Galshell: Blood Red Skies (PC)

I hope this post isn't too clouded by nostalgia, since this (along with Warning Forever and Dan Da DAN!) was actually one of the first few doujin shooters I played when I got my first PC years and years ago. Obviously, the main draw of the game is the amazing Gigeresque visuals, though the detailed sprites have a payoff in that there isn't much animation to go with them. Though what there is is used effectively, with enemies and bullets pulsating and wiggling like gross infectious parasites. Even the two player craft have their

own unwholesome little twitches.
Ufortunately, as you can tell from the screenshots accompanying this post, there's a weird problem I've had while playing Galshell on my current PC: all the explosions and enemy bullets are surrounded by ugly black squares. Though it doesn't effect the game itself, it is very ugly, and a shame considering it gets in the way of the great sprites. A little extra bonus is that all the game's graphics and sounds are just regular files in the game's directory to be enjoyed at your leisure.
The game itself is a lot of fun to play too, of course. There's no fancy scoring system like you'd expect from a modern shooting game, though there is a fairly novel power-up and extend system.
The player gains experience points for every one of their bullets that hits an enemy, and killed enemies drop

blobby red throbbing items, which also give experience when collected. Upon levelling up, the player's weapon is upgraded and they get an extra life. Even when your weapon's fully upgraded, you can continue levlling up to keep gaining extra lives.
Along with the three regular difficulty levels you'd expect (easy, normal and hard), there's also an extra mode, which ramps the difficulty up to crazy levels, but also gives the player experience at a much higher rate.
Galshell is a great game, and definitely worth playing, and if anyone can solve the  black box problem, please tell me!

Tenkomori Shooting (Arcade)

So, an evil witch has kidnapped all your monkey brothers and locked them in her towers. Also her towers are full of shooting minigames. You, as one of the two remaining free monkeys must go to the towers to shoot stuffand save your brethren. It's a lot like what Tanto-R or Warioware would be like if they were made by

shooting obsessives.
Depending on which difficulty you choose, you play through either four, six or nine shooting games, each about a minute long. There is a surprising amount of variety among the games, there are a few obvious ones like "shoot this many tanks/planes", "collect this many medals", "shoot the boss this many times". but there are also a lot of games based on premises you wouldn't associate with shooting.
There's a stage in which you must shoot love hearts at a performing idol, making sure to avoid hitting the waiters, elvis impersonators and dogs who will all assault you in various ways should they feel your love. There's also a stage where a man will ask for certain sushi dishes that are scrolling by on a conveyor belt, to be delivered via the medium of thrown plate.
Then there are stages where you're shooting stuff again, but with an interesting twist, such as a stage that gives you three shots to destroy at least 20 planes, making you aim at clusters of planes close together, to set of a chain of explosions. (If you're really good, you can get all twenty in a single shot). Or a stage where the enemy is a single cell organism that splits in two when shot, and your mission is to split it into a certain

number of copies.
Obviously, since it's a Namco game, there are also stages paying homage to Galaga, Digdug and Xevious (Another possible homage to another Namco game is that the monkeys look a lot like the monkeys from Dancing Eyes).
That's enough boring listing of the minigames, I think. I like this game a lot, it appeals to my short attention span, it rarely feels unfair, even when it's brutally hard and it is very addictive. Having seperate high scores for each minigame along with a highscore table for the highest combined scores is a simple but excellent idea, adding an extra little challenge, pushing the player to get better each time they play. I always say this when I write about an arcade game, but it really is a shame there was no home version of this, it has a lot of potential for

extra modes that would only work on a home port, like being able to play each game individually, and infinite survival mode, and so on. Oh well.

Demon Front (Arcade)

This game is by IGS, for their PGS arcade hardware, a company and a system both mostly known for their high-quality beat em ups, such as Oriental Legend and the Knights of Valour series. This isn't one of those, though: it's a huge Metal Slug rip-off.

