did anyone enjoy Mad Shark?

[gigadrive32]

I just 'discovered' Mad Shark a Raiden clone by the developer called Allumer, the same developer that made Rezon, an R-Type clone.

I'm finding Mad Shark to be fairly enjoyable. nice colors, nice music, even though it's a total ripoff of Raiden... it's dated 1993, so that puts Mad Shark roughly in the same timeframe as when Raiden II came out.

I guess this developer made a name for itself by cloning other famous shmups

man, there are SO many shumps that exist that came out in the 1980s and 1990s which never knew of, that I only find out about through emulation...

it just boggles the mind.

[spadgy]

Necro bumb!

I just got the PCB, and I'm really enjoying it. Sure - it's a bit of a B-movie of a shmup (somebody needs to coin a term for Japanese shooters made by the likes of NMK, Video System and Allumer. The hard to find obscurities that me, DaveK and Dragon1952 seem to adore that have that hard to define charm) - but it's a great B-movie of a shmup.

A lot of fun, good looking and with a pretty nice tense scoring system based on 1-lifing your way through as many repeated weapon power ups as possible.

Sure it's a Raiden rip of most explicitly, but it has brilliant touches that remind me of Aero Fighters, and older games like Tiger Heli.

Surely somebody else must be fond of it?

[Dave_K.]

I'd call this more of a hidden gem than a b-movie. They remain hidden since most people don't give them more than a passing glance, since they'd rather play the real thing, and understandably so.

Mad Shark has got more polish than a cheezy Raiden clone, so thats why I like it. Plus, Allumer is just a strange company that made several clones of great shmups, including the magnificent War of Aero, which I'd rather call a tribute, given its was made 5 years after Image Fight came out.

[Drum]

Necro bumb!

I just got the PCB, and I'm really enjoying it. Sure - it's a bit of a B-movie of a shmup (somebody needs to coin a term for Japanese shooters made by the likes of NMK, Video System and Allumer. The hard to find obscurities that me, DaveK and Dragon1952 seem to adore that have that hard to define charm) - but it's a great B-movie of a shmup.

I am a huge UPL fantard. They were the kings of this as-yet-unnamed subgenre.

On topic: I like Mad Shark okay, but it's no Zing Zing Zip!

[spadgy]

I'd call this more of a hidden gem than a b-movie.

Yes. Perhaps my use of the word 'B-movie' was inaccurate (perhaps I used it as I adore B-movies). It's certainly a very nice quality game, and while it's inspiration is explicit, it has both it's own character and plenty of quality.

I have a Zing Zing Zip PCB too, and I love that, but Mad Shark has a bit more class.

I really want to track down War of Aero one day, but perhaps I should actually spend some time with Image Fight first of all.

[burgerkingdiamond]

you weren't kidding with the Raiden rip off. Not too subtle. But looks like fun. Gonna have to try this in MAME.

[Observer]

I found out about this game back in 1995, through a magazine (anyone in Brazil might still know it: Action Games! We had a spanish translation sold here until 1998) and I thought it was the shit, that the graphics were awesome and the 2 player action was great. As if I would care about it being a Raiden clone, it was about shooting shit down and making things go boom!

Fast forward to last year where I was finally able to play the game again via Mame and, man... Memories are truly deceiving. I still like it but playing solo is HORRIBLE after a while. I recorded a couple of videos with the first stages but the checkpoint system is quite punishing and one little death is pretty much going to screw you up bad.

On the other hand, 2 player mode is hilarious and pretty solid. It also was how I played it back then, before I cared about scoring systems, heh.

[spadgy]

You're right about it being punishing in terms of loosing a life - it's a bit of a Gradius in that regard. I love the pressure though, and recovery is more achievable than in Gradius.

The later levels are awesome too. I finally made it to space last night.

Anyway - if a few people are playing this, I'm going to set up a high-score thread. I just have to pop out, but I'll do it later today for sure.

