Forgotten Worlds (Arcade, MegaDrive, PS2, PS4/Switch, Capcom, 1988)

[Randorama]

Forgotten/Lost Worlds (Capcom, 1988) is an HORI(zontal) shmup with a rotating joystick and one of Capcom’s first games on their CPS-1 board. The game combines a Dying Earth Science Fantasy setting with more Heroic Fantasy themes strongly reminiscent of Michael Moorcock oeuvre. In the 29th century, a galactic conqueror has reduced Earth to dust; the last survivors send a biologically enhanced flying hero to defeat this god-like being and save the planet. The game is notable in featuring rotating joystick controls, one of the earliest human player characters in the genre, and highly detailed, multi-screen boss battles. If players can set aside some game mechanics bringing the game closer to ”Euro shmups”, they can certainly enjoy this intriguing and somewhat unique shmup. My goal in this review is to argue why this is the case in a staggering 2510 words (or: 6 pages, times new roman size 12, single space), and why my dear readers should try the game at least once (N.B. the squib version is here):

We have discussed the micro-context of rotary games in the Time Soldiers. Furthermore, if we go back to Last Duel’s squib, we have a good context for Capcom’s 1988 releases. For this review, we combine the two contexts into a larger backdrop to the game’s release. By 1988, Capcom had a more powerful hardware in the form of the CPS-1 and had a certain relevance in the market via its earlier successful titles. In 1988, designer Tokuro Fujiwara and his team released the legendary Ghouls’n Ghosts, so Capcom had a successful hit further cementing their reputation. Forgotten Worlds acted as the third unofficial chapter in the “jetpack trilogy” after Section Z and Side Arms. It also acted as an attempt to carve part of the HORI market against Taito’s Darius and Irem’s R-Type. Yoshiki Okamoto, father of Street Fighter II, decided to compete with a shmup with an epic style.

This epic style emerges via the game’s story and setting. The game takes place in the 29th century, when the galactic conqueror “Bios” decides to lay waste to Earth and its inhabitants. He succeeds in this goal via the help of the Bios armies, who are so powerful as to appear as “gods” to human survivors. The survivors hide for a long time, in a desperate attempt to regroup. After decades of secrecy, two unknown soldiers with psychokinetic powers and immense martial skills, “P(layer)1” and “P(layer)2” start their liberation war from these gods and their majesty Bios. The game thus incorporates fictional that span from sources as different as the epic Gilgamesh as Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion cycle and Roger Zelezny’s Lord of Light. If players 1-CC the game, they can literally free humankind from the tyranny of “the gods”, though if these are extremely powerful aliens.

With this epic story and context in place, we can concentrate on the explication of the game mechanics. Players control P1 and P2 via the joystick: the characters can move in eight directions, while flying in an upright position. The A button controls the main shot, which can further find the support of secondary attacks; the game implements a relatively fast auto-fire rate. There is no default B button, but players can add a second button to simulate a slightly faster auto-fire rate. Differently from other rotary games, Forgotten Worlds the A button also acts as a “roll switch” button controlling the angle at which 1P and 2P can shoot. With 16 fixed positions at 22.5° of distance each, players can thus move and shoot in any direction. Though technically a rotary shmup, Forgotten Worlds does not actually use a proper rotary joystick.

Players can also release a desperation bomb if they press the A button, but sacrifice part of their energy. Forgotten Worlds thus follows 1943 in including some typical Euro Shmup mechanics, one of them being an energy bar. A second mechanic close to this maligned sub-genre is the use of a weapons shop. 1P and 2P can collect Capcom’s famed Zenny coins when killing enemies. Once per stage, they can visit a shop in which the mysterious “Sylphie” is ready to sell them more powerful weapons, extra energy, armour, or game hints. Weapons follow a levelling up scheme: once players buy a weapon of a given level (e.g. level 2 machinegun), the next level becomes available. Thus, the game also includes A(rcade)RPG mechanics in how characters can increase their power. To pursue this objective, players must however kill as many enemies as possible, to collect their zenny coins.

