Slap Fight MD - astonishingly good

[louisg]

I discovered the Megadrive mode in Slap Fight MD and, wow, I'm blown away. It's faithful to the original game, but with all new levels, art, and music. If you like oldschool shooters, definitely check it out. I don't hear much about this one for some reason. Pity it never was released in other regions.

[nimitz]

Yes indeed, It should have ranked higher in that top exlusive console shmups thread (ended up #20)

Definitely the best console exclusive shmup of the 16bit era

[louisg]

Yeah, and also I dunno why the extra mode wasn't on the title screen or the default setting. I wonder if a lot of people miss it-- I know I did. The reason I found it was that I had a bad ROM and was fiddling with the options to try to see if I could get it to work.

It's fascinating too because the artwork kind of echoes later Cave games. It's something about the angles and specific kind of futuristic art style. I don't know if that's a coincidence (for all I know the extra mode was developed entirely by Tengen staff), but it's interesting at the least.

[Domino]

Fantastic port of the original game (just like Gauntlet IV).

[k39bk]

yes, UI of that mode wasn't very prominent. At first I missed that mod too but one day discoverd it accidentally!

[Battletoad]

The Yuzo Koshiro music for the extra mode is terrific. Wish he had done more music for other shmups... Haven't played the game though because of the high prices and me usually avoiding emulators (besides MAME).

[emphatic]

Wow, it looks awesome.

[stryc9]

Oh good, you made a thread for this gem! I picked this up within the last couple of days and the Special Mode is crazy aimed shot dodging from Hell.

To my shame, I'd never played the cab of this since we never had Slap Fight down my way, but as it stands this blows the other Toaplan ports out of the water for me, especially when it comes to sound.

I never could stand the audio in Tatsujin or Fire Shark MD, although Hellfire is reasonable and Zero Wing probably comes in second to this.

It also plays a lot more interesting than the aforementioned games IMO.

[TransatlanticFoe]

I'm not a fan of either the power up method or a lot of the power ups themselves, but found this great fun just sticking with the default gun most of the time.

Funny how random the MD Toaplan ports were, region-wise. Shame they never did Flying Shark at all, too.

Shame its so expensive to get hold of... probably easier to get making reproduction carts than it is hunting down stuff like this and Eliminate Down!