[Blackbird]

This looks like a pretty solid Raiden clone o_O. Maybe we can think of it as a Raiden arrange mode, lol. I'll put this on my list of things to check out.

Actually kind of digging the music.

[Despatche]

It's okay. I think Fire Barrel is better.

Allumer is just a strange company that made several clones of great shmups, including the magnificent War of Aero

Project MEIOU was made by a company known as Yang Cheng.

[Dave_K.]

Yes, Yang Cheng and Allumer both worked on the game. Its an Allumer PCB.

[Herr Schatten]

Games like this are exactly what we should be playing during STGT instead of revisiting Dangun Feveron for the nth time.

[spadgy]

Games like this are exactly what we should be playing during STGT instead of revisiting Dangun Feveron for the nth time.

Exactly. Expand our horizons.

For now, at least we have a shiny new Mad Shark hi-score board!

join me over there. It's lonely, and I don't deserve the top spot.

EDIT:
A question. What makes those damn bonus cars appear (or not appear)?

[DocHauser]

The 'Geto Gamer' reviews Mad Shark:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joFLkJ_7ccI

Oh yeah.

[Despatche]

Yes, Yang Cheng and Allumer both worked on the game. Its an Allumer PCB.

I wouldn't know about that, but Allumer is credited nowhere, and quite a few companies used Seta1 hardware.

[spadgy]

The 'Geto Gamer' reviews Mad Shark:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joFLkJ_7ccI

Oh yeah.

If the Geto man picks it up, it's gotta be worth a try.

Echo effect to the max!

[burgerkingdiamond]

It is nice to play something different than the standard CAVE bullet hells. I've been playing a lot of Raiden DX/IV lately. This game is pretty fun too. Thanks for bringing it up. There are so many games I have for MAME that I still haven't found out about.

[Dale]

This game is ok. The check point system and power down bullshit kills it for me though. Not only that but their is way too many steps to maxing out the power up for any given weapon which makes the other two things I mentioned much worse. You can kill bosses at level 2 so its not overly ridiculous. It looks real pretty the hitbox is pretty good decent bosses. It's ok.

The power up system in this game isn't nearly as bad as Meta Fox's though.

[Observer]

The biggest problem I have with this is the Gradius-like ultra punishing-as-a-sin power down upon death. Not only you are treated with a checkpoint system, you come back NAKED with your ship wailing its sorry ass at ultra-fast bullets that sometimes blend with the backgrounds.

edit: You just don't say, "Shit, I died", you go "FUCK, NO!!! I'M TOAST".

Oh, yeah, it looks pretty no denying. And, please, if anyone can try this with another player, you'll surely have a blast. That's where I felt the game shines, especially if you can coordinate with your buddy to hold one side of the screen or take out stronger enemies with the laser while you kill the popcorn with the spread gun.

Since there is no overly complex scoring system, anal chaining or anything, it's actually quite fun.

[DocHauser]

Thanks to it being mentioned upthread, I checked out Fire Barrel again (which is very similar to Mad Shark) and discovered it's working a lot better on more recent versions of MAME. Sweet.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

Ive just tried this out on mame, yea the gradius style power down is a pain, but atleast its not as bad a Gun Frontier imo (dunno about the later stages), and thank god it doesnt have speed ups which would of totally broke the game for me. For me personally the worst thing I hated is those sniper tanks like that one near the start of stage 3 that shoots from the bottom right of the screen, very annoying.

Since I never got past stage 3 im wonder how the later stages are? How many stages is there in total? loops / rank?

EDIT:

Games like this are exactly what we should be playing during STGT instead of revisiting Dangun Feveron for the nth time.

I totally agree, pick one maybe 2 popular titles but the rest should be obscure (but still good) games which hardly anybody has spent much time playing and that nearly everyone will have to start learning from sratch

[Dave_K.]

Allumer is just a strange company that made several clones of great shmups, including the magnificent War of Aero

Project MEIOU was made by a company known as Yang Cheng.

Yes, Yang Cheng and Allumer both worked on the game. Its an Allumer PCB.

