Gamshara (Arcade)

 I'm sure I was far from the only person who had been waiting a long long time for this game to be added to MAME, but at the same time, it's a game of which a lot of other people will be totally unaware. It's also an interesting little anachronism, being a Cabal-like that was released in 2002. But I guess that's a big part of why it had such allure in all those years it went unemulated, and also why it was only big arcade game enthusiasts who really cared about it.

 

Though Cabal was obviously the patient zero of the genre, I think a more widely accepted point of reference nowadays would be Wild Guns, thanks to its excellent remake on modern consoles a couple of years ago. In case there are readers for whom neither game is familiar, it's kind of like a light gun game where you move an aiming reticule around the screen to shoot at enemies that pop up or wander across your field of view, but with the added caveat that you're also controlling an onscreen character in the foreground, who has to avoid the incoming enemy fire.

 

The controls are as simple as you'd expect: the reticule always moves when you move the joystick, your character only moves when you aren't holding down the fire button. You also have a jump button. You can jump while shooting, though you won't keep shooting while you're in the air, and while you're in the air, you're also invincible. I'm still slowly building my skills (I can currently get as far as the boss at the end of the fourth stage, a water ninja who summons a water spout to drop dead bodies and sunken boats on your head), but I'm pretty sure the secret to good play is going to lie in the fact that you can do an invincible jump without letting go of the fire button. A third button activates Gamshara mode, which causes a big explosion and gives you a few seconds of super-powerful shooting.

 

The game is set in samurai times, and sees you picking one of two machine gun-toting samurai who are fighting against the enemy forces alone. There's Saika, described as "powerful", and Hotaru, described as "speedy". This isn't just a stat difference, though, as they each have a skill the other doesn't: Saika has a powerful charge shot that's fired by releasing the fire button after every couple of seconds of holding it down, while Hotaru has a double jump. Despite the differences, I can make just about the same amount of progress as either character, though I tend to score better as Saika.

 

On the topic of scoring, the system for doing so in this game is simple and fun: shooting stuff, whether it's enemies or bits of destructible scenery, builds up a chain meter, and the amount of points scored for killing enemies is multiplied by the current number on that meter. So, if you play well, you can be gunning down rows of one-hit-kill ninja (which is very satisfying, and happens a lot), and scoring well over ten thousand points from each one. I quickly realised that this means that holding your fire for a few seconds to run around collecting the piles of gold that are worth a couple of thousand each is a waste of time.

 

You've probably figured it out by now, but despite the long wait, Gamshara is definitely not a disappointment. It's a ton of fun to play, it's got a bunch of interesting systems to get into, and I'm looking forward to getting better at playing it, and also seeing it get the love it deserves from more players now that it's actually accessible. The only negative thing I really have to say about it is that the pre-rendered sprites are kind of blobby and ugly, but I think there's enough spectacle and imagination in what they're depicting to make up for that. It's also not as good as the Wild Guns remake, but that's an absurdly high bar to reach. Those NatsumeAtari remakes are among the most perfect videogames ever made, after all.

Savannah Gurashi no Cheetah-san (3DS)

 That title traslates to, I think, "Mrs. Cheetah's Savannah Life", or something like that, at least. It's a pretty descriptive title, too. You play as a mummy cheetah, and you live you life on the savannah. That life consists of chasing down prey to feed yourself and your kittens, scaring scavengers away from your freshly-killed meat, and suffering high-speed head trauma until it kills you. Or maybe you starve to death. Or maybe your kittens starve to death. The problem with a cute game about wild animals is that animals don't really live cute lives in the wild, I guess.

 

So, the game puts you in the savannah, and you've got to run around looking for the small brown animals to hunt down and kill. There's two types, which I think might be some kind of meerkat and some antelope-type creature, too. The antelope-type ones are slightly smarter and more annoying to chase down. There's other animals around too, like wildebeast and zebra, but they're bigger than you, so if you try to pounce on them, you'll just get your face smashed in on their muscle mass. To further explain how the game's played, I should talk about the controls. The d-pad steers your cheetah, tapping B makes her run, a makes her pounce, Y puts on the breaks, and the shoulder buttons do a little sideways step.

