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Hamster's new Arcade Archives port of this game advertises itself as being a "great, easy game to get into, even for players who don't often play shooting games!"
This is a lie. A complete lie. This game is completely evil. Beneath the lovely, incredibly cute aesthetic where an otter dangles his legs out of a biplane, lies a system where you will die at the drop of a hat, you move slow enough for some bullets to barely be reactable, and the scoring mechanics are absolutely stupid.
The most efficient way to score in this game is to literally rub up against the right side of the screen, which gives you about a thousand points a second. Yes, that's where most enemies spawn - yes, there's no warning that enemies are spawning. Yes, they kill you on impact. NMK are you ok?
Alternatively, you can pick up point items or merely walk on the floor to get points. But you also get points for avoiding point items, and only 3 of the 8 stages have floors! So ?????????????
It's very stupid. And very, very hard, rivalling the likes of Toaplan's evil STGs of the period, with later levels filled with loads of enemies that will fire lighting fast bullets at your massive hitbox, and it ultimately turns into a game of bomb resource management - well not bombs, "big" items that make your otter comically huge and fire sunfish at enemies which do increased damage. Because why not.
Aside from the shitposty nature of the game as a whole, it's pretty good. It suffers from a lack of variety as the same enemy types pop up again and again and again, and it's a bit too long, but the encounters themselves are pretty fun, and it is extremely, extremely cute throughout, and when it is throwing new bosses at you the encounters are surprisingly puzzle-y and interesting. The caravan modes included in the new port are also probably the best way to enjoy it, with two bite sized portions of madness instead of half an hour, with less frustration as a result.
But yeah, this is a hilarious shitshow that I kinda respect the gall of. In an arcade setting from 30 years ago, it's probably something I'd completely avoid and would get a horrid reputation, but as a modern curiosity, it's a nice little look back into one of the first cute em ups, and one of the more silly, evil examples of the genre.
This is a lie. A complete lie. This game is completely evil. Beneath the lovely, incredibly cute aesthetic where an otter dangles his legs out of a biplane, lies a system where you will die at the drop of a hat, you move slow enough for some bullets to barely be reactable, and the scoring mechanics are absolutely stupid.
The most efficient way to score in this game is to literally rub up against the right side of the screen, which gives you about a thousand points a second. Yes, that's where most enemies spawn - yes, there's no warning that enemies are spawning. Yes, they kill you on impact. NMK are you ok?
Alternatively, you can pick up point items or merely walk on the floor to get points. But you also get points for avoiding point items, and only 3 of the 8 stages have floors! So ?????????????
It's very stupid. And very, very hard, rivalling the likes of Toaplan's evil STGs of the period, with later levels filled with loads of enemies that will fire lighting fast bullets at your massive hitbox, and it ultimately turns into a game of bomb resource management - well not bombs, "big" items that make your otter comically huge and fire sunfish at enemies which do increased damage. Because why not.
Aside from the shitposty nature of the game as a whole, it's pretty good. It suffers from a lack of variety as the same enemy types pop up again and again and again, and it's a bit too long, but the encounters themselves are pretty fun, and it is extremely, extremely cute throughout, and when it is throwing new bosses at you the encounters are surprisingly puzzle-y and interesting. The caravan modes included in the new port are also probably the best way to enjoy it, with two bite sized portions of madness instead of half an hour, with less frustration as a result.
But yeah, this is a hilarious shitshow that I kinda respect the gall of. In an arcade setting from 30 years ago, it's probably something I'd completely avoid and would get a horrid reputation, but as a modern curiosity, it's a nice little look back into one of the first cute em ups, and one of the more silly, evil examples of the genre.
On the surface, Hacha Mecha Fighter is a cutesy animal-themed horizontal shooting game for kids. You're a cute sea otter who can barely fit in his plane, shooting cute bullets (dead-eyed fishes at the highest power level!) at other cute animals (that sometimes reside in planes or tanks). In reality, it's one of the most disgustingly evil, nasty and sadistic (for your patience) shooting games ever released in arcades. Developed by NMK, it is a game where the visuals are at odds with what is truly going on. It may seem easy and (I guess) fair at first, but as you progress, the cracks will begin to show and you will begin to question your own sanity for playing such a game. You are slow, your hitbox is enormous, and enemies fire fast and HUGE bullets that sometimