire with the shoulder buttons. Pretty fun. Winner.
Imperium - 3.5/10
Flying Hero - 5/10
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-D-Force
-Zone (disqualified, replacement: Acrobat Mission)
What kind of game would you expect from a company that has a crosseyed dinosaur as a mascot? D-FORCE. Here's your rival, Strike Gunner. This game is nonstop mode 7 abuse, slowdown and blandness unrivalled. That is, until the "exploration" stages. Lower lefthand corner. HOLY SHIT! Hahaha. This game goes from military to prehistoric to military to middle ages, etc. In the exotic stages you can move from the top layer to the bottom (aside from shooting this is all you can do). It's so broken. You can just make the bullets disappear by moving up and down through the layers. You defeat the dinosaur boss by moving up when it swings its tail over. Wow. Just wow, .5 bonus half point. I think the upper right screens speak for themselves.
Zone is disqualified for being what I would guess is a Space War clone. Acrobat Mission takes its place and I don't have to say anything about it.
D-Force - 1.5/10
Acrobat Mission - winner by default
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-Cosmo Gang
-Fuzzy Shooting
Cosmo Gang is going to make a shocking ride as a single screen shooter in a 16-bit tournament (but this is the SNES, right) into the third round. Why? Fuzzy Shooting is an asshole. I hate to dismiss a shooter for difficulty, but it has to be done in cases like this. I think I lost my first "credit" in under a minute, in complete shock. Easily the hardest SNES shooter I've seen, has to be amateur.
With a name like Fuzzy Shooting you'd probably expect a cute 'em up, but this is generic space blaster shit with the same enemies repeating in bases and star speckled space. The thing of it is from the first second it barrages with enemies and bullets. Bastard pink enemies popping from the side shooting three spaced bullets while the guys above pop aimed shots. It's a mess, and here's this ship with this fat hitbox. No power-ups that I encountered, but you can move your pods around like Gleylancer and lock them in place. If you press select at the title screen you get a boss rush mode, or something. Everything feels like a minigame. I partially admire their attempt at putting challenge in an SNES game, but it's a bit much.
Fuzzy Shooting - 3/10
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-Tekkaman Blade
-Hunt for Red October
Eh, I knew whichever game I paired with HFRO would have it easy, and I'm not even sure it belongs in this tournament. Tekkaman Blade plays exactly like Sol Divide has been described to me, like a hack n slash in a side-scrolling shooter environment. Robot's got a staff he tosses out about half the distance of the screen and a short range slash attack. Both wipe out bullets. Robot is really big and of course the game has a lifebar, so there's lots of clumsy crashing into everything. It's a shame because at moments the slashing techniques feel badass, but then it all comes crashing down. At the end of each stage the robot encounters an evil robot and they talk in Japanese ("Let's fight." "Alright, this way then!" *zoom*), then have their gladiator duel in vs. fighting style. It's very Mazin Saga-esque. Pretty crappy.
But Hunt for Red October is just unplayably boring. It's like the Subterrania of the SNES, except not as good because its a license based on submarines. You've got a different type of weapon for each button, like this little dot that comes out of the ship's blowhole. It sucks. Mission objectives besides "win the stage" suck.
Tekkaman Blade - 3/10
Hunt - 1/10
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FIRST QUARTER FINALIST REVEALED!
-Cosmo Gang
-Tekkaman Blade
I decided after playing this game again today that it had to be stopped. Enough is enough. I don't care what crazy power-ups they add to it (see above), it's still a wannabe Galaga, except without the charm of being an antique. Space Bomber it is not. Galaga '88 takes this one down by a few points at least. The multi-ship thing in Galaga '88 was cool, here we've got see above. You so craazy Cosmo Gand The Video.
Tekkaman Blade is a grower. Now, I haven't gotten past the third stage yet and it's staying true to its level formula almost too closely, credit has to be given for doing something a little different (in both its basic side-scrolling attacks & stage bosses).
WINNER: TEKKAMAN
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SIDE-SCROLLING SHMUPS WITH SHIELDS BATTLE
-Bio Metal
-Spriggan Powered
Bio Metal (U) has stepped out of the competition. In its place I'm putting in Bio Metal (J). You see, in the Japanese version of this game you will not find a single note of GET READY FOR THIS by 2 Unlimited. In fact, it seems a story intro was removed, so why haven't I ever heard the cries of SNES fans before? This is Mobile Light Force, Phalanx cover butchery. The troo soundtrack is much more appropriate and enjoyable for a long term commitment. It also makes it less embarrassing to not have a Radikal Records logo every time you start up.
Alright, so this match is with two heavy hitting second/third tier shooters, the first in this tournament. Combine their scores and you might get a perfect 10. But seriously, Bio Metal is nearly a killer game. Fix up the power-up/weapons system (to Thunder Force) and that's basically all it would take. As it is the base power level is too weak, which I consider to be its only major flaw, aside from not being able to switch between weapons. Otherwise I like the use of the rechargeable shield, almost a very ghetto Takumi, for those moments when the game decides to launch berzerker mode.
