nullPointer wrote:DonPachi
Good on you for giving DonPachi a shot, null. It's a pretty tough game. I don't think most people (even those who play a lot of DoDonPachi) have ever spent much time playing DonPachi before. Did the Playstation version not have unlimited continues? Because I know the Saturn version does. It even lets you continue into the ura loop. Try out Batsugun, or Batsugun Special Ver if you still have a taste for something similar, but a whole lot less pulverizing.
I spent the last few days playing all sorts of shmups, but most of them I didn't really spend much more than 10 minutes with, individually. From memory, I played little bits of Thunder Force II, Vapor Trail, Musha Aleste, a few really terrible SNES games I don't even remember the names of, Super Aleste, Flying Hero, Macross Scrambled Valkyrie, Spriggan Powered (maybe the only really good shmup the SNES has), Abadox, Abarenbou Tengu, and Power Strike II. Thunder Force II, Vapor Trail, and Spriggan Powered were easily the most enjoyable of the bunch. Musha is okay, but I'm really finding myself to be increasingly disenchanted with Compile's shooters. I think I can honestly say that I prefer Robo Aleste to Musha, anyway. It's not the first time I've tried Musha, though, it's just that I've never been pulled in much by the game play, although the visuals and music are both excellent. I played up to Stage 4, I think, which seems like it's about as far as I'd ever really played to in the past. The friggin' ninjas behind the clouds fill me with such murderous rage!
I also went at Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius, and Gradius a couple more times, but it was not to be. I threw in Parodius Da!, for old time's sake, but was foiled by the crab walking showgirl.
So, feeling like I needed at least one more win, I decided to play Chou Jikuu Yousai Macross: Ai Oboeteimasuka. I don't know much about Macross--I watched Macross Plus when I was in middle school, and bought the PS2 game when that came out, but am otherwise pretty clueless, outside of some ramblings of Mark's, from Classic Game Room--but I believe this game is something of a game tie-in with a theatrical, renewal of the original TV series. There's a bunch of clips from the movie between stages, with some narration over still images, as well. It's a little hard to follow, though, as someone who is not really familiar with the original story. There are 11 stages, in the game, and they play all right, but it's sort of a poor-man's shooter, with large sprites, a health meter, and more instances of 'what the hell actually hit me' than you can shake a stick at. It's a pretty technically impressive game, with enemies moving between the plane your VF-1 Valkyrie is on, and the background and foreground planes. There's always tons of stuff going on, all over the scree, which is both visually stimulating, and overly busy. The main thing is there's just not a lot of room to maneuver, because enemies, and the Valkyrie are so large in proportion to the space on screen. The bullet patterns are nothing too special, but it's really easy to just run into enemies as they're whipping across the screen. I ended up having to continue a fair amount in the last few stages, but it wasn't overly difficult, per se. More so just annoying, at times.
I won't insult any Macross fans out there by trying to summarize the story, or anything. I'll just say that from what I got out of the sort of haphazard telling of it in this game, it's weird. I kind of feel bad for Minmei, though. I get the sense that very few people are sympathetic to her, but-- man. Exclusivity is just kinda dumb sometimes. Good for Max, though. I feel like that's probably the love story that should have been the focal point. Anyway, I don't think I could actually sit through the TV show, or even the movie, really. I'd recommend the game to Macross fans, but not really to anyone else.