Has anyone tried this out yet, its a retro 8-bit (though it says 12-bits on cover.) Nintendo style shooter that I thought it would look similar to Gradius, but its a bit different, here's the description on the game.
Mega Shooter 11™ is an extremely authentic, retro side-scrolling space-shooter, ala the best 8 and 16-bit space shooters. It features topnotch old-school graphics, a heart-thumping soundtrack, and intelligent game play. Spread over four huge bases with branching pathways, the game features tons of upgrades, hidden levels, enemies, and excessive amounts of replay value.
It costs 240MSP, but like all XBLA/IG games, you can try before you buy. http://bit.ly/n8vNwb
Tons of upgrades? Something tells me you'll have to grind early levels to have a fair shot at the later stages. I dearly hope they're just referring to a Gradius-style power bar or some such.
I literally just downloaded this before I took my son to soccer practice. As such, I was able to play it for only a few minutes, but I liked the old-school vibe of the thing. Yeah, it's slow and archaic, and most will probably find it a bit dull, but I'm old enough to remember when most shmups were kinda like this. Hopefully, further exploration won't sour that first impression.
There was some video of this posted on IRC last night. My general impression was that the player was either unbelivably awful at the game, or the ship was so large and firepower so weak that he was unable to avoid anything. Probably both, now that I think about it. Also, it has a life bar. Bleh. Waste of some decent art and music, if you ask me.
I found if you think of the game more like Iron Tank or Jackal with a health bar, it helps to get into it. Though it's true your ship can be a little unwieldy at the lowest speed (especially after you get killed).
It's pretty strange though, there are 4 big bases, I beat the ice base (bought it half way through). I would ignore the '200 levels' or whatever, and just know that the 4 bases (maybe more? I see 4 on the menu) take a while to get through. I guess a while being 15-20 minutes (? at least I think, the ice base took a while for me, didn't time it exactly).
You can save your progress within the bases.
And as you travel in a base, you can collect different gun types and modifiers (like flame gun, but then mods like shoot forward/back or up/down).
And as you go the ammo thing does stink at first, but they give you a decent amount and it's pretty fun to try to conserve it then use it on bigger enemies, try to carefully go about it. And after the first base, I was given the choice of several permanent upgrades (one being 50% less ammo usage).
I liked the large variety of interesting enemies and how they attack. The couple bosses I fought were pretty good too.
As for continues/1ups/control precision, it's okay, but I blundered through areas for sure. But it basically has a decent array of checkpoints you can restart at. And if you die completely, you can restart there with 4 ships I think, and try to beat that segment. I also found a warp that let me pick easy/medium/hard paths a ways through the ice base.
I will say I'll definitely pick the easy/medium path next time if I get another choice.
I like the game a lot already as it has an interesting, strange blend of shooting/exploration that I've enjoyed so far, but it's just not a traditional high-scores style shoot em up. I currently plan to come back to it tomorrow night to try another base as I'm still interested in playing more (I don't always say that about all games, even big games, so I see that as good).
Making an action platformer with a transforming grappling hook: ChainStaff. Also made a shmup with multi-ships: Shoot 1UP DX, and more .
I haven't played this yet, but from the vid the lifebar actually looks fairly reasonable. I noticed that a collision cost about 1/2 the lifebar and a bullet about 20-25%. Lifebars aren't a problem so long as there are no undodgeable bullet waves. Overall it kinda looks like a more combat-oriented Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet.
It's got a weird aesthetic to it, like some random MSX game or anything else you'd find on an ancient Japanese PC.
I dig it but it needs some tweaking in terms of weapon strength and ship speed.
You're screwed if you die, since the ship speed is so pathetic at the lowest level you might as well sit still.
I'm kind-of stuck on this boss because of this. It's really frustrating when I can't do anything even with a bunch of lives, a health meter, and all sorts of other stuff.
Well, I've only tried a little bit of it, but it felt too clunky the first time, but anyways, I'll give this another go, but I won't buy it though, lol.
After d/l'ing this demo version of Mega Shooter 11, by pressing button X, you can cycle through some nifty screen options including one with the obligatory scanlines if playing it on an LCD monitor setup. Tried it with a Scart to Jamma setup and looks remarkable on an 29" Nanao arcade monitor setup for that slick NES/Famicom retro shmup graphical vibe type of effect. You can even select a "fuzzy" old-school aestethic to replicate that RCA composite video look (if it were played on an old-school CRT monitor with RF and/or Composite Video inputs) for completeness. Makes me wonder if this game could be possibly released as a real NES or Famicom cart. Up to eight alpha-numeric characters can be entered upon starting up a new game session.
