Run & Gun Gaming on the GBA!!

I consider the Gameboy Advanced SP, with the bright screen, the pentacle of Nintendo’s achievement in portable gaming design. Even though they have introduced other, more advanced, portables over the years, I still maintain this perspective concerning this little console. It fits so well in your pocket and still offers plenty of gaming that has aged well.

Gunstar Heroes was a pleasant surprise back in the golden era of the Sega Genesis. It appeared in the latter half of the system’s lifespan. With me, it became an instant classic and has stood well the test of time. And it only made sense to bring this to portable gaming with a release of a sequel in Gunstar Future Heroes for the GBA. Excellent, story, hand to hand combat, run and gun gaming that brings joy to any lover of the genre. If you do any retro gaming and love the GBA SP you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy. Especially if you love the genre. But if this only wets your appetite for this type of gaming and want more, I got something for you. These are my recommendations if you love this type of gaming.

Alien Hominid: Only released in Europe, as far as I know. I managed to get me a copy. And wow, this is my game. Unrelenting humorous pure run and gun action, agents pouring in from everywhere, love this game so much. A totally must own. The one game I run to when I just want to shoot.

Metal Slug Advance: This is Metal Slug. If you have not played a Metal Slug game, then may I ask, where have you been living? Fun, humorous, Contra like, pure run and gun continuous action. If you liked Alien Hominid then you will love this one too. There is just some magic in the way the Metal Slug games are designed.

Astro Boy: The Treasure touch is strong with this one. I remember being blown away by this game back then. (But then I am an Astro fan.) This is run and gun Astro style in a Gunstar sort of way. It begins with a good training mode, which is needed to know how to use Astro. Even though you can see, and feel, signs of Gunstar, there is enough here to differentiate and take it to a whole new level. You have a good story to follow and the ability to choose how to level up your character. The leveling of your character, and multiple weapons, moves to learn, is what stands out to me. So I really don’t feel that it is more of the same, even though it is more of the same, in a way. You will have to play to understand. But this is still Treasure at their best.

Thirty Years of PC Engine!!

The 30 year anniversary of the NEC PC Engine is coming up next month. I plan on focusing my gaming toward that console to celebrate the tech. I’m talking about arcade shooter madness. The way that system entered my gaming heart and stayed. As I took the Turbo Grafx 16 off the shelf at a Toys-R-Us many many years ago, I never imagined that I held in my hands what would become my favorite gaming system of all time. As a game console, it quickly made its way to the top of the heap in my game time.

The console is about the size of an NES cart, so tiny and powerful for its time.

It continues to hold that place even today in the presence of excessively more powerful systems. I find that there is some type of magic in its gaming library encased in those little flat credit card size carts called HuCARDs, or dubbed in the US as Turbochips. Anyone presently getting into the console, it is essential that they first acquire a PC Engine, preferably the Core version of the console. This is the Japanese version and you will find the games much cheaper than the Turbo Grafx 16 counterpart.

The Japanese PC Engine huCARDs are more colorful with pictures, where as,  the Turbo Grafx 16 mostly has nothing more than lettering, or the title of the game.

Collectors have driven the prices into the excessive insane range. If you later desire to expand that gaming into the CD games then a Duo-R would be the best choice. I am so happy to have started playing in its infancy because there would be so many games I would not been able to afford. The gaming library is overflowing with arcade shooters but not entirely dominated by them. It has a great selection of action adventure platforming, and as in the shooters, many unique to the system.

The console has its own feel, sort of, a Japanese flavor to its games. To some it may be an acquired taste. I like it and find that aspect is in no way different than other systems having their own uniqueness. It is basically an 8bit gaming machine on steroids.  Or an 8bit 16bit hybrid. Some games shows the power of the architecture  while there are those that feel very 8bit. It is an 8bit machine with a 16bit graphics chip that creates an environment  for arcade shooters apparently. That is where it excelled during its heyday of popularity which quickly fizzled when the 16bit era emerged. It just could not compete against the SNES and the Genesis once that generation got to rolling. Even though it was the first console to launch CD gaming, and did it right, that was still not enough. It had a longer, more successful, run in Japan where in the US it was late to the party. 8bit was at an end, 16bit was the excitement. It was at that moment that the Turbo Grafx 16 hit the US market. And so it was just pushed from the limited shelf space as the 16bit machines took over.

The Turbo Grafx 16 and PC Engine game cards are not interchangeable.

People often talk of nostalgia concerning retro gaming systems. I personally really don’t know what they are talking about. I focus on what is fun when it comes to gaming. With the PC Engine it is wonderful fun and escapism at the end of a hard day, or week, just to blow up a few of those pesky aliens from another galaxy who think they can blow up ours. Honestly, why do they always seek out our solar system to blow up when they have the whole galaxy before them? Who do they think they are?

NES Shooter Marathon!!!

(Original Cart, A Generation Nex clone system, on a retro cathode tube TV. The way it was not exactly meant to be. But close enough, maybe?)

I had my NES games out yesterday, and today. I know nothing about game programming. (Did a little basic in my Commodore 64 years, but nothing to talk about) So I don’t know what I am talking about except from a gamer viewpoint. I was playing NES shooters. Now I know that the NES is not exactly known for its shooters with the exception of its Gradius and Contra series. But I am mainly addressing the horizontal and vertical type stuff. No run and gun. Mainly more of the, alien, outer space flavored type shooter, which are my favorites.