Spriggan Powered seems like a competent game, but aside from one level so far (fourth) and a boss (second) I'm not excited by the design. The only other thing that really got my interest was the primitive buzz/scrape tech bonuses, but judging an oddly shaped 16-bit mech hitbox doesn't work well with scraping. There are few moments I could think of going out of the way for the bonus and 200 points a near hit isn't that much incentive. As a late SF game the graphics are all ugly, trying to do too much with this shitty hardware. The result is grainy clouds and rainbows. Not a bad game in the least, but not good enough to win this round.
Spriggan Powered - 5/10
winner: BIO METAL
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GAMES WITH A SURPRISE BATTLE
-Syvalion
-Phalanx
I was so excited this round 'cause I had no idea what to expect from this game. Had no idea what it was, and lo: free-roaming dragon shooter. An arcade conversion of a Taito forgotten (apparently) classic. Quite possibly the only SNES game worth considering playing for score. Your dragon's got a fire gauge which determines the strength of the fire. You can use to clear enemies or bat away obstacles/bullets. You can swing the fire around in a circle using the shoulder buttons. It takes a bit of getting used to controlling this train around, so I'm unsure of the difficulty just yet. Seems moderately hard. Novelty enough to overtake tepid crap below.
Blarg. I have this cart, but only got it to work once. Recognized some of this crap, but played another hour or so. It's amazing how many games remind me of Air Buster, and hey, here's another. This one's got a confused Thunder Force power-up/weapons system where they'll give these power-ups to you every 1 or 15 minutes depending on I don't know. Boring, boring, boring. By the time I got to the stage where I had to push the screen around I was more than done.
Syvalion - better than Phalanx
Phalanx - 3/10
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-Flying Hero
-SD Gundam 2
Completely riding on the license here. This feels like a Game Boy game with SNES graphics. You pick your robot, then you move onto a GB quality side-scrolling space stage. Finish stage, Monster Lair platform shooting. The little guy in the rightmost screen is a boss. Game has a lifebar, which to me says they're too lazy to come up with solid level designs or bosses. Clumsy chunky mech jumps around or gets sandwiched up against a fat boss shooting out boring arc blasts seen in a million shooters. The only interesting thing is the space to platform swapping and the fact that you can change the direction of the ship in space.
SD Gundam 2 - 2/10
Flying Hero - see last page, & winner
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OLD SCHOOL BATTLE TO THE DEATH! (standing in for the Operation Logic Bomb vs. Operation Logic Bomb battle)
-Dropzone
-Galaxy Wars
All signs pointed towards fear. The title screen is an eyesore to end all, the game has that awful gritty western graphics style, there's an overlarge "panel," there is gravity. I thought I was in for some bastard PC-style shmupping, but thank God no. It takes a few minutes to realize what is happening, but this is vintage mid-80s arcade style shooting. My knowledge of oldies isn't so great, but it reminds me the most of Fantasy Zone - side-scrolling, two direction shooting, looping screens, destroy enemies until boss appears. In addition to that you must attach orbs to ass and bring them back to base while destroying all of the enemies. Game is so old school it goes by "waves." Which of course means they keep increasing the amount of activity more than background graphics or anything fancy (the first 3 bosses aren't too different from each other and repeated twice over the first 9 waves). But this game is pretty fast and fun, a score-based throwback.
WOW, BEST SNES SHOOTER OF ALL. Seriously, the Strike Gunner of uninspirational old school shooters. You launch this rocket at the bottom of the screen and guide it to the two rows of bad aliens at the top. You can speed it up or slow it down, the end. You have to dodge the happy fellows squiggling their way back and forth at the bottom and dodge the shots fired by the above because sometimes they even kill you. Points for killing the above fluctuate based on I could never figure out (I got 50-600 and tried different techniques, no pattern detected). Game has color mode AND a black and white mode, although the difference for color mode is like flying through a rainbow for a few seconds. Neo mode is exactly the same except more grisly looking and SNES. Slow, terrible game.
Dropzone - 5/10
Galaxy Wars - 1/10
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*Flying Hero moves silently past Dropzone into the quarter finals*
-Acrobat Mission
-Macross: Scrambled Valkyrie
I omitted Acrobat Mission from this tournament since I played it before I got the idea and I thought it seemed great. Then it revealed itself as the mediocre game XII Stag could've been. The thing that reminds me the most of XII Stag is the wiggle side attacks. The game also dumps out a bunch of bombs, just like Stag, so I'm wondering if there's a connection here. The backgrounds are as repeating as those in Stag's, which is to say the same screen for an entire level. Only one of the power-ups is worthwhile, stages are so-so and the bosses can be frustratingly oafish, hogging up a sizable portion of the screen and shooting out beach ball bullets randomly. Hilariously the game awards a bonus for not continuing during the stage and then doesn't reset the score when you continue. But what it does have over XII Stag is no focus on score. That's the difference between a 3/10 and a 4/10.
