Life Fortress Volcabamba: Freeware MSX tribute shmup

[Despatche]

Crimzon Clover is definitely not the game I'm talking about; think games like Volcabamba here, Verminest, and if I may bring out an old commercial example, Bomber Raid. At some point games like these start to feel more like techdemos than complete games, all because of very basic mechanics that went missing (some would even criticize the mechanics themselves).

Manesis seemed to run as well as any of those MSX Gradius games. MSE doesn't bring up anything, so I dunno about that one.

[Ruldra]

Where's the last orb in stage 3? It's the only one I can't find.

[Ghegs]

I managed to find all the orbs, the last one in Stage 3 is right after the first set of green platforms going up and down. Very shortly after the orb hidden between these "elevators".

Finding all the orbs gives an end-game bonus of 200,000. Haven't quite got the no-miss yet, best I've done is a 1-miss. Very easy to get hit in Stage 4's maze.

[Klatrymadon]

Manesis is working for me, but the music isn't playing. The MIDIs were extracted to the same folder, and BGM is set to "on", of course. (Very nice take on Gaiden's "boss graveyard" stage, BTW!)

Ed: does Volcabamba have a pause feature, at all? I could use one, but I don't think there's a key for it.

[Ruldra]

I managed to find all the orbs, the last one in Stage 3 is right after the first set of green platforms going up and down. Very shortly after the orb hidden between these "elevators".

Found it, thanks.

All that's left for me now is the no-miss, but I don't think I'll go for that...

[KennyMan666]

My verdict for this will have to be "Well made, but not a good game".

And dear gods does it ever need a reset button.

[Ruldra]

And dear gods does it ever need a reset button.

More importantly, it needs a pause button.

[Op Intensify]

Interesting that I've almost never seen anyone complain about the low difficulty in the Thunder Force series and most PC-Engine shmups, but this seems to have struck a nerve.

[Ghegs]

And dear gods does it ever need a reset button.

More importantly, it needs a pause button.

I'm pretty sure it does have one, at least it can be mapped to a joypad button in the configuration program.

[Ghegs]

Got the no-miss, all orbs run. I'm done now. If somebody really wants to push the score, breaking 700k is possible.

[Ruldra]

Great job!

I was hoping the Earth level would be playable after getting the no-miss/all orbs. Oh well.

[Ruldra]

I wanted to give this game another shot but looks like the site was removed. Is there no way to play it anymore?

[Shepardus]

You can still get it through Archive.org. I don't see his more recent "Osorubeshi! Xaklogian," though, so I uploaded my own copies, minus my settings files, here:
Volcabamba
Xaklogian

[Ruldra]

Thanks a lot man! Somehow I missed this Xaklogian game, will give it a try.

[BrianC]

You can still get it through Archive.org. I don't see his more recent "Osorubeshi! Xaklogian," though, so I uploaded my own copies, minus my settings files, here:
Volcabamba
Xaklogian

The URL that was linked from the high score page at this link works and has both games.

[Shepardus]

Ah, looks like I just didn't look hard enough then. I'll keep my downloads up anyway in case it actually goes down in the future.

[MommysBestGames]

Volcabamba sounds excellent, but I can't get it to work in Windows 10.
I tried the compatibility settings but every time it crashes on start with error code 38. Anyone else getting this?

[Shepardus]

Works fine for me on W10 without any compatibility settings.

[BrianC]

Both games work fine for me in windowed mode, but run slow in full screen mode.

[MommysBestGames]

Alright, sounds like it's my side then. I tried a Win7 laptop too, same error.
Anyway, watched a full playthrough of it. I love the level design. Some things we've seen elsewhere of course, but well put together and I love the energy of it. And some great personality for the one-eye enemy.

[BulletMagnet]

I recall having trouble running the game when I first DLed it some time back, but someone here clued me in to an additional file to download which made it work right - the link is in this thread, see if that helps.

[MommysBestGames]

Hey, thanks a bunch. That was it! Also, thanks ptoing!
Here was the fix for me on Windows 10:

Download MSVCR71.DLL from here http://www.hspdx.net/software/ or somewhere else and put it in the game folder. That might help.