Battle Garegga...oh man this game is insane

[LoneSage]

Words can’t begin to explain how amazed I am at this game. I don’t even know where to begin…the attention to detail is absolutely marvelous, the music reminds me of Streets of Rage 2 (in that club/techno music way), and the game itself is so ingenious in bullet patterns, backgrounds, enemy placement (remember when that tank in the beginning of level 2 rolls over that house? Awesome), etc…

The graphics are amazing, and IMO it isn’t until the third stage that the game starts to become really manic. That Cloud level was awesome, mainly because of the unrelenting minibosses and that lightning striking in the background…


After getting completely assraped on my first try, I played the game on Arcade mode and lied on my side the entire time (since I don’t want to mess up my TV) on the floor. I turned all the options on in the second menu, turned on free play, and then beat the game…but hot damn, this game is just amazing. Just thinking of the bullet patterns in the last two stages makes my head hurt; I wouldn’t mind shaking the hands of fellows who have actually 1CC’ed this game. What’s up with the last stage being at the airport, though? Thought it would have been at an enemy base or something And oh wow, when I thought I had actually beat the last boss, I put down the controller..and then its last form popped out and I got killed. This game is just absolutely amazing.

In NLI’s thread, I remember he asked about how to turn on colored (red) bullets…well, after beating the game in Arcade mode, I went to the Options menu and was surprised to see everything was in English! I copied down everything in English in the second menu (by pressing the R button) for those who could possibly be unaware of it:

Red Ball (changes color of bullets)
Guest Players (yup, I played as the 4 extra characters through my second time…changes the attitude of the game if you ask me, like that attack that summons the two devils who become one and bullet spray everywhere! Creative characters, that they are)
S-Option (no idea what this does)
Stage Edit
Small Hit Size
Easy Menu Mode

Well that’s all for now…my mercy, this game is amazing. My second favorite shmup of all time right now.

[Neon]

what's your first favorite? you buy dodonpachi already?

[LoneSage]

what's your first favorite? you buy dodonpachi already?

Nah, call me crazy but Gradius V is my favorite of all time. There will never be another shmup, ever, that will make me scream at the top of my lungs "OH MY GOD!" every 5 seconds from the first playing and "OH MY GOD! THAT'S ME FROM THE FUTURE! OMGOMG!". It's just an incredibly beautiful and deep game.

Donpachi left me kinda disappointed, I'm not too interested in Dodon right now.

[TWITCHDOCTOR]

I always played my Garegga with the S option turned on.
To me, It "personalizes" the planes a bit, kinda like Strikers 1945. Each plane will have different style "options". In other words, you'll have your basic "snake trail" formation(Gradius) your "auto aiming" gunpods(Strikers Hayate/BF-109) etc,etc.
This can actually be done in the arcade game, by only grabbing certian items. It might be "Secret Option" though, rather than Special.

The "Easy Menu Mode"(English Text) can be turned on without beating the game.
I would also reccomend using "Red Ball" bullets. The original bullets aren't that hard to see when played on a proper arcade monitor, but with a normal TV, they sort of become "inviso-bullets".

BTW: The "Guest Players" are from the Kingdom Grand Prix series( Diasakusen?)

[CMoon]

Haha, I would recommend turning the 'small hitbox' on!

[TWITCHDOCTOR]

Small "hitbox" might be like cheating.
I prefer defaults. The only things I change are setting the "Red Ball" bullets on, which isn't cheating, however some may say that "S" options might be.
I call it "Battle Garegga Special" regardless...

[Dylan1CC]

Ah, I'll never forget the warm late June 2000 night I played Garegga for the first time. Even months of playing Radiant Silvergun and Souky couldn;t spoil me for how good the game was.

Manic old school plane action programmed and hand drawn to perfection.

[MadSteelDarkness]

Man, do I love this game. In fact, I actually changed my avatar in honor of Garegga (courtesy of a pic I found on the old Destroy All Monsters site).

