UPL is one of those lesser known developers who get over looked pretty easily by some of the shmup incognoscenti but one who has a few excellent titles to contribute to the genre. Omega Fighter, I still consider to be their best work, but Strahl is quickly becoming a favorite.
I bought this from Sofia in Japan, one of the few times I have used a dedicated PCB business, and as usual, its well worth the few extra dollars you will portion out. The pcb arrived in two day from Japan via EMS, T. Onihara at Sofia was painless to work with and the pcb even came with original artwork, something I had never seen before. The packaging was perfect and done with the utmost care and just opening the box felt like an event. I felt like I should have a glass of scotch and bright lighting rather than my desk at work.
The game itself is awesome, a great futuristic military shooter with a decent soundtrack. The game play is actually very good for a horizontal with a kind of medium level of difficulty - but I am typically pretty bad at hori shmups, so you can take that with a grain of salt. Your ship has a forward shot with a rotatable missile shot both by tapping A, where the missile shot can be adjusted for numerous positions by tapping the A + B buttons simultaneously. B is a bomb and the game allows you to select from four different shot, missile and bomb types at the beginning f the stage, with each coming at a weight penalty with only a certain amount of weight being able to be carried by your ship. It's an interesting system and one that allows you to get a big amount of bonus by loading up on small bombs and keeping them still the end of each stage, racking up a big bomb bonus.
It gets some negative criticism for being able to counterstop the game due to the high bomb bonus, but its still excellent fun and as much as I would love to counterstop it, I think that may take some time. There does seem to be a strange link to SDOJ with its inflated scoring bug as both games are super fun to play but ultimately suffer from some scoring issues, but scoring aside, this is a fantastic game.
9 comments:
I agree with you, this game has splendid animations, style and mechanics. It sure beats Platypus...
It really does! The more I play it the last few days, the more I realize how well done it is. Animations especially. Chunky sprites, big explosions, great stuff.
Need to slow it down man, starting to look like Dave_K..
Yeah man! Totally. I'm still a player first and formost (won't buy stuff just cause its rare) but it seems like so many boards that were plentiful back in the day (Out Zone and DDP most notably for me) and getting scarce and expensivce and I'm trying to grab them when I can. It helps that I got a great job and some spending cash...
I especially like the Mega-bombs in each level which blow the crap out of nearly the entire screen. A superplay would be AWEsome, dare I say impossible?
I do have alinks to a Japanese superplay on nico video, but I am not sure how to download it. The game kicks my butt in stage 4, but I am still struggling with the early stages and weapon choices. I know I need to max the bomb bonus for the counterstop, but I'm also wondering if I should just go super powered up for the clear...
And yeah -- those bombs are dope! First time I saw one, I flew to the edge of the screen, thinking I needed to avoid them!
LOL brent is just paying you a compliment! I'd rather buy 10 rare shmups at the cost of 1 brand new Cave shmup. :) I'm also a player first and foremost, and glad I can share these with the bay area shmups community.
Also very true, these are only getting more difficult to find as well as expensive, so why not buy it now if you have the cash. :)
So SF has quite an arcade scene hmm? I may just have to make a trip.
@Dave - yeah, I think those of us who buy pcbs, especially older, rare ones get that stigma of being collectors rather than players. I definitely didn't mean you were just a collector! ;)
And I'm totally with you on the new pcb thing - though SDOJ does look pretty good.
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