I have trouble understanding why the genre can be so diverse in its playability on the NES. Gradius seems to play too fast for me. The Gameboy version is much more playable in my opinion. Parodius, on the other hand, just boggs down and is so sluggish on the NES. It has slow crawling and dragging gameplay. Then there is Summer Carnival – Recca, plays great and is very enjoyable, even insane. And so is Crisis Force, plays great, no problem. I know having a lot of sprites on the screen can bogg the game down, but Gradius and Parodius are basically the same game. And it does seem that the sprite overload is the problem. I know I am playing on a clone NES. Maybe that’s it. I need an actual NES? Not sure that’s it, bad programming, maybe? From Konami? I like the Parodius series!

And what about Gun Nac which has loads of sprites on screen and is a complete dream to play. Loads of fun to play. And totally madness, at times, like Recca as to what can be thrown at you all at once. Salamander, no trouble, except for the difficulty level. Gun Nac is set at the right difficulty for me. I can shoot my way through without frustration even though I lose space ships in the process and have to start at zero power-ups. It is still just as enjoyable. The same with Crisis Force, which is a Konami game, highly detailed fast action shooter with plenty of on screen sprites. Love this game too, it deserved a US release, but got none. Zanac is another one that had a lot of on screen sprites, good game.

Can I mention Super Star Force, never made it to the US but it is a fun little shooter with some unique quarks. Again another busy shooter. Star Ship Hector is another good sprite loaded shooter. Star Force, Abadox, and Star Soldier throws a lot at you, good games.

I didn’t pull out everything that I have but I did play all of these today. I guess my main beef is with Parodius. I first started playing it on my SNES and was wanting it to play the same on the NES. Even the Gameboy version of Parodius plays great. It has been a fun fill weekend of an NES shooter marathon.

Super Famicom: Darius Twin!!

(Original Cart, original hardware, on a retro cathode tube TV. The way it was meant to be.)

In this weekend of gaming, my obsession has been “Darius Twin.” I have this for my SNES, but it is relatively inexpensive, so I had to have it for my Super Famicom. You don’t need to know Japanese, menus are in English. It is one of those shmups, shoot’em ups, space shooters, whatever you want to call them, from the past. In those days, they filled the arcades and those early consoles. Love this sort-of stuff, I cut my gaming teeth on them. Shoot everything that moves, high score, repetitive, and all your enemies come in patterns type gaming.

The enemy ships are mostly shaped like fish or some sea creature in this series of shooters. The graphics are colorful and bright. Parallax scrolling going on in the backgrounds gives the stages that “depth” feeling. Each stage basically has their own particular bunch of enemies with some reappearing from earlier stages. Everything has their own patterns, and direction of entry, in which you can memorize and learn to avoid, hopefully, get those reflexes involved. That is, I guess, a part of the fun, challenge, and typical of this genre.

The gameplay is simple, dodge, power up, dodge, shoot everything you see, dodge, and it moves at a good pace, not too slow, not too fast. Curious that it doesn’t have a hard mode of play, only easy and normal. And looking at what I would normally call a world map, there are twelve stages where you only go through seven because you get four choices between stages. Only subtle differences between the top and bottom stages, maybe a difference in difficulty? Sort-of a choose your own route. I like the fact that if you lose your ship, you return to the same spot and keep all your power-ups. And you power up your ship to be a powerhouse able to blast everything. But your not invulnerable to all the flying bullets, gun fire, even though you do have shields, which does help to a certain extent. I find this game so enjoyable.

What “wows” me about this game is that it was an early game for the system and it had no slow down which was characteristic of several other early shooters. It also has two player gaming! And there was a later Darius entry, Super Nova, which, I think, Darius Twin is the better game. Just this gamer’s opinion. Hey, I can only get to the next-to-the-last-stage at the moment, but having a great time doing it. Big thumbs up here for a fantastic shooter. Highly recommended if you are into this sort of stuff.

Star Soldier: The Vanishing Earth

I have not pulled this one out in a long time. I was itching for some shooting action on my N64. I had some bad memory of this one for some reason, not sure why. Maybe it was from reviews I read. I did have a lot of fun with it today. The easy mode was too easy. Liked regular better, more challenging, more bullets on screen. I will say, back then, that I would have had higher expectations of a game like this coming from Hudson Soft and landing on the N64. Should have been an awesome winning combination.

Instead I get an average space shooter that feels like something is missing. Nothing makes it stand out from others in a very crowded genre. There are those moments when I get that “yes” feel here, but I wanted it all through the game. Not sure what caused them to sacrifice whatever it is that is missing but I should have got something akin to Blazing Lasers. Something having that same intense feel. Maybe they had difficulty with getting a grip on the hardware and translating a 2D game into something with a 3D pseudo element in the mix. There could have been a little more creativity gone into the bosses. (And there is a part of me that wishes it was hand drawn graphics.) I do see a lot of influence of other shooters in this game. For some reason Iridion 2 for the GBA comes to mind. Which is not a bad thing. I know that this is not up there with the “big boys” but I do feel that this game has been very under rated.

I love this genre of games. And in lovin the N64, I would not want to be without this game in my collection. Like I was thinking today, as I was playing, that I was thankful that a gamer like me was remembered by Hudson Soft, being the only company to give this type shooter to the N64. It is still awesome fun. After all these years I play it with an appreciation that it exists. And I enjoy it more today than I did back then. Time changes your perspective. For me, it was “Game of the day” and it dominated my N64 in today’s gaming. I did save the Earth in beginners mode. That is why you are able to read this. (Yes beginners mode, get over it.)