1P and 2P can thus buy increasingly powerful primary weapons, but can also buy secondary weapons in the form of “satellite modules”. These are small pods following the two characters along the screen and releasing secondary attacks of various types and power. Pods can absorb basic bullets, so players can also use them to cancel these attacks from screen. If players shoot and rotate their angle, satellite modules will rotate accordingly and re-orient their attacks. If players do not shoot while changing angle, the satellite modules can change position around 1P and 2P instead. Players can also point-blank enemies with the satellite modules, since these secondary weapons are invincible. In so doing, they can further increase fire-rate and cancel bullets. This R-type-style technique is generally risky, but can land devastating damage against larger enemies and bosses that use partial shields (e.g. Stage five’s boss).

The game has a few more mechanics that complete the picture. Pressing the A button repeatedly can then release a bomb-like attack (i.e. the “mega crush”), but this results in a loss of the character’s energy. When players start a co-op play, they can also trigger the “Aura spark”, i.e. a flow of energy that strengthens the characters’ attack while releasing sparks (of course). The extra energy power-up increases the number of H(it)P(oint)s permanently; the first aid kits refills the HP bar, which automatically refills after clearing each stage. The shop appears after 90 seconds or so into the stage, and seems to re-appear every 30 seconds or so, until players reach the boss. Boss fights can be long and players can time them out, but receive no bonus points or zenny coins afterwards. Overall, Forgotten Worlds is mostly a HORI shmup with rotary mechanics, but also offers ARPG-oriented components.

The game is notable in its presentation, both from a visual and musical perspective. Visually, the game is notable in having gorgeously detailed graphics and huge sprites, along a unique visual identity for its game. This is not surprising if we consider that this is the maiden design work of Akira Yasuda or “Akiman”. Musically, it presents a particularly original musical composition by none other than Tamayo Kawamoto, still a member of Capcom’s Alph Lyla by this year. Let us proceed in order, however. Forgotten Worlds features a fairly rich colour palette with fluidly animated characters, from the most basic lizardmen zakos on Stage one to the lethal drones in the final Stage nine. There is a certain prevalence of dark colours, copper, and crimson shades, given the darker tinge of fantasy underpinning the world setting. Nevertheless, the game looks highly detailed and quite well-animated, for its year of release.

The creation of the world setting is the strong part of the game’s visual identity. Stages one to three take place in “Dust City world”, a highly technological city lying in ruins during the game’s period. Stages four to Six take place in “pyramid world”, which recreates the underworld of ancient Egypt gods. Stages seven to Nine take place in “sky world”, a virtual heaven/hell with a new tower of babel as the base for Bios and his armies. Characters tend to be small and large enemies may be big. Bosses are massive; for instance, “War God” on Stage three occupies the equivalent of five screens, while players fly upward to kill him. Each Stage has tons of intricate background details and highly distinctive enemies, such as the various Chinese mythic creatures on Stage seven. The game is richly designed and highly evocative via its exquisite graphics, simply put.

The OST complements this visual design in a remarkably fitting manner. Tamayo created a complex sound tapestry that echoes the one she composed for Ghouls’n Ghosts. To the best of my understanding, Tamayo used synthesizers to recreate the sounds and tones of klaviers and church-style organs and attempted to re-create a baroque classical music sound for Stages one-three. As a result, these Stages resemble the musical scores of fantasy movies of the era, such as Ridley Scott’s Legend. On Stages four-six, Tamayo instead attempted to recreate the beats of ethnic music from the middle East, given that the Stages take place in mythical Egyptian underworld. The OST then moves into almost gothic territory during Stages seven-nine, since 1P and 2P must enter Bios’ heaven/hell and kill the most powerful of the “gods”. Organ-based brooding themes feature prominently, and the music takes dramatic pace and undertones.

The OST may not be to everyone taste’s due to its immersive stylistic choices and blend of genres, but it combines with Stage design in an elaborate manner. Each theme matches the Stage’s specific world settings, with changes in tempo and rhythm matching the action smoothly. For instance, the entrance of Stage three’s boss comes with a sudden piano passage alerting the players to the god’s ominous arrival. One could thus argue that the OST provides a well-executed movie-like score to the epic action of the game. Sound effects are also impressive, since the game features several voice samples during cutscenes, more refined sound effects for explosions and weapons, and a more accurate use of the stereo capabilities of the CPS-1. Overall, Forgotten Worlds is a superbly designed game that still looks and sounds impressive after all these years and presents the in-game action in an exquisite manner.

