A very simplistic riff on the likes of TF3 with a gimmick of switching between a robot and standard ship. The robot's bombs essentially give you I-frames on demand, whereas the ship is able to cancel bullets with a Shockwave. Although this is one of the easier shmups on Genesis, chain deaths are still a very big possibility as you lose everything on death and the game unfortunately commits the design sin of having speed power ups. I'd consider this the better game over Whip Rush (also done by renovation/vic tokai) even if that one offered adjustable speed.

Easy games can be fun -- let's get that out of the way -- but Arrow Flash's normal mode is the bad kind of easy: devoid of even the pretense of challenge. You will sit in an empty frame, firing to the right, and once every 5-10 seconds a wave of enemies will come crashing into your bullets, wholly unable to retaliate. You may find yourself dying because your focus floats away to, perhaps, what's for lunch -- and in that regard the "Normal" mode might be the more difficult one here after all.

Bump it up to "Hard," and things get a little, but not that much, more interesting. You have to deal more consistently with enemy fire, though there are still long bouts of nothingness scattered throughout the game's 5 stages. And, adding a frosting of genuine brokenness on top of this cakewalk, you have a special move that makes you invincible and able to run into enemies and bosses for massive damage. The activations of this move are handed out plentifully in the game's "Stock" mode, and in "Charge" mode they're infinite.

So is all of that to say that this is a bad shooting game? Actually, no. It's an aggressively alright one: there's nothing actively frustrating about it beyond the boredom that can ocassionally set in, which the hard mode alleviates enough, at least in my book; and the mechanics it offers (swapping from mech to ship for two different option-behaviors, the aforementioned kamikaze-mode) are enough to provide a fun, if extremely-basic, run to the finish.

If it weren't also nice to look at and listen to, it might get two stars... but fortunately that's not the case. The sprites and cinematics are cool and decently unique (more cartoony than in many stgs), and the music ocassionally got my head bobbing.

It's ok! It's fine! Check it out for an alright, not bad time!

Cleared on July 9th, 2023 (SEGA Genesis Challenge: 24/160)

Now this is a great shoot em up game. No difficulty spikes, no questionable decisions designed to extend playtime; just a reasonable challenge that never once did I feel like I was being screwed over. Mind you, I still had to use save states since I got a list of games to go through, but I feel confident this is one of the ones I'll be returning to.

So what makes this game so fun? Well, at first it seems to be nothing out of the ordinary when it comes to shoot em ups. You dodge, you shoot, and you collect power-ups to empower your weapons. However, what makes the game more intriguing (and this is what I embarrassingly didn't realize until the final level) is that you have the ability to shift between mech form and plane form. While both are similar, they do have a few differences. Mech form brings the drones you collected (which are the assistants that add firepower) to your side no matter where you are while the Plane form has the drones position themselves where you were. So like if you were up at one point and you go down, the drone will go up if that makes any sense. They also have their own special moves which include Mech being able to briefly turn invincible which adds a mercy aspect to the game and may even save you from what's otherwise unfair like the final level where there is a tight corridor with a few enemies waiting for you. Meanwhile the plane will fire a wave of powerful lasers that clears most projectiles, making it a powerful tool as a surefire way of avoiding damage.

The music in this game is fantastic, and I could see myself listening to the soundtrack of the game on my free time. And it has a cool visual appeal to make it stand out from other games of the genre though I think it's mainly because of the mech design and some of the boss enemies look cool as well.

However, I still have a few gripes with the game. Even though the game is much more fair compared to other shoot em ups, you will still lose all of your power ups when you get hit which could make coming back difficult, but the good news is that you start out with 3 special attacks which means you could potentially buy some time to get some of your powers back if you play your hand at the right time. The frame rate at few segments are really bad, namely a few of the boss battles in the game although at least you can kinda control it by not shooting so rapidly and for the 4th boss in particular, it might've worked to my advantage to avoid attacks. Lastly, the final boss is really lame. You can stay in one place, occasionally move out of the fireballs, and then just shoot the center until it dies. That's it.

But all that aside, I really enjoyed this game, and I didn't even feel like I wanted to hurry to the end with this one because my mind was numbing or I was getting aggravated. It's a great time, a great game, and I would definitely recommend this as someone's first 2D Air Shoot Em Up.