I had originally planned to play through
Deathsmiles next for this theme. Unfortunately when I upgraded my laptop to Windows 10 Professional last week, I lost all my programs in doing so (formatted the drive), so
Deathsmiles was collateral damage. I was too lazy to reinstall it last weekend. Oh well, I did manage to "finish" this today:
Mars Matrix: Hyper Solid Shooting | Arcade | 2000
Mars Matrix: Hyper Solid Shooting is an arcade shoot 'em up, developed by Takumi Corporation and published by Capcom in 2000. This game was ported to Dreamcast in 2000 (Japan) and 2001 (USA). Mars Matrix runs on the Capcom's CPS-2 arcade system board. The arcade version is notable for using a horizontally aligned monitor, something that is rare for a vertical shooter. Another unusual aspect is that Mars Matrix only uses one fire button. This was not common for its genre at the time of release. Depending on timing usage of the fire button, different type of attacks are created by the player. I'm not sure what this game's plot is. Basically you're flying a ship that's shooting down robots above Mars best I could tell.
Mars Matrix is a super technical bullet hell shmup. The gameplay is based on the "mosquito" system. By holding down the fire button, your ship can absorb shots and then "spit' them back at the enemies. Additionally, each destroyed enemy (and reflected shot) releases experience cubes of various values, which can be multiplied by chaining. This experience is used to power-up your ship, and also acts as a multiplier for your score. Each player ship has a 10x12 pixel hit-box at the front of the unit. Navigating between oceans of bullets is only possible if the player knows exactly where that hit-box is at all times. I'm not going to go into all the details of the combat system, as it's pretty complex... involving those cubes from dropped enemies and how they affect the player's attack stats and point aggregation. Ultimately the player spends their time avoiding waves of bullets, long enough to built up a charge meter, and then uses that charge meter to absorb enemy bullets into a massive counter attack. It's pretty crazy stuff. The Dreamcast version adds a shop where players can buy stuff using cubes as well. Adding yet another layer of complexity.
+Really pretty bullet streams at times.
+Pumping techno OST.
+Well animated sprites.
+Appreciable utilitarianism with the "one button" concept.
+Doesn't last too long...
-The difficulty is just ridiculous.
-Background artwork is bland.
-Sprite work is muddled low resolution captures of pre-rendered CG.
-I wish there were more variety to the player weapons.
-Can't I fight anything besides uninspired robots?
I would NOT recommend Mars Matrix to the average shmup fan. This game is clearly aimed at masochistic shmup lords seeking a super technical challenge. Truly if you can 1CC this game, you've got nothing left to prove in shmup land. Beyond the technical complexity and challenge, there's not much else on offer. All the stages feel the same, the artwork is just passable, the experience is fairly short, and an overwhelming sense of redundancy permeates the entire experience. This game is the equivalent of climbing a very hard mountain, except the climb itself is over monotonous unvaried terrain. Sure you'd be proud to have climbed such a difficult mountain, but the journey itself wasn't very memorable. But anyway, if you loathe yourself enough to desire a 1CC challenge that will take every ounce of patience you can muster, have "fun".
Ex's time to spend the entire Nigerian Prince's unclaimed vaults of virtual quarters to "beat": 25 minutes
Ex's rating: 5/10
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Looking over my calendar for what's left of November, I don't have time for more shmups. So this wraps up this month's theme for me personally. These are the shmups I beat for this month's Club Retro:
Dragon Blaze (6/10)
Eco Fighters (7/10)
Mars Matrix: Hyper Solid Shooting (5/10)