Ya know, it's a crying shame we never saw a proper "Raizing Shooting Collection" for the ole PS2. I would have paid decent ducats for an Armed Police Batrider/Battle Bakraid double pack.

[LoneSage]

Is Raizing the dev, and 8ing the publisher? I noticed the old Electronic Arts logo on the back cover, too Also, what happened to Raizing?

[Neon]

Donpachi left me kinda disappointed, I'm not too interested in Dodon right now.

Donpachi is pretty much poo, especially on the saturn. Dodonpachi is excellent. Go for it

[MadSteelDarkness]

Donpachi is pretty much poo

*Sigh*

In a world that produces games like Enter the Matrix and Punky Skunk, you would equate Donpachi with excrement? Oyyyy....the kids these days...

Ah, well. To each his/her own, I suppose.

[tsunami0ne]

what's your first favorite? you buy dodonpachi already?

Nah, call me crazy but Gradius V is my favorite of all time. There will never be another shmup, ever, that will make me scream at the top of my lungs "OH MY GOD!" every 5 seconds from the first playing and "OH MY GOD! THAT'S ME FROM THE FUTURE! OMGOMG!". It's just an incredibly beautiful and deep game.

Donpachi left me kinda disappointed, I'm not too interested in Dodon right now.

don't worry. Dodonpachi is leagues better than Donpachi.

[raiden]

I don´t consider the small hitbox as cheating for 2 reasons:
- it makes grabbing medals harder, so it helps survival but hurts score
- you can do it in the arcade version just by selecting the ships with a different button or letting the timer run out. A "cheat" that is so easy to access it can even happen unintentionally probably wasn´t considered a cheat by the developers.

Like Twitch said, the S-Option is also easily accessible in the arcade game by letting 5 option items drop out of the screen, then grabbing one. Real pro Garegga players change options manually with the C-button all the time, anyway.

Concering the Saturn version, the extra options weren´t identical between jp. and english settings. I don´t remember exactly, but there was one option only appearing in english, and another one only in jp.

[TWITCHDOCTOR]

Donpachi is pretty much poo

*Sigh*

In a world that produces games like Enter the Matrix and Punky Skunk, you would equate Donpachi with excrement? Oyyyy....the kids these days...

Ah, well. To each his/her own, I suppose.

I agree, DonPachi is "coo"...not "poo"!
The Saturn version is not the best, but its still GOOD!
Its fun to play, and its playable, so, whats the problem?

[umi]

Donpachi is pretty much poo

*Sigh*

In a world that produces games like Enter the Matrix and Punky Skunk, you would equate Donpachi with excrement? Oyyyy....the kids these days... :(

Ah, well. To each his/her own, I suppose.

Watch your words, sir! I happen to be a Punky/Cooly Skunk fan :P

p.s. To the other poster... Donpachi rocks, so watch your words also :P

[Anarchos]

Meh, give it a week and you'll understand that the game isn't ALL THAT. I still don't see the bullets, and the patterns are nothing compared to Cave.

[CMoon]

Donpachi is pretty much poo...

Oh here we go again! Them's fightin' words Neon and sooner or later (whether it be this or Gun Frontier) were gunna have to shoot it out (what a terrible day to change my avatar...)

I don´t consider the small hitbox as cheating for 2 reasons:
- it makes grabbing medals harder, so it helps survival but hurts score
- you can do it in the arcade version just by selecting the ships with a different button or letting the timer run out. A "cheat" that is so easy to access it can even happen unintentionally probably wasn´t considered a cheat by the developers.

It does in fact make medal collection significantly harder, even with a fast plane, but I can predictably get to level 4 with is, so I'm happy.

don't worry. Dodonpachi is leagues better than Donpachi.

I think you've got that backwards. No seriously! What's up with this sort of thinking? Don't like Raiden? Don't like Batsugun? After the heavily toaplanesque Raiden, the just-then newborn Cave decided to do an homage to an homage (since Raiden itself is an homage) by making a very very Toaplan playing Raiden shmup that in the end was like Seibu and Toaplan had this wonderful love-child.