 

The X button is a context-dependant button that only comes into play once you've killed one of your prey. If you're stood over the meat, X will eat a bit of it, replenishing your hunger meter. If you're not, it'll should for your kittens to come and eat, which is essential, as the aim of each stage is to fill their hunger meters before the time runs out. And when the hyena comes to steal your kill, X can be used to scare them off. So, you know the win condition, but there are several lose conditions. First, you can die from head trauma, as you lose health every time you run into something face first. Second, you can starve to death, as your own hunger meter depletes as you run around. Third, your kittens can starve to death, which works in the opposite way, as this happens if time runs out before you've filled all of their hunger meters. There's apparently lions who'll attack you from the fourth stage onwards, but I've been unable to confirm that.

 

Mechanically, the game is pretty fun. It's repetetive, but it's cute, and mildly satisfying. The problem comes in something that might be a programming error, or it might just be a bad design desicion, it's hard to tell. The stages are only a few screens across in each direction, and they also loop in each direction, too (meaning that these savannahs are all torus-shaped). But you can be running and running and running, and never finding any prey animals to kill. It's both boring and frustrating when this happens, seeing you hunger meter and the timer both running down, with nothing you can about it. Because of this, I've never seen past the second stage. I'd love to play more of this game, and I'd love to recommend it, but this one issue completely ruins it.

 

Now, the interesting thing about this is that it's a digital-only 3DS game that (I think) you can still obtain through official channels! Because it was made using Petit Computer 3/SmileBASIC, a program/programming language that was an officially-supported way of making homebrew for the 3DS (and the DSi before it, and the Switch after it). I believe that at the time of writing, if you already have Petit Computer 3 installed on your 3DS, you can still use the seven character codes to download people's work. If you're interested in Savannah Gurashi no Cheetah-san, the code for it is 2ZDQ83Z4.

Future GPX Cyber Formula Sin Vier (PS4)

 So, back when I reviewed the PSP Future GPX Cyber Formula game, I said I'd get around to this one eventually, and I finally have. Unfortunately, my first impression of it wasn't a great one, as the anime license has been pretty much wasted: there's no story mode, or even endings, and the characters only appears as the names of the other drivers against whom you're racing, they have no art or voices. It's even more of a shame, since, as far as I know, this is the first time one of these games has received an English release that didn't strip the license away.

 

However, This little disappointment is gotten over quickly, as the game itself has a lot to like about it. As a single player (and the only multiplayer is online, no splitscreen), you can pick between the 2022 and 2023 championships. That's an amusing little detail: since the game's based on a sci-fi racing anime from the 1990s, these are the canonical years that these futuristic races take place, not the years we have been recently experiencing in the real world. Each championship offers seven races, with the typical system of getting more points the higher you place in each race, and winning by having the most points after all the races are done. All pretty standard so far.

 

What aren't so standard are the cars themselves. There's a lot of them to pick from, all taken from the series (and presumably also its various OVA sequels?), and they're all pretty different in their abilities, too. Basically, there's two main abilities the cars in this game can have: transformation and boosting. Transformation refers to the ability to switch between two modes: circuit mode, where the car handles normally, and aero mode, where your acceleration and top speed increase at the cost of vastly stiffer steering that has no chance of getting around most corners. But transforming can be done as often as you like and happens almost instantly, so the challenge here is judging when best to enter and exit aero mode. A couple of the cars don't have the ability to transform, and they have the higher acceleration and top speed all the time, but they're also much more difficult to handle all the time.

 

Boosting is much more obvious: you press a button and get a temporary massive boost to your speed. Some cars have the "two step boost" ability, whereby the boost enters a second, even faster phase after being active for a few seconds. A third ability that some cars possess, but doesnt seem to be listed on the car select screen is some kind of AI speed management system that automatically starts to lower your speed as you approach corners. I'm not actually 100% sure on that one, to be honest. I might have imagined it. These abilities make a clear and tangible difference to how each car plays, even to someone like me with knowledge or interest in more subtle automotive nuances.

