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After many failed attempts, I managed to finish:



It's 1988's Bomber Raid for SEGA Master System. This ol' shoot 'em up isn't particularly notable honestly, aside from being a SEGA Master System exclusive genre piece. What's here is very standard classic arcade-style stuff, no big surprises. Fans of the golden age of vertical shmups would likely enjoy the bare bones simplicity in "Bomber Raid". Those looking for a more sophisticated or extravagant experience would not be impressed. Five stages of dirt simple pew-pew is what's on order. A few more thoughts here.

I'm happy to have completed a game for this TR. The "shmup" genre is definitely a viable candidate for Together Retro. I appreciate MrPopo making this theme one of the voting topics. That said, this shall be my only entry for this TR. I am retiring from Racketboy. I wish you all the best, and good luck with those 1CCs!

It's got double the Mega power of the competition, even if it does strap wings onto a reconnaissance plane.

Finished the "arcade mode" of Trouble Witches. Dunno if it's worth going back in for story mode. Fun game. I'm still not in love with having shops in shmups, but the power-up and scoring system in this game are really cool. Also like having the ability to freeze bullets in lieu of the traditional bomb cache.

Pretty swell overall. I think this is better than most of Cave's output.

I rank like 1,300 on the leaderboards lolololol.

MrPopo wrote:It's got double the Mega power of the competition, even if it does strap wings onto a reconnaissance plane.

And you play as a propeller driven plane in the actual game. 90's US cover art at its finest.

You just hurt my brain Gunstar.

I had to give Rohga: Armor Force a shot, since shmups are going over here, and Data East December on Hardcore Retro Gaming. Two birds with one stone! It's a mech game, but it ends up being a sort of platformer/shmup hybrid. The graphics are top-notch the entire way, and despite feeding a crapton of quarters in (pretty sure it was around 40), the game doesn't feel blatantly unfair. I could actually see someone that has practiced potentially 1CC'ing this game.

You can choose different mechs that give you varying power and mobility. I tended to like the "aerial" mech loadout, with the short-range sword that will often block projectiles. There are four weapons to choose from, the default Vulcan gun, a Cluster shot that's pretty powerful, a Grenade launcher that actually seems not terribly powerful, but whose blast absorbs projectiles, and the Laser. Oh, the Laser. I love that thing. It tends to rip enemies to shreds, and was easily my favorite weapon.

There are also little jetpack dudes you can grab to augment your firepower, and if your mech is blown up, you become one of those jetpack dudes, at which point one hit will kill you. You can get a mech back, but I think it requires grabbing three powerups. Survival for that long rarely happens.

Anyway, the game might be a touch too long for my tastes. It took me 1:12 of realtime to finish. Still, I'd say give it a shot. I think the game plays swimmingly, and it might be one of Data East's most polished titles I've played yet. I'll give it a... hmm, I was going to say 8, but I'm going to go with 7.5. Either are valid. I might not be a massive shmup fan, but this is easily one of the better ones I've played, and I figure genre fans will enjoy it even more.

Rohga/Wolf Fang is really cool. There's a reason it's too long. The original game has story sequences with branching paths but in the International release that became Rohga they just strung all the levels together into one giant playthrough.

Been playing some more Trouble Witches. Really warming up even more to this one. Went through the story mode. The story is atrocious, but the Japanese voice acting isn't bad, and I dig the character art.

Anyone have Deathsmiles on the PC? Any different from the 360 version?

(Also, what the hell is this lololololol)...
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4504 ... miles_Set/

I didn't realize there was even a PC port of Deathsmiles.

I've been working on Kolibri a bit. It ends up being more of a puzzle/adventure shmup, and it gets quite hard as you get on. It seems to be a mixture of imprecise controls, imprecise hit boxes, and some nasty level design. I'm about 3/4 of the way through and I think I need to restart the level I'm on; I'm at a checkpoint with no hits left and some spots that you're almost guaranteed to take a hit on and I need some mercy invincibility.

I did play some Space Invaders Extreme over the weekend. Maybe an hour. It's definitely fun. I think I've beaten three bosses if I recall. I'll have more to report soon enough.