Posts Tagged ‘treasure’
Podcast: What the Shmup
One of the oldest and most popular genres in gaming is the “shoot-em-up” or “shmup” for short. Whether you’re a space ship, a young girl, or even a winged pod the basic goal is to navigate the screen, rack up points, and don’t die. Fred and Jam dive into the origins of the shmup, the sub-genres that exist, and some of their personal favorites.
Podcast: Shmup Game Club
This week we are joined by listener Jason (@albirhiza) to discuss our Shmup Game Club: Giga Wing 2, Velocity (Ultra), Radiant Silvergun, Power-Up, and Sine Mora. Campaigns, tactics, high scores, and more are covered as we dissect some of the more contemporary additions to the genre.
Retro Game Challenge: Radiant Silvergun
For those of you gearing up for this week’s Gaming History 101 shmup game club, we’ve got the Radiant Silvergun campaign through to completion on a video here. Don’t expect the best playing in the world, I’m okay but I’m no match for the one-lifers who take this game on. It was more like 50 lives in my case, but nonetheless, I managed to complete the game despite some self destructing bosses.
Podcast: Guardian Heroes Game Club
This week we are joined by Horseplay podcast’s Yogi Lopez (@Yogizilla) and freelance retro writer Jam (@Jamalais) to discuss Sega’s gem for the Saturn Guardian Heroes. A surprisingly deep hack-and-slash with RPG elements and even a fully controlled NPC, this title ushered out 2D sprites and a genre that was much beloved in the early-to-mid 1990s.
Games You’ve (Probably) Never Played: Tiny Toons Adventures: Defenders of the Universe (PS2)
If you’re not familiar with this Playstation 2 title it’s probably because it never came out. On our most recent podcast, we discussed the developer Treasure, responsible for a slew of great and popular titles but the company itself is quite lesser known to those in America. With a resume that spans almost every console from the 16-bit era on, there are some odd releases that Treasure is also responsible for, namely Tiny Toon Adventures: Defenders of the Universe (which will be referred to as DotU from now on and was also at one point Defenders of the Looniverse).
Conspiracy Games, a somewhat obscure publisher that is responsible for a bunch of licensed and lower budgeted projects on the PS2, Wii, and PSP, must have acquired the Tiny Toons license because it was and has developed a few games for the series. Conspiracy specifically works with developers that want to make a game but do not have the financial backing to do so. This title was to be a somewhat large collaboration that had Tetsuhiko Kikuchi (aka HAN), best known for the great Saturn brawler/RPG Guardian Heroes, as director and even its own web site: http://www.dotu.com. Very little is known about the development cycle, struggles, or overall issues about the development of this game, but what started as an early PS2 release in 2001 eventually was delayed 3 years into 2004 (according to IGN) and eventually canceled. Because deals with publishers and developers often result in delayed processes and forced decisions that the creative team does not like, it’s really anyone’s guess why this game spent so long in development and was eventually sapped.
Somehow, a prototype of the game was recovered and released on the Internet for all to enjoy. In order to play this “game” you need to either have a PS2 emulator on your computer (that runs marginally well) or burn the game to a disc and play it on a modded PS2. I have a modded PS2 so I check it out on the latter. Below is a video of the gameplay and pretty much the entire prototype (I was one or two screens from the end), which appears to be simply a demo. It’s pretty interesting that the game seems to support up to four players taking on each other in a hybrid co-op/competitive team game to save the Universe. DotU seems to harken back to the N64 days – at the time of initial development somewhere around 2000 this would make senses until a publisher comes in and explains that the N64 is dead and to release a game is far too great a risk and cost. I don’t even know if the 4 player multi-tap for the PS2 was out yet, but you can see where Treasure would have made great use of it. I wish there was more to this game – I’ve heard this is a nearly completed version, which sounds completely wrong since there’s only about half an hour of content on this disc and half of it is cutscene. Still, had they continued on and increased the dynamic of team play while also adding the challenges of beating the group, I could see this being one of those licensed games we discuss that was “ahead of its time.” As it stands the title remains unfinished and unreleased, lost to the annuls of history and just another holy grail of people like myself that want to experience as many prototypes as possible. If you have the capabilities to play it, especially with multiple controllers, you may want to check out this early knock-off of a Mario Party title. For the majority of you, here’s 18 minutes of a game that never saw the light of day.
Podcast: The Treasure Box
This week Trees returns and we are talking about the Japanese developer Treasure, best known for some of the most impressive games on Sega’s consoles (Gunstar Heroes, Radiant Silvergun, Guardian Heroes, and Ikaruga) as well as Nintendo’s later consoles (Bangai-O and Sin & Punishment). We discuss the company origins, values, and of course the entire library of this impressive developer.
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Below is a video of an unreleased (canceled) title, Tiny Toons: Defenders of the Universe. The beta that was presumably used as a trade show demo eventually leaked on the internet. We have acquired it and played it on an original, modded, PS2. Enjoy!
