Mimi in The Sky (X Box 360)

 Along with zombie-themed Minecraft knock-offs and creepy photo-based dating sims, twinstick shooters are one of the most common genres on X Box Live Indie Games (how odd it is typing that in the knowledge that before long, we'll only be able to refer to it in the past tense. I really hope we don't lose the ability to play the games we've bought). Most of them don't really have any way of standing out from the crowd, though there are some exceptions. Early example I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1 stood out despite the tired zombies premise through its unique " dancefloor at a dingy rock club" atmosphere. Mimi in the Sky is another one that stands out, though its unique nature lies more in its mechanics.

You see, the game's main hook is that it's a twinstick shooter with the design sensibilities of an arcade shooter, if not the prodction values (though that's obviously forgivable considering the circumstances of its existence). Like a lot of Japanese shooters in this post-Touhou world, you play as a flying little girl, beset from all sides by ghosts, witches, flying squirrels and other enemies. As you destroy them, two things happen. The most immediately obvious is that they release a load of grey numbers. These are points items, the bigger the number, the more the points. Also, the closer you are to the enemy when they're detroyed, the bigger the numbers will be. The other thing is that a meter at the bottom will gradually fill up.

When that meter's full, you can use the right trigger to perform a dash. The dash is a useful move, it provides a split-second of invulnerability and destroys any enemies through which it passes, no matter how big. Destroying enemies by dashing fills up yet another meter, which is activated as soon as it fills, starting fever mode. Fever mode offers no perks regarding your ability to destroy enemies or avoid their attacks, but instead vastly increases the scoring potential. While fever mode is in effect, the grey numbers will be multicoloured, and worth vastly more points.

As the game goes on, bigger and stronger enemies appear, and from the point at which the large witches floating in the foetal position appear, you can stay in fever mode almost continuosly (as dashing through one of them is enough to completely fill the meter). Shortly after this happens, though, the game gets a lot more dangerous, as thicker hordes of smaller enemies start appearing, along with enemies that fire aimed lasers that go right across the playing field, as well as enemies that fire rings of revenge bullets in every direction and so on.

Mimi in the sky is a pretty good game. It's no threat to Chieri no Doki Doki Yukemuri Burari Tabi's crown at the top of XBLIG shooting games, but it's worth the 69p it costs to buy it. It's listed with its title in Japanese, so to save you the bother of trying to find it yourself, here's the link.

Tomba! (Playstation)

It's April Fools day again (Or the 30th of March if you're a patreon subscriber)! I liked doing the Soul Calibur V post last year, so I'm making a tradition of these annual non-obscure game posts!
 

If it was released today, Tomba (or Tombi in Europe) would be called a metrovania (or metroidvania for people who like words with awkward stops in the middle of them). It's a platform game with RPG elements and a big explorable world in place of seperate linear stages. Obviously, the genre existed before either Metroid or Castlevania: Symphony of the Night existed, but those were the two that made it popular, blah blah et cetera.  

 

Though it wasn't anywhere near as popular as either of those two games, Tomba was fairly popular in its day, and it's remembered fondly by everyone who played it. If it was more popular, or if design traits were more of a factor in coming up with these names, Tomba would have part of its name in that awkward portmanteau alongside the works of Nintendo and Konami. The reason I say this is because the three games represent three different styles of RPG being turned sideways and played all platform-like.  

Metroid represents a simple, Zelda-esque style of RPG, with the player character getting stronger and opening new areas being based on the finding of certain items, and in which each item has a specific intended use. Symphony of the Night represents a more typical Japanese RPG, with lots of stats and experience points and all kinds of different weapons and armour and other equipment. So what does Tomba represent? Western-style RPGs, series like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout. 

 

This might sound ridiculous, but it's true! The crux of this lies in Tomba's mission system. Like in a large, open-world western RPG, Tomba picks up missions and side-missions and so on as he wanders the world looking for the Koma Pigs and hid Grandfather's bracelet. Also like those games, new missions can be triggered in a variety of different ways: talking to characters, finding items, entering new areas, and so on. 

 

Also like those games, some missions will be over almost as soon as they begin (or, in some cases, a particularly thorough player can finish a mission before they've triggered the start of it), and some missions can be started near the start of the game and not come fully into fruition much later in the game. 

 

So yeah, that's an aspect of this game that I've never seen anyone else acknowledge, and I think it's a shame that it's one that hasn't really found a place in the greater DNA of the metrovania species.