Homebrew Atari Jaguar pioneers Reboot are back again with another release for the fabled 64-bit console. Degz is their upcoming title which pays homage to Konami's granddaddy of the horizontal scrolling shooter genre, Scramble. To mix up their faithful re-imagining of the 1981 arcade game, the developers have included a humourous pop culture Easter Egg.
Believe it or not, the YouTube meme Nyan Cat is set to make a prominent appearance in Degz as a playable character. Seeing the pop-tart bodied cat in pixelated form is one thing, but hearing a chiptune rendition of the Nyan Cat theme tune as you blast your way though the game is not something you get to enjoy every day.
On a more serious note this new release from Reboot which follows their last effort, Downfall, also comes accompanied with a belting chiptune soundtrack. Degz is due to make its first appearance at the upcoming Swedish Atari demoscene party Sommarhack 2012, before being made available to the public.
Cool to hear another new Jaguar shmup title down the pipeline. Wouldn't it be cool to see/play a danmaku title for the Jag?
Tis a shame that Duranik's Jaguar powered Native shmup (an updated tribute to the classic R-Type shmup title with some novel twists and spins of it's own) was never finished despite having a single stage with an end-stage boss to fight against completed. Tried it out at the World of Atari '98 Expo as it was a very last minute unscheduled appearance (and on the last day of the expo to boot). It had a cool techno BGM to match the stage easily. Of course, it was running on a Jag dev console with a Jag flash cart in the cart slot setup. Both the game engine and BGM were uploaded from a notebook into the dev console before I was able to try it out. I was blown away by it -- it certainly had the right combination/mixture of a hard-core shmup title for the hard-core shmupper wanting a solid shmup experience/challenge. If that was the initial impression that dev Duranik wanted to show shmup fans, it had it in spades without a doubt. Here was a Jag shmup that was one to be looking forward to...I certainly was (after taking the Native demo out for a serious spin).
Upon finishing the single stage with end-stage boss, the Duranik programmer asked me what I thought about it (considering that he personally asked me if I wanted to try a game out beforehand & not knowing exactly what genre it was). I said it was awesome and couldn't wait for it to be finished. He smiled and I got up and thanked him for his generousity of allowing me to try it out. It certainly made my day right there. To finally play Battlesphere & Native were two highlights of that Atari Expo bar none.
In retrospect, the current Songbird Productions version of the Jag CD-Rom Native demo doesn't have the cool BGM tune to back up the gameplay though, nor the ability to play the end-stage boss section either. Hmmm, I wonder why that is?
