Keio Flying Squadron (Mega CD)

 This is another game where I'm not totally sure on its obscurity, but I'm going to go with the excuse that a moderately popular Mega CD game that's been mostly forgotten is still going to be obscure to most people. I wouldn't go as far as to say that any Mega CD game outside of Night Trap, Sonic CD, and Thunderhawk is obscure, but I also don't think it's too crazy a statement. But anyway, this is a game that surprisingly got a lot of coverage in UK magazines when it came out, even getting a demo disc given away with one of them!

 

It's a horizontal shooting game, and I think a large part of its appeal is that it was made specifically for the Mega CD, but it's also just a game that happens to be on CD instead of cartridge. Of course, there's lots of voice acting, an FMV intro, and a bunch of full screen pixel art cutscenes, plus a CD audio soundtrack, but as a game, it's just a regualr old shooting game with regular old pixel graphics. I suspect that it might take advantage of the increased onscreen colour palette the Mega CD offers over a stock Mega Drive, but it might also be that the artists were just really good atre-using colours and dithering. Maybe both!

 

As for the game itself: it's pretty good! Nothing spectacular, but it does look really nice and it plays decently. I've got a few issues with it, like how your main weapon is incredibly weak before you've picked up a few power ups, and how the power up for your secondary weapon seems to take ages to cycle round to the one actually useful option. Also, it's absolutely merciless when you lose a life. It'll trick you at first into thinking it doesn't suffer from Gradius syndrome because when you die, you're only partially depowered, plus a couple of power up items appear onscreen, too. But the truth is, those power ups are all the way at the other end of the screen, and your invincibility time post-ressurection is woefuly inadequate in terms of getting you over there. There's been many times where things were going perfectly well, then I immediately lose all my lives in just a few seconds. It's infuriating, and I have to admit that Ihad to resort to using a level select cheat to take screenshots of later stages to add a bit of variety to the screenshots for this review! How shameful.

 

If wikipedia is to be believed, there's some weird stuff going on with the western versions of this game, that really flew in the face of the trends and accepted wisdom of the time. Apparently, the reason it's so aggressively odd and also set in a fantastical version of old-timey Japan is because they wanted to tap into the burgeoning popularity of anime in the US and Europe. The exact opposite of what most companies were doing up until almost a decade later! Also, Rami, the bunnygirl protagonist was intended to be bisexual? And another reason for the comedic themeing is to be as far away from the then-controversial Mortal Kombat as possible? I recommend going and reading that page, it's got an insane amont of detail for a mostly-forgotten thirty-year-old shooting game.

 

There's a couple more points of interest, too. The options screen, as well as looking unusually nice for an options screen, also includes the ability to slightly change the exact location of your sprite's hitbox, which is something I don't remember seeing in any other game before or since. There's also a secret hidden game! Inputting a certain sequence on the main menu takes you away to a faux-LCD (or LSI as they're called in Japan) game about a cat catching falling objects.It's not particularly exciting, but it's there, and that in itself is fairly interesting. I assume it must have been a while after the game's release that it was discovered, too, as I don't remember it ever being listed alongside the level select cheat in magazines (and hidden game cheats always stuck out to me, even for games I didn't have any access to. The very concept of them was fascinating, along with secret characters and stages back in the pre-32-bit days when those things were a lot rarer).

 

One final thing I want to mention is that, as stated earlier, some of the cutscenes are FMV, and some are full screen pixel art. But somehow,  the FMV looks almost as good as the pixels! It's big and colourful, and might only be bettered on the Mega CD by the ports of the Taito laserdisc games. Also, the voice acting is really reminiscent of English dubs of comedy anime from around the same time, which is nice and nostalgic, too. Keio Flying Squadron is a pretty good game, and it's full of charm, too. There are definitely better shooting games on Mega CD, but this is one that's still worth a bit of your time. The Mega CD is a system that seems to have been hit particularly hard with "the retro game curse", though, probably due to its unpopularity when it was new, so always assume that emulation is the only option for its games.