Well, rip-off might be a bit harsh. Everything about the game is very high quality, and it does have a couple of new ideas. But the general feel of the game, as well as some of the weapons (the most blatant being the machine gun and shotgun) are exactly like the Metal Slug games. You go across slightly hilly horizontally scrolling stages, killing tons of one-hit enemies, occasionally stopping for a bigger set-piece type enemy, and there are even litle hidden paths and points items gained by shooting the right parts of the background, just like Metal Slug. One thing they were right to steal is the concept of having really nice 2D graphics. To be extra clear, the graphics themselves aren't stolen, but it's obvious the developers knew they couldn't compete with SNK unless their game looked just as good, and it definitely does. Well, a lot of people might prefer Metal Slug's "everything is dirty and slightly melted" style to Demon Front's "really really nice use of colours"

style, but either way, Demon Front looks great.
As for the original parts, the first is that each character has a little pet flying alongside them. Holding the fire button for a couple of seconds makes the pet do their attack, which is different for each pet, and pressing the third button turns the pet into a forcefield around the player which can take a few hits. It's obviously a lot safer using the pet as a shield than a weapon, and when playing, I've survived longer when using this tactic. Once the forcefield has taken its share of hits though, it disappears and won't reappear until you lose a life. Some brave players might want to try being a little more tactical, using the forcefield right up until the last hit, then turning it back into the

pet and using its powerful attack for a while.
There is also some kind of levelling up mechanic regarding the pet, and you get different kinds of experience from enemies depending on whether you shoot them, stab them or kill them with the pet's attack. The levelling doesn't really seem to have a huge effect on what happens either way, though.
All in all, Demon Front is a pretty great game, and is definitely worth playing, and even if it's not totally original, its general quality makes up for that.

GunMaster (Arcade)

As promised in my Dharma Doujou post, I'm doing another post on an arcade game by the little-known company Metro. This time it's a platform shooting game, heavily influenced by Gunstar Heroes.

I use the more generous "influenced by" rather than "ripped off" because while GunMaster does have a lot in common with Treasure's masterpiece, it also adds a lot of it's own ingredients, the most notewothy of which being the fighting game-esque special moves the player can execute. Most of these moves are listed in the game's attract mode sequence, except one move, referred to as "BLOODY DANCE". I haven't managed to figure out this move myself (having done so with all the others, as being the impatient person I am, I didn't bother watching the attract mode until I'd already played the game a few times), but according to internet hearsay, the commands for it are revealed during the end credits.
The game itself sees the player going from stage to stage with each stage being a few screens wide and being taken up almost entirely with a boss fight, a la Alien Soldier (yes, another Treasure game, though in this case
GunMaster predates it by about a year).
I did actually intend to throw away my principles and credit feed to the end to take a screenshot of that elusive move for my precious readers, but unfortunately, the game's emulation in MAME has one small, but fatal flaw: while playing, it might at some random point, for no obvious reason, freeze.
But anyway, you can still play it to see what it's like, and it doesn't freeze every time, nor does any specific

in-game situation seem to trigger the bug, so you might make it all the way through if you're lucky! Plus, even if you're not, you can choose the order in which to tackle the stages (except for the final stage and an easy introductory stage), so you can still see a lot of the game. You'll definitely have to credit feed, though. That's the biggest flaw of the game itself: the unfair difficulty. A lot of the bosses have attacks that are impossible (or at least very close to impossible) to avoid. This wouldn't be so bad is the player had some kind of defensive maneouver, like Alien Soldier's Counter Force, or even just something as simple as a block button would have made fiinishing the game a significantly more realisitc prospect.
As for Metro, while trying to find more information on this game, I actually stumbled across their official website, which is still active, as is the company itself. They mostly seem to make licenced shovelware, as well as a few MMOs and even a couple of entries in the Simple series.