 

I really enjoy how the game plays and feels in general, too. You drive fast around nice-looking tracks in a blue skies future. It's never really stressful, and a championship run is about thirty to forty-five minutes, so you can easily just get a little speed fix every day or two without it feels like a labourious chore. It is incredibly easy, and I haven't played through a championship yet without finishing it as the winner,  but to be honest, I don't really play racing games looking for a big challenge. I just want to drive fast through nice-looking environments with very little stress or resisitance. Another weakness is the soundtrack. Though there's a cool vocal song that plays during the final race of each championship, the rest of the music is very generic, very cheap-sounding dance that just kind of blends into the background noise.

 

Though there are a few arcade-style racing games on modern consoles to pick from nowadays, if you want one that doesn't take on a low polygon faux-retro aesthetical affectation, it's slim pickings. In fact, I can't think of any other game like this on PS4 that also has modern-style (albeit kind of low budget) graphics. You can get an English version on the Hong Kong PSN Store for about £20-ish, and if you like this kind of racing game, I'd say it's worth a shot.

3D Shooting Tsukuru (Playstation)

 This is a "construction kit" type thing, not a game. Like RPG Maker, but for 3D rail shooters. A pretty cool concept, and it's both a surprise and a shame that no publisher ever bothered to pick it up for a western release. You'd think the creative urge would be a pretty obvious universal market, wouldn't you? But I guess it's the cost of translating all those menus that put them off. (Even though the Playstation version of RPG Maker did get an official translation, somehow).

 

And on the subject of menus and language, I have to admit that I haven't even tried to actually make something using this program. Sorry. But I have been curious for a while about whether there were sample games on the disc, and if they were worth playing, since rail shooters are cool and fun, and ones that weren't even actual releases would definitely fall into this blog's remit. Luckily, there are three of them, with differing levels of complexity, difficulty, andeven completeness!

 

First up is the utilitarianically-entitled Sample Event 96. It's pretty simple, and has you flying a spaceship/plane through various situations. Sometimes you're shooting enemies, sometimes you're just avoiding scenery. After three stages, it abruptly ends with the same game over screen you'd get if you died. This really is nothing more than a sample game, and it doesn't even feel like it was finished. Scoring isn't implemented (though the kill counter is), and it's not even clear if shooting the enemies is having any effect sometimes. I wonder if part of the program's tutorial has you fixing the faults in this one? If so, its existence makes a lot more sense.

 

Second on the list is Ride On Broom, a game that feels like it must have taken influence from Panorama Cotton and Panzer Dragoon. It sees you controlling a little witch as she rides her broom through two fantasy worlds: a sea with rocks floaing above it, and a semi-abstract world with a giant storybook spread open in the distance. This one's a little more sophisticated: you can shoot a rapid fire stream of shots, as well as Panzer Dragon-style lock-on homing lasers. There's only two stages, and it's incredibly generous with the extra lives, but once you get through those stages, it does at least roll some end credits, which is nice.

 

Finally, there's Orbital Force. Again, it's more sophisticated than the games before it, and again it takes clear inspiration from SEGA games. This time: Afterburner and Galaxy Force. Like Sample Event, you're flying a spaceship/plane, and shooting enemies, but this time, you've got lock-on missiles like in those aforementioned arcade games. And the missiles look great, too: they blast off and fly around leaving a trail of little white smoke cloud sprites. I can't tell you how long this game is, however, as after several attempts, I've been unable to get past the first boss. Still, Orbital Force is a good time while it lasts, and really shows the kinds of things that can be made with this consumer-level package running on consumer-level hardware. And all without keyboard, mouse, or hard drive, too!

 

Unless you've got enough proficiency in Japanese to actually use 3D Shooting Tsukuru for its intended purpose, I don't recommend actually spending any money on it, but if you're a fan of rail shooters and I've made you curous about playing these sample games, then emulating it definitely wouldn't be an unpleasant experience or a waste of your time.