I'm typically not much of a UPL fan, but for some reason, I couldnt stop playing this today. In fact, I spent most of the afternoon playing, trying for the clear. I think I got to the last section of stage 5, heading inside the ship to destroy the mother computer or something.
There's something about the dated graphics, the pretty good for its time soundtrack and the Ketsui-like aggressive play style. In fact, the game heavily rewards aggressiveness, giving you a multiplier based on how far you are from an enemy when you destroy it.
You have a choice of two different shot types - the spread shot and the laser shot. The spread jiust gets wider, taking up a good half of the screen on full-power while the laser gets more powerful with each pick up - and shrinks - vertically. If you haven't played this game before, take a second to think about this. Not only does your shot get more powerful, but it gets shorter, forcing you to run up on enemies to take them out, giving you a higher and higher multiplier when you do. You can power it up so much that the beam only will extend out from your ship about one ship length. That's very short.
I found its best to collect about four or five power ups, giving you about a four ship length beam and go to town.
You don't have a typical bomb, but you do have a slow-down button, which can make all of the enemies on the screen move slow with slow shots while you remain the same. Each slow bomb is collected by picking up small satellite power-ups, which also act as shields and disappear when they take a hit. After you play for a while, you won't use these so much to get through the stages, but to slow down time to get right up on big enemies and get a 10x multiplier (the max).
The stages are all based around a mothership and destroying each of its sections - the tail, left side, nose cones, right side and the central core, which is a few sections long. The first two stages are tough, but not too bad while stages three and on are brutally hard and require some good movement.
I really, really like this game and pushed myself for the clear today, but only made it to the third part of stage five inside the ship for a first high score of 2,567,190 - which is pretty good considering my high score before that credit was just under 1 mil.
Most of you who read this blog know I'm mired in the old school and this game is now right up there with my favorite classics.
3 comments:
Awesome, drB!
I absolutely love this game for the fact that it is very much a precursor to Ketsui. I love trying to snag all of the "10 Chips". But it is sooooo hard to be consistent with that. And I love the "drop-framerate" bombs!!! Awesome innovation in a virtually unknown shmup!
Thanks for sharing!
Definitely a pretty fun title. I think Special version kind of kills this game, btw - pretty much the opposite of Batsugun.
I know Dave_K is a big UPL fan - I wonder if he's got anytime in on this one?
On the off-chance someone is watching this post - I may have this pcb on the way...
Post a Comment