Espalion (PC)

Espalion is a shooting game made in 2004 by a Japanese indie developer named Team DRYUAS, and as far as I'm aware, it's their only work.
It feels really different to most shooting games, and though at first I couldn't put my finger on how, I eventually realised that playing Espalion feels less like flying a fighter ship in a future war and more like taking part in some kind of choreographed performance. The enemies are all arranged into exact positions, and have exact lines of fire to create intricate grids and weaving patterns, in contrast to the chaotic spirals and shapes of typical shooters.
The way it plays is fairly unique, too.Your main (and only) weapon is a pair of two shields that shoot streams of bullets, either in front of and behind your ship, or to either side of your ship. You switch between the two positions at the touch of a button. The shields also absorb bullets, which is also the game's main scoring gimmick. As I said earlier, the game feels like a choreographed performance, in which you're expected to find the right place to be to survive, as well as the right alignment for your shields to both absorb enemy shots and kill those enemies.
The choreographed feeling doesn't hurt the game like you mgiht be thinking, though. It is still a shooting game and quick enough reflexes will get you through, so it's not like a shooting version of Rick Dangerous, with unfair deathtraps that are impossible to avoid on a first attempt.

TRL: The Rail Loaders (Playstation)

Hello! I'm back again! I apparently get the same amount of monthly views whether I post or not! Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Anyway, on to today's game. I think it might actually be a port of a Korean PC game, but I'm not sure.
It's hard to categorise, but I'm listing it as a shooting game and a puzzle game. Mostly a shooting game though. But unlike most shooting games, you play as a train on a track, and as such, your movement is mostly restricted to moving back and forth along that track, as well as jumping over obstacles. You also have an AI-controlled parttner, who's performance mostly varies between useless and annoying.
You do get some small choices as to where you go in the stages, as there are switches here and there along the way that change the route you're taking. The problem with this is that you don't know which routes are the best unless you've playted through the stage before.
Along the way, there'll be other trains on your track going the opposite direction that you'll have to shoot, and brown... things that you'll have to jump over. Your gun isn't a typical destructive weapon, instead shooting a large bubble that your enemies safely float away inside.
At the end of each stage, there's a boss fight, during which your train will inexplicably take flight. The first boss is a pushover: you can just sit in front of its weakspot and shoot until it dies, but the second boss is a lot harder, constantly attaking, and hiding its weakspot away most of the time.
I haven't beaten the second boss yet, and to be honest, I probably never will. The game, despite being original, just isn't very good. I don't recommend wasting any time playing it.
 END.

Dolphin Blue (Arcade)

Dolphin Blue sounds like a meaningless title, but both words are very relevant to the game. Dolphin, because you spend the game being accompanied by a dolphin buddy, and blue because a lot of the game is set in or on water.
Because of all that water, there are three kinds of segments in DB. There are parts on land (or more often, on the decks of huge battleships), where you fight on foot. These parts are very reminiscent of the Metal Slug games. Before I'd played the game, I'd only seen a few screenshots, and assumed the whole game was like this. The second kind are the parts that take place on the waves, with you riding on your dolphin buddy's back, and the third kind are underwater, seeing you swimming around accompanied by your dolphin buddy. It's in these parts where he comes in most useful, as he'll go around collecting points items that are hard for you to reach, and can be commanded to attacked the enemy by curling into a ball and bouncing aroud the screen, smashing not only the enemies, but their mines, bombs and missiles too.


It's really a shame that this game has never been converted to any home consoles (unless you count those fanmade consolised Atomiswave systems as such), which is the case for a lot of Atomiswave and Naomi systems. I guess if the Dreamcast had been supported longer, it would have made a fine home for them all. Oh well.
Obviously, I like this game a lot. It's fast and fun to play, it looks really nice, etc. One little touch that I love (and was probably not really intentional on the part of the designers) is that the default gun that you have when your power-up weapons run out can fire as fast as you can press the button. So some of the more tense situations are enhanced greatly, just by the physicality added by hammering the fire button as hard as you can (something I also felt regarding the finishers in Bayonetta, especially the ones which had the player spinning the analogue sticks with as much vigour as they could muster(but I don't think many people agreed with me on that)).