I think the problem is that people work backwards with all the terribly modern shmups. Donpachi isn't the prequel to Dodonpachi, its the sequel to Batsugun!!!

[LoneSage]

The so-called inviso-bullets aren't that bad once you get to training your eye for them; I just played through it a second time and didn't have much difficulty with seeing them. It's just a matter of practice.


PS I LOVE THIS GAME.

[Neon]

Its fun to play, and its playable, so, whats the problem?

The problem is that unlike some people here, I play my games for more than five minutes before stacking em on the shelf with the others (sometimes I buy without a spinecard, gasp!) [edit - just joshing, don't take seriously]. Donpachi has pretty graphics yes, and decent-ish music, however practicing it is hell. The first three stages are incredibly easy, and then the 4th stage onwards are very tough, making it a huge pain to practice since you have to continually play through the first three stages. That wouldn't be so bad if the game was worth it, but IMO it's not.

Dodonpachi is hard from the get go (if you're going for chains) and is stupid fun the entire time.

[CMoon]

So you're saying if it had a practice mode it would be a much better game???

I don't think Raiden or Raiden 2 have practice modes, and the first two levels are relatively easy... Are they poo?

[LoneSage]

IMO Donpachi is a derivative game that is not poo nor coo; the only real cool thing about it is the way those thick lasers look. I pressed pause one time with the thick laser on and stared at it for like half a minute.


Donpachi's shite compared to BG.

[dave4shmups]

How wide is the non-Tate mode in Battle Garegga? I just got Batsugun the other day, and it has a VERY wide non-Tate mode.

[LoneSage]

It's no more and no less than most non-Tated shmups. You can find a screenshot of it somewhere and that could give you a general idea.

[landshark]

After getting completely assraped on my first try, I played the game on Arcade mode and lied on my side the entire time (since I don’t want to mess up my TV) on the floor. I turned all the options on in the second menu, turned on free play, and then beat the game…but hot damn, this game is just amazing. Just thinking of the bullet patterns in the last two stages makes my head hurt; I wouldn’t mind shaking the hands of fellows who have actually 1CC’ed this game. What’s up with the last stage being at the airport, though? Thought it would have been at an enemy base or something And oh wow, when I thought I had actually beat the last boss, I put down the controller..and then its last form popped out and I got killed. This game is just absolutely amazing.

You can play laying on your side? You have talent my friend. I'm completely useless at that angle. I think I have a mercury switch in my head that disables all motor functions when I'm not upright

[BulletMagnet]

Consider yourself lucky, as my motor skills are defunct even when I'm right side up!

[Neon]

So you're saying if it had a practice mode it would be a much better game???

Yep. Kind of pisses me off to play a long time to get to the same spot, then die in the same spot. Fortunately for me there's mame, which in addition to having hella better sound effects than the saturn version (perhaps the best explosions/guns (on the green helicopter) of any game) has savestates So tonite I had some fun with it now that I got past that stupid spot, which I won't mention how hideously early in the game it is.

[PepsimanVsJoe]

Battle Garegga is indeed amazing. Though I suck at it.
Can't control rank let alone SURVIVE.
And I don't care what anyone says, the bullets suck. All too often my ship will suddenly explode and I'll be like "WTF?" and it turns out I missed the gray bullet flying over the gray background that was hidden in some explosion(which may have been gray too).

Oh and I made the mistake of playing Donpachi AFTER Dodonpachi. Man I felt like somebody crapped in my Cookie Crisp cereal. Hell for a (VERY) short amount of time I owned the saturn version of Donpachi...egads!

[TVG]

if anything, donpachi is worth playing for the announcer alone.

[U K Narayan]

Also, what happened to Raizing?

Pardon me if this has been said before, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe team Raizing merged into Eighting fully.

I'm probably wrong though, I haven't looked too much into it.

[dave4shmups]

"It's no more and no less than most non-Tated shmups. You can find a screenshot of it somewhere and that could give you a general idea."

Any screenshots of this game are more or less likely to be of the Tate mode; that's why I asked for a comparison to Batsugun.