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Post by Sarge on May 28, 2021 22:18:15 GMT -5
Glad there were a few you really liked, Ex ! I may be done with this theme for now, too. Not sure, since there's still a few days left. A recap: Gate of Thunder / Duo / 8.0 / 1h0m / May 3 Sylphia / Duo / 7.5 / 50m / May 4 Gun-Nac / NES / 7.5 / 1h0m / May 6 Seirei Senshi Spriggan / Duo / 7.5 / 1h0m / May 6 Android Assault: The Revenge of Bari-Arm / Sega CD / 7.0 / 1h30m / May 7 Robo Aleste / Sega CD / 6.5 / 1h45m / May 8 Keio Flying Squadron / Sega CD / 6.0 / 2h0m / May 12 Aleste Gaiden / MSX / 6.0 / 30m / May 12 Zanac / NES / 6.0 / 3h30m / May 14 Abadox / NES / 6.5 / 3h0m / May 14 Axelay / SNES / 7.5 / 1h0m / May 16 R-Type III / SNES / 7.5 / 3h30m / May 18 Thunder Force IV / Genesis / 7.5 / 2h0m / May 18 Thunder Force III / Genesis / 7.5 / 50m / May 19 Soldier Blade / Duo / 9.0 / 2h0m / May 21 Ginga Fukei Densetsu Sapphire / Duo / 7.5 / 1h0m / May 25 My favorite of the bunch is still Soldier Blade, but my favorite new beat was Gate of Thunder. Splendid stuff. I'm also very surprised at how many of these I did end up taking down legit. Yeah, some are easy, but some are brutal. R-Type III in particular is very memorization-heavy. Lots of very good games, though, with eight of them getting a 7.5/10.
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Post by Ex on May 28, 2021 22:45:33 GMT -5
Soldier Blade is tough to top, I agree. Top tier stuff. You sure knocked a lot out of the park too. You reminded that I beat Keio, so I went back and added that one. Forgot to put it in my HLTB apparently.
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Post by Xeogred on May 29, 2021 9:53:22 GMT -5
I want to try and hit up Gate of Thunder, Soldier Blade, Blazing Lasers, and Super Star Soldier on this little vacation I'm on the next few days (after working tonight, less I call in...)
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Post by Sarge on May 29, 2021 13:32:06 GMT -5
I will be shocked if you don't end up liking Gate of Thunder given your love of Thunder Force III/IV. They're very much cut from the same cloth.
Of course, there's a reason for that - CAProduction developed the game, and they were formed by a group of former Technosoft employees.
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Post by toei on May 29, 2021 14:10:48 GMT -5
I'm glad Sarge has taken up to Gate of Thunder so much. At the start of the month, I was the guy telling people how they should play it and how it was made by former Technosoft people, and now he's taken the mantle. It's just a very well-made game. Smooth and well-designed, so that it doesn't need to do anything other shooters don't do. The other ones Xeogred listed are different - those are all vertical shmups by Hudson Soft (with Blazing Lazers being co-developed by Compile), so they're all in the same vein.
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Post by Sarge on May 29, 2021 14:13:23 GMT -5
Heh, yeah, I was really impressed by it. It's like the ultimate expression of the "generic" space shooter. At first glance it doesn't look that special, but it executes everything at a high level.
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Post by Xeogred on May 29, 2021 15:48:47 GMT -5
I've always assumed Soldier Blade, Blazing Lasers, and Super Star Soldier kind of play similarly? A loosely related trilogy? Maybe I'm totally wrong though. So many shmups and names, I guess I just always accidentally roll up Gate of Thunder into those too haha.
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Post by toei on May 29, 2021 15:55:57 GMT -5
I've always assumed Soldier Blade, Blazing Lasers, and Super Star Soldier kind of play similarly? A loosely related trilogy? Maybe I'm totally wrong though. So many shmups and names, I guess I just always accidentally roll up Gate of Thunder into those too haha. The Soldier games were Hudson's flagship shmup series. There's Star Soldier (NES), Super Star Soldier (PCE), Final Soldier (PCE), Soldier Blade (PCE), the spin-off Star Parodier (PCE-CD) which, as the name implies, is basically Star Soldier + Parodius, and then there are later entries on the N64, PSP and Wii. So there is a trilogy on the PC Engine, but Blazing Lazers isn't part of it (it's a co-production with Compile, so it isn't part of any series). Gate of Thunder is a horizontal shooter and isn't like those games much.
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Post by Sarge on May 29, 2021 21:04:58 GMT -5
Yeah, the way I keep them straight is that all the "Soldier" games are part of their series, and Gate of Thunder in particular is a spiritual spinoff of Thunder Force given the "Thunder" in the title. I do tend to forget that Blazing Lazers is kinda its own thing, and was apparently a tie-in to the Gunhed film in Japan, with the game also bearing that moniker.
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Post by toei on May 29, 2021 23:41:40 GMT -5
I beat Battle Mania Daiginjou, aka Trouble Shooter Vintage. Cool game, but I kind of expected more from the little bit I'd played. It's got that late-Genesis, all-setpieces-spectacle going like some of Treasure or Konami's games, with all bosses having multiple forms and crazy things happening regularly. Some of those bosses are really creative; at one point, you notice two basketball nets on each side of the screen, and the giant robot you're fighting starts dribbling some kind of missile-ball and shooting it into the nets. You have to try to shoot it down before it gets into the net, otherwise it explodes and sends a bunch of shots your way. The visuals are great, too, with lots of parallax scrolling, and the cutscenes are short but gorgeous. The game is really easy, though. Like, beat-it-on-your-first-try-even-though-you're-not-that-good-at-shmups easy. Also, while it doesn't lay into the "crazy bosses all the time" thing as much as Contra Hard Corps or Alien Soldier, it still gets a little tiresome after a while. So it's a very impressive game in many ways, and very clearly a labor of love, but I don't love it like I thought I would. I'd give it ***, meaning "good". Other than that, the gameplay fundamentals are solid; like the first game, you play as two girls on jetpacks; the main always fires to the right, and she's the hitbox; the second one can turn 180 degrees to fire at enemies behind you. Your weapons charge up at all times so you can release a powerful bomb-style attack quite often; it's part of what makes the game so easy.
I still plan to replay it once with the translation patch, as I didn't bother the first time.
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