Abarenbou Tengu

released on Dec 14, 1990
by KAZe

,

Meldac

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This game is one of those oddities you may see a couple of times where people go wow that's a pretty weird game, dies once and moves on. People will probably recognize this game more under it's US name called Zombie Nation.

This game is a shmup and you play as this Tengu mask thing. I think they represent something important in Japan but I'm not knowledgable enough to know this stuff. I do know Tenguman in Mega Man 8, is that good enough? No? Ok. You can shoot to destroy many enemies and even environments like buildings.

This game does not want you to win. It can get pretty hard even on Easy. If I have any tip to give you, do not touch hazards because you have no i-frames meaning stuff like that electricity in the first stage will basically equal game over for you. You have limited continues but you can gain more then your default amount.

The controls are a little too floaty but this may have been done due to the health bar. You also have to mash a lot as you need to earn auto fire, I'm not too sure how I even got it, maybe it was from saving the humans? You can also get powerups to your own weapon but it's nothing too amazing and you can also earn a one time use of clearing anything on screen. Also the way to show you how many more humans you need for powerups is confusing, I at first thought it was tracking my progress in a level since it was a running man going to a flag. It took me till like stage 3 to notice what it actually meant.

There's also not many stages at all, there's 5 stages and even then the last one is just the final boss. The stages are kind of mixed for me. I feel like they're fun enough at times but I swear they just throw stuff at you and it can be pretty rough. It feels like they knew the game was too short and instead just put some poor hazard and enemy patterns in places. You can also choose what stage to do first but it's only that stage but there's really no reason to pick later stages unless you want early practice.

The bosses are easily some of the most wtf parts of the game as if it wasn't already weird. You fight an evil statue of liberty in stage 1, like damn they really wanted to slap you and go this ain't just any shmup, what shmup lets you do that. The bosses also aren't too hard at least on easy and don't even get me started on the final boss. Easily one of the most anticlimatic bosses I've ever fought in a shmup. It dies in like 5 seconds, why.

The game does look nice for a 1990 game, it's got some cool themes at times however the backgrounds leave a lot to desire at many places. Sadly the game does have a lot of sprite flicker and slowdown so that keeps it down. The music is pretty good however so that's nice at least.

By the end of it all, I really didn't know what to score it. I think personally it's not bad but I wouldn't call it good but it's so close to being good. It has the qualities of being a good game but it's not enough. With enough changes, something good could be here but as for what it is, it's just a game that's at best worth a look. If you like Bakage games then you probably have already played this. Both releases of this game are also very awfully priced in the 2nd hand market. Your best bet is getting a copy on modern platforms for $20 but even then I feel like that's too much. Even if I didn't love it, at least I did have fun.