Macross has been a satisfying game for the first hour or so. I hadn't played it before. Levels have some design to them, weapon switching = good, decent graphics and a nice fair challenge to start. Need to spend more time with it, but it beats out Acrobat Mission pretty clearly.
Acrobat Mission - 4/10
Macross: Scrambled Valkyrie - 5-7/10
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CUTE VS. ULTRA-MASCULINE BATTLE!
-Cotton 100%
-Rendering Ranger R2 (replacement for U.N. Squadron)
I'm not a fan of Cotton. This seems to not exactly be Cotton 1, but it plays exactly like it and the enemies are all reminiscent. This is a very training level shmup with much of the projectiles being destructible or just bounce right back after being hit with Cotton's fire. It isn't until the last level or two where there's anything remotely interesting as an obstacle or challenge. The game rides on its graphics and "crazy" cute 'em up bosses. Half amusing to look at once. What, a snowman with a baseball bat! Insane!
Rendering Ranger alarmed me at first, again because of the Western graphics style. The title screen is very Subterrania, but give it a chance if you haven't. The run n gun stages are near or at Hard Corps quality, with massive firepower, fast action and lots of explosions. The side-scrolling shooter stages are no different. They really put in everything a 16-bit shooting fan would want: weapon switching, direction switching, special/bomb attack for each weapon (rechargeable), little dead space and detailed graphics. It's obvious these guys loved all of the right kinds of 2D action games.
Cotton - 3-4/10
Rendering Ranger - 8/10
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FINALIST #1
-Bio Metal
-Syvalion
After refining my Bio Metal shield techniques, lumbering gimmick-shooter Syvalion is out. Bio Metal's status upgraded from could've been killer to yeah, maybe. Next round we'll find out.
FINALIST #2
-Macross Scrambled Valkyrie
-Rendering Ranger R2
Rendering Ranger R2 is truly an impressive an anomalous 2D shooter, in that it was made by white folk. Melfred and his friends. As you can see in the screens, and the description I already typed of it, it takes inspiration from many great 16-bit sources. But as you can also see, it has its own style, a style that is darker than most Japanese devs dare to go. Lots of skulls. That's basically the extent of any "Western feel." The problem is, it would've been nice for them to make two separate games instead of combining 4-5 levels of each style. Both would've made nice games, but I don't particularly like playing two levels of one game and then two of another that feels totally different. It ruins the flow and in the end you feel like you didn't get enough of each. As an entire package I'd give it the edge, but as a "shooter" I grudgingly place it a hair below Macross.
-Flying Hero
-Macross Scrambled Valkyrie
Flying Hero, more proof of the fat cupcake-eating SNES hero theory. As a serviceable cute 'em up, it was only a matter of time before it fell, but it stands no chance against a shooter that killed a shooter that killed Cotton. But a boss that's a bowl of nuts? Crazy! What won't cute 'em ups have in them as crazy bosses?
Alright, final match up later. BIO METAL vs. MACROSS THE SHOOTING.
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THE FINAL MATCH: REAL SNES HIDDEN GEMS REVEALED: 1993 BATTLE
-Bio Metal
-Macross: Scrambled Valkyrie
Bio Metal, like most great modern shooters, takes a simple gimmick and builds an awesome game around it. It's pleasing to finally see an old school shooter with sense evident in the level designs, constructed around the ship's capabilities. In Bio Metal the device is the GAM, which is like the CRAWs in Thunder Force if they were tightly packed around your ship and you could repel them in any direction. This is such an awesome and devastating tool that they had to put a charge/timer on it so the game didn't overload in too much awesome. As you may know, I love games with charge bars (Gunbird 2, Giga Wings, etc.), but you may not know why? Why, because it makes you think strategically. Strategy is fun, it's the opposite of Compile naps.
With the strategy I've been talking about the game kind of plays like R-Type if you could shoot the force in any direction you wanted, it had bullets on the screen and ran 100x faster. Bio Metal shatters SNES convention by keeping the action fast like Lightening Force when there's no slowdown. The levels are succinct, with no cupcake breaks and the bosses only last as long as the GAM meter empties itself once or twice. An SNES fan would be like "where's ther' mode 7 rotating battleships??" Yes, this is solidly built, does not got overboard on graphics witchery, which will offput many 16-bit fans looking for a screensaver to play.
You might already tell by the description above that Bio Metal has won. You are correct, but I'll say some positive things about the loser. This is a very good shooter for an SNES one with a few well used ideas, good bosses, nice graphics, etc. Its only major drawback is its tendency to drift at a slow pace in relatively unchallenging sections. Select the homing shot and coast. But I think the switching weapons was done well here with three different ships with different hitboxes, speeds and power levels. The lifebar didn't feel like an SD Gundam design copout, but a replenishing life stock. Well done.
Final scores:
Bio Metal - 8/10
Macross - 7/10