Bangai-O (Treasure)
Up to this point, we’ve had a relatively small number of shmups that don’t fit into a simple criteria: either vertical or horizontal raster arcade shmups. Sure there was some discussion about on-rails titles with Silpheed and even the mention of old school vector graphics in our introductory shmup article, but there are some games technically called shmups that fit a different category. These are games where you control a single character or duo and battle large numbers of enemies in rudimentary level designs. The actual size and shape of the level is irrelevant, the point is that you are getting bombarded on all sides and must survive against a mass of trigger-happy enemies. From a certain perspective, this is considered a shmup and I definitely agree with that sentiment.
It’s important to note that the title originally started as a remake of Hover Attack, a Sharp X1 type-in game from 1983. For those not familiar, a “type-in” game was a program you purchased in book form for a few dollars, you would type in the (often times) hundreds of lines of code. Usually the program didn’t run the first time, various syntax errors would claim responsibility, and it was always because of a single character issue on literally thousands of lines of code. This was before floppy disks, it was a different time. Anyway, Hover Attack was a game that allowed a ship or and carrier to move in all different directions and fire independent of its movement. It was one of the first games to do so and for comparison is a very basic version of a twin stick shooter. This is why the game/level design seems a bit dated for a game that released in 1999 at the end of the N64’s life. It eventually became its own property and remains a unique independent title, although certain concepts like the streaking of bullet patterns remain from Hover Attack.
Ikaruga (Treasure)
Ikaruga is shrouded in praise and wonder from those in the critical and shmup communities, but if you were to just pick it up and play you wouldn’t really see what all the fuss is about. First off, it’s pretty freaking hard and absolutely impossible if you don’t understand the special gameplay mechanics. Second of all, like so many other shmups, it started life in Japanese arcades so unless you’re lucky enough to get the US Gamecube version you will need to figure out how the game is played before you embark. I don’t know about you, but most of the gamers I know tend to not do critical things like read instruction manuals before playing. This is a big mistake with Ikaruga.
This game is the spiritual successor to Treasure’s Radiant Silvergun in that it borrows the ideas of color connection and polar opposites as its main gameplay style choice. The plot is basically irrelevant, but you are fighting forces in a specialized jet fighter known as the Ikaruga. Polarity, or opposites if you will, are the main objective in the game – you need to figure out how best to handle the light (white) and dark (black) polarities in enemies to plan your strategy. Your ship is capable of swapping polarities at any time under your control with the same polarity granting you invulnerability and the opposite polarity dealing dual damage. It’s a balance between a heavy offense or an unbreakable defense and trying to decide which is most important. Mind you, even though you are invulnerable to bullets of the same polarity, you are not invulnerable to the collision of ships so destroying them should be a high priority. Unlike other danmaku (bullet hell) shmups, you will be weaving in and out of enemy fighters just as much as bullets. In addition, the invincibility option also puts you in situations where it’s not possible to dodge all the bullets. In other danmaku shmups it will always be possible, no matter how tight or specific, to dodge the bullets if you know the pattern.
Radiant Silvergun (Treasure)
Now we are getting into the thick of Japanese shmups that are more than 10 years old but just made it stateside for the first time within the last few years. One of the most dynamic shmup teams, Treasure, had just begun its long career of shmups when it came up with Radiant Silvergun. A dynamic vertical shmup released in Japanese arcades in 1998, the well-known producer of the title Hiroshi Iuchi claims it was inspired by Image Fight – another solid shmup by developer Irem (of R-Type fame) that released to arcades and Nintendo consoles in 1988. This also started a familiar concept found in many shmups, especially ones by Treasure, where you need to focus on the colors of the enemies you destroy.
In the arcade version, there was really no story but basically the game entails Earth under attack by, wait for it, an alien presence. You will begin with sky battles on Earth and conclude with battles in space and near space stations. What is significant about Radiant Silvergun is not its story, though, nor is it the impressive 3D effects and moving backgrounds. It’s the fact that the game features seven weapons, all of which are built into the ship from the start. You do collect power-ups that strengthen your weapons, but the bigger key is to know what type of weapons (in the arcade it’s based on combinations of the 3 buttons, on ports there are more buttons to help correspond to each weapon). In order to make it through certain waves of enemies and destroy the multi-stage timed iterations of each boss you need to know the correct weapons to use. In many cases this will reward you with a bonus, especially when fully destroying a boss or taking out 3 or more enemies of one color. In many cases you can get by using whatever weapon you want, but no hardcore shmup player is satisfied with “good enough”, right?
What is a Shmup?
For some reason, this screen from R-Type is always what I think about when I hear the word “shmup”.
It’s leap day, a day that on most years doesn’t even exist, and had it not been for today it would officially be March. For those of us in the retro gaming world, shooter fans or basically anyone who listens to Drunken Gamers Radio it also means Shmuppreciation month. For 31 long days we show our appreciation for intergalactic starships, Moai heads, tiered power-ups, sexy young girls with large breasts that aren’t involved in a hentai game, dodging thousands of bullets and actually seeing a vertical raster effect in a high-definition game. It is all for the love of the shoot ’em up, these days called “shmups” for short. What’s distinct about the shmup is that aside from most other genres, it has been around as long as video games themselves – yes, the first video game was a shmup – and has remained relatively unchanged for more than 30 years. As an avid fan with probably more than $1,000 in shmups alone among almost every system – did I mention the shmup has some of the most expensive games in existence? – I wanted to reflect on the history of the shmup.
Gaming History 101 