STDS00751 R+R (X68000)

Sorry about the long wait between the last post and this one, but I was busy preparing for, going to, and recovering from Bloodstock 2012 (which was thoroughly excellent, in case you were wondering). Also, I was playing a lot of Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3 instead of anything that fits this blog's remit. Oops.
Anyway, this game is a shooting game for the X68000. It's a pretty good one, too! It's neither too easy or too hard, it moves at a decent pace and it looks and sounds pretty good, too. The only problem it has is that it's a little bit generic. It doesn't have any really strong gimmicks: no intricate scoring system, no fancy bullet-countering weapons or cool-looking bomb attacks, not much at all really. The nearest thing it has to a good gimmick is the power up system: you start with the weakest weapons (oh yeah, there are two weapons that can be switched between at any time: a powerful straight laser, and a weaker spread shot. Again, generic) and once you get 10000 points, they get more powerful, then again after another 20000 points. If you die, you're back to the weakest weapon and have to build it up again.
This would be a pretty cool system, if it had more than 3 levels of power. It would have been interesting if the game rewarded continued survival with gradually more and more powerful weaponry.
You also get an unlimited-use super shot that is activated, oddly, by jiggling your ship left and right.
As said before, the game looks pretty good, with the sprites being a lot better looking than the backgrounds (though they themselves aren't ugly or anything). I could be my imagination, but some of the enemies seem to be possibly inspired by Thunderforce IV.
The music is as good as you would expect from a shooting game for the X68000, though obviously it doesn't reach the heady heights of ChoRenSha.
All in all, this is a pretty fun game, but on a system with as many great shooters as the X68000, it doesn't really stand out much. And it has a really terrible name.

XESS - The New Revolution (Arcade)

This is a Korean arcade game, that's actually a compilation of three games, two of which had been previously released seperately. Okay, then.
So, the first game is Cookie and Bibi. It's Puzzle Bobble. It has puzzle and versus modes like Puzzle Bobble, the same mechanics as Puzzle Bobble, it is Puzzle Bobble, but with different graphics. I guess the fact that it has different sport-related balls instead of different coloured bubbles is a nice touch, though? It's also a part of a series of three games, all of which appear to be Puzzle Bobble clones. I suspect it might be the second in the series, but I have no idea why.
The next game is Hyper Man, which was originally called Hyper Pac-Man. It's a Pac-Man ripoff, of course. A really good one, though! It seems like the makers wanted to rip off Pac-Man, but then they had a bunch of other ideas and stuck them all in, too. There's different kinds of enemies, boss fights, destructible walls and a bunch of power-ups including (but not limited to) jump shoes, speed-up shoes and a helmet that shoots lasers! Also, unlike the original Pac-Man, each stage has a different layout, and there's room in there for odd gimmicky stages, like a stage that is just dots and ghosts, with no walls. I seem to remember there being a homebrew amiga game, also called Hyper Pac-Man, that also featured the addition of a bunch of power ups and gimmicks. I doubt the two are related, though.
The final game, and the only one that is completely new for this compilation is New Hyper Man! It re-uses a lot of sprites from Hyper Man, but it isn't a Pac-Man clone, it's a single screen top down shooter! On each stage, kill all the blue enemies to go on to the next stage. Dead enemies constantly respawn after death as red enemies, though you only have to kill all the blue ones to advance. There are items strewn about the stages, too, including the points-giving food items from Hyper Man, as well some of the power ups from Hyper Man. Getting points is very important in this game, since your score also acts as an RPG-esque experience system, with your weapon becoming more powerful as your score increases. New Hyper Man is a really fun and fast game, and could really have been released on its own, especially since the other two, weaker games already had been. Maybe they though such a move would be too cheeky, considering all the re-used graphics in NHM? Never stopped bigger, more "legitimate" companies, though, did it?