By this point of the review, we can move my discussion of the game’s difficulty, using the hopefully well-establish term and concept of Facet. I believe that Forgotten Worlds offers three Facets as types of difficulty to players: game mechanics, Stage design/layout, and the interaction of the two as a weak third Facet. With early Capcom games, this interaction appears as the exception rather than the rule, as I mentioned in other game's squibs (e.g. Black Tiger, Tiger Road). I thus suggest that the first two Facets attract 20 and 25 points out of the total 50 points, and the interactional Facet attracts the remaining 5. I anticipate matters a bit and suggest that the final score is 22/50 points: Forgotten Worlds is a low-tier shmup for expert players, and a rewarding “rotary experience”. The reasons why I propose these three Facets are as follows, proceeding via proposed order of Facets.

For the First facet, players must master the rotary mechanics in a manner that differs from other games in the genre. After all, other titles combined axial and polar movement in the joystick, not the attack button. Players need to kill as many enemies as possible and collect their zenny coins to upgrade as soon as possible; attacking power matters, in this game. Learning how to use satellite modules is tricky though not as hard as using pods in R-Type games. At least in my experience, players may leave them in any position and exploit their attacking power with ease. Bullet-cancelling and power-blanking enemies, especially bosses, requires quite a bit of practice. The surge and spark attacks are not crucial but can help players in tenser situations. Overall, however, the game mechanics do not attract more than 5/20 points of difficulty: practice a bit, and the mechanics will become intuitive.

For the second Facet, players must learn the Stage layouts, the potential traps and secret items, e.g. extra HPs appearing when 1P/2P shoot the hiding spots. Enemies appear from different directions, since 1P and 2P can quickly rotate and shoot them down with their usually powerful weapons. Stages four to six have branching paths in their second parts, probably a nod to Darius. Players must choose which path they prefer and learn how to handle their specific difficulties. Stages seven to nine have enemies with high HPs or sections with dozens of minor enemies: players need to develop strategies to handle these onslaughts without losing too many HPs (or none). Bosses, except for Stage one’s ”Paramecium”, are not difficult to handle, but each of them requires specific speed-kill techniques. The final Boss Bios, for instance, can die quickly if players point-blank its weak spot when the boss exposes it.

I thus suggest that each boss a motivates one point of difficulty, and that Stages four to nine justify one point each due to their specific design. At 14/25, this facet offers the main source of difficulty in the game. The third, weak Facet is the interaction of the first two Facets. Two sub-Facets fall within this domain: sections with non-horizontal scrolling (Stage three, Third Boss, Stage five, Stages six and nine), and the positioning of modules. First, when the game scrolls upwards (Stages three, six and nine) players must be careful above enemies suddenly appearing from above and from the sides. Knowledge of enemies’ position and use of point-blanking techniques is fundamental, indeed. Second, moving the module around 1P/2P to handle stage-specific passages is always useful: modules are weapons and shields at once. At 2/5 difficulty points, this Facet represents a small but important source of difficulty.

We thus have reached our total of 22/50 points and motivated our evaluation. Let us have concise conclusions, to balance matters out. Forgotten Worlds is a HORI shmup with ARPG and “Euro Shmup” elements, plus a variant of the rotary joystick mechanic. Players take the role of 1P & 2P, two rugged soldiers who must slay the divine armies of Bios, a mysterious and immensely powerful alien invader. The game features nine Stages of brilliantly designed action by Okamoto, a cool and exotic OST by Tamayo Kawamoto, and the maiden art and design by Akiman. The game is also a quite solid challenge for any players who wish to test their HORI skills with a shmup including quite a few contaminations from other genres. Forgotten Worlds thus acts as a veritable time capsule charting the beginnings of Capcom and its perhaps most famous designers. 1-CC or occasional credit, be sure to try it out.