I wouldn't know about that, but Allumer is credited nowhere, and quite a few companies used Seta1 hardware.

Trust me, I own the PCB, and Allumer is written on the roms and custom graphic chips. Besides, Jun Ichikawa is credited as programmer and director, who also did Rezon, so there is really no question.

[Angry Hina]

Can somone tell me the locations of all the star items? The first one I know about already.

[Despatche]

Can't believe I posted in this thread. Tragic. I want to apologize, especially to Dave K, because I really should have known better then. It's pretty obvious that War of Aero is by the same people that did Mad Shark, and so on.

That aside, I want to remind everyone that Raiden is a shameless ripoff of Kyukyoku Tiger. Nobody acknowledges this because Raiden became too popular for anyone to care. This happens a lot in video games, the public only pulls out the "ripoff" card when you fail to win the dice roll of success. And nowadays, you have devs openly advertising that they're ripping off specific games by name, and everyone seems to think that's okay...

Also, Mad Shark is way better than Raiden.

[AGermanArtist]

I agree. I prefer it to Raiden.

[Angry Hina]

Nah, Mad Shark more or less IS Raiden (1.5 or so) (but with less polished graphics and worse music). Kyuukyoku Tiger is obviously the basecamp for Raiden but they made a lot decisions to optimize it (I know, some decisions made the experiece worse). Its more a reboot and Mad Shark is a clone.

And (as I said in one Raiden thread) KTiger was already very old in the standards of this time and Toaplan itself "optimized" their formula to create games that differ to KTiger. For the worse in my opinion. KTiger has made many things just right but Same3 (which is the closest approach of Toaplan to succeed/continue KTiger) is gameplay system wise worse. So if Toaplan wasnt willing/able to do it, why is it bad to let Saibu do the job? If one likes KTiger, he should be glad to have some sort of "Next Gen KTiger" even if its a bit less polished in some whys (but more in others).

At the moment, I like Mad Shark more as well but its just because it dosnt flood you that fast with enemies and bullets and you can adjust a bit better to it. The star item helps alot of course. Sooo... nobody knows the positions of them?

[Angry Hina]

It's pretty obvious that War of Aero is by the same people that did Mad Shark, and so on.

So Yang Cheng (developer of War of Aero) has some of the Moss Staff as well? I found this:
Programmer Jun Ichikawa (J. Ichikawa)
Graphic Yukie Sugimoto (Y. Sugimoto)Hitoshi Kanemaru (H. Kanemaru)
Character Design Jun Ichikawa (J. Ichikawa)Hitoshi Kanemaru (H. Kanemaru)
Sound Program Hiroshi Yamanaka (H. Yamanaka)
Sound Yohko Ogawa (Y. Ogawa)Hisao Shiomi (H. Shiomi)
Special Thanks N. IsobeNoriaki Yamaguchi (N. Yamaguchi)Kenji Kikkawa (K. Kikkawa)Sou Kajiwara (S. Kajiwara)Yasuhiro Ota (Y. Ohta)
Director Jun Ichikawa (J. Ichikawa)

Does someone know about the people who actually worked on Mad Shark?

[AGermanArtist]

I prefer the default weapon in Mad Shark.

[Bassa-Bassa]

So Yang Cheng (developer of War of Aero) has some of the Moss Staff as well?

Yang Cheng was not the developer of War of Aero, it just was the Korean publisher the game was sold to (by Allumer, the actual dev as stated) for a foreign release as it wasn't getting a domestic release.

Mad Shark was developed by Moss.

[Angry Hina]

Ah, ok, I thought Allumer was more a publisher and payed different teams like (pre-?)Moss.

Star topic:
I've found this so far per watching videos:
stage 1: Star above the tree on the left after river and mountain ended and the large orange tank appears
stage 4: Star right after the first blue barracks on the right side
stage 5: a 1Up appears when destroying a specific astroid at the beginnig before the two midsize enemies

possibly there arent more.