Metal Head (32X)

The 32X, like the Mega CD has a reputation for being a worthless albatross. Unlike the Mega CD, it kind of deserves that reputation. It doesn't have many good games at all, and most of the ones it does have are ports (Doom and Virtua Fighter, for example).
Luckily, Metal Head is both a fairly good game and a 32X original. If you also add the fact that it has probably the best (or at least, the most technically impressive) graphics on the system, it's surprising that it isn't more well known.
It's a 3D shooting game, in which you pilot a robot around city streets and underground bases shooting terrorists, who themselves have their own robots, plus tanks, hoverbikes, jeeps and various other things.
The stages each have different objectives, which are all simple tasks like "kill all the enemies" or "find the enemy's hideout". At the end of each stage you get awarded points, based on how many enemie you killed, how quickly you finished and how much ammo and health you have left. These points can be spent every few stages on weapons and other upgrades. One feature that is both strange and annoying is that none of the upgrades are permanent: you start with a grenade launcher in the first set of stages, but if you want to use it later, you have to buy it again. Likewise, you can also upgrade your machine gun, but this needs to be done every time.
As mentioned earlier, the graphics are really excellent, considering the hot console. You could easily mistake MH for an early Saturn or Playstation game! The most impressive thing is the fact that everything is texture mapped, and though the textures are very low resolution (the game did come on a cartridge, after all), it really does add a lot to the look and feel of the stages.
The controls are okay, though they'll seem very old fashioned to people used to modern twin-stick 3D shooting games. The d-pad turns and moves, and there are buttons for shooting, cycling through weapons, running and looking left and right. The biggest omission is the lack of strafing. There is a surprise in that the "Mode" button is used to change the camera angle. I didn't know that button could actually be used for in-game stuff. Is Metal Head the only game that uses it like this?
There's also a fairly long (and unfortunartely, quite boring) intro with voice acting, if you like that kind of thing.
I think I've said enough about the game itself now, so I'll tell you about two quite strange options the game has.
The first allows you to change the speed of the game's music. It sounds fine as it is, though, so I leave it at the default. Actually, I should mention that the music in this game is pretty good, and I do find myself humming the intro theme from time to time. It's a shame that whewn you're actually playing the game, it's drowned out by the sound effects, really. I can only assume that this option only exists because the programmers discovered that it was a neat trick the 32X could do?
The second weird option is the one that lets you choose the style of the character portraits. You can choose between photos of real people (which look really weird when animated along with the voice acting) or cartoony drawings of them. This doesn't have any effect at all on the gameplay, and also, the characters in the two options look completely different to each other.

Two Tenkaku (Playstation)

I read somewhere that this game was the winner of the highest award in the Second Digital Entertainment Program (DEP '94) Pro Course. The problem is, the only reference I can find to this program is the same quote regarding this game winning at it, copied and pasted into various pointless game database sites. So for all I know, DEP '94 might not even be a real thing.
Other internet results for this game are mainly made up of scattered forum posts, in which people express their opinion of it. Most of thoe opinions are negative. That's entirely reasonable, too! The game is far from being a must-play classic! It doesn't have an interesting scoring system, the graphics are kind of drab (although the first stage has some nice pixel cityscapes, if you like that sort of thing), and it's hard without
feeling like a fun challenge. To top it all off, it has an incredibly ugly CG intro FMV. Despite all these criticisms, I actually kind of like this game! Or at least, I got mildly addicted to it. If I put it on, I know i'll be playing at least few credits before I get bored and do something else. And the presentation isn't all bad! The title cards for each stage have an unusual "ominous Buddhist chanting" thing going on. The Buddhist theme also finds its way into the graphics in a small way: one of the two bomb types summons a giant Buddha made of fire that shoots fireballs about the screen. (Note: I am not a religious scholar. If I'm wrong and the chanting and the fire guy are from another religion, feel free to correct me.)
I should probably describe how the game actually plays in a little more detail, right? Well, there isn't really a great deal of detail to go into. It's a pretty generic shooter. There are three ships to choose from (I prefer the blue one, as it shoots a cool Dodonpachi-esque laser when you've collected a couple of power-ups), power-ups, bombs, no special scoring system, blah blah blah. In summary, I liked this game, but don't feel like you're missing anything if you never get to play it.

Tank Force (Arcade)

Tank Force is the sequel to Tank Battalion, which got ported to NES and Game Boy as Battle City (why was that such a popular thing in the old days, changing the names of arcade ports? Was it a licencing thing?). The GB version of Battle City is easily one of my favourite games on that system, so you should definitely play it sometime. It gains a lot from the simplified graphics and the fact that you can't see the entire map onscreen at once.
But this post isn't about Battle City, it's about Tank Force! And I'll say right now, it's definitely a worthy sequel. In fact, it does everything a sequel should do!
If you don't know, the idea of the game is simple, the stages are simple, slightly mazey single screen maps with destructible walls, onto which enemy tanks will roll. You, also in a tank, keep killing all the enemies until they stop coming, then it's on to the next map.
Tank Force builds well upon this simple formula. The most immediatly obvious change is the improvements in graphics. TF is very colourful, and while the first game had simple, functional brick walls making up the stages, the sequel has various different buildings which, though viewed from above, still give the stages obvious themes: warehouse district, military base in a desert, etc.
There's also a lot of new actual game stuff, too. New power-ups, such as a range of temporary weapons, including a kind of sonic wave weapon that passes through walls without breaking them, allowing you to kill enemies from acros the map. There's new enemies too, including small, fast tanks that drop timed mines, and the biggest addition of all: bosses! The original game had no bosses at all, but every few stages in TF, you'll face really big super-tanks.
I think I'm beginning to sound a bit too much like a press release or something, with all this feature-listing and positivity. The problem is, I do just really like this game! I strongly recommend you play it, as well as the Game Boy port of the original.

Still Hunt (PC)

It's been a long time since I last wrote about a Korean game. It was one of the first posts on this blog, in fact: Uzu Keobukseon for Mega Drive. I don't know why it's been such a long time, but here's another Korean work.
It's a blatant "homage" to Treasure's famous debut Gunstar Heroes, and it's possibly a bit better better than the other GH homage, Gunner's Heaven/Rapid Reload for Playstation.
So, it's a running and shooting game, then. You can choose from two characters, Jean and Houn, who have the same default weapons, but they each have three collectible weapons (though you can only have one of the collectible weapons at a time). All the weapons can also be levelled up by using them a lot too, so you'll probably want to find the weapon you like most and stick with it. They also each have a few excluive stages, which is nice. Their respective versions of the second stage are especially notable, as Jean has a stage in which he flies via jetpack, while Houn rides across the sea on a futuristic jetski.
If you want an easy ride through the game, pick Jean. One of his collectible weapons, appropiately named the "Exploder" is a fast-shooting missile launcher whose shots leave explosions that linger and cause damage to enemies for a few seconds, and it burns through boss lifebars like nobody's business.
Whichever character you pick, the game itself is a lot of fun to play, it's fast, there's lots of enemies and explosions everywhere, and it's neither punishingly hard or tediously easy. There are only two major flaws: the first is that for a lot of the stages (especially the earlier ones), there's pretty much no level design. You just run from left to right, shooting enemies as you go until you reach the end. The second flaw is that once you get a few stages in, the enemies take just a tiny bit more damage than I'd like. That one's not really a huge deal-breaker, but it does kind of break the flow a little.
The graphics and music are both really great. The graphics have nice, big, colourful sprites, and look like they could be from an early Saturn or Playstation game (like the aforementioned Rapid Reload), and the music has a nice Mega Drivey feel to it.
I should mention the lengths to which I went to get this game running on a modern (well, Windows XP) computer. Obviously, for a game so old, DOSBOX was a necessity to get it to run. Then there was the question of mapping the controls to my USB Saturn pad, which not only required the use of Joy-to-Key, but also, since the game uses the numberpad for the directional keys, and I'm on a netbook with no number pad, I had to use the On-Screen Keyboard to map them. And finally, there's the copy protection! Before the game loads, you have to bet on who will come first, second and third in a race between seven Haro-like robot things (that also appear in the game itslef as power-ups). There are 100 possible outcomes to these races, and I assume the original game came with a sheet or booklet listing them all. Luckily, the list of results isn't hard to find on the internet, and once you have that, you can play the game without worries.
Despite all these shenanigans, Still Hunt is definitely worth playing. Like I said before, it's fast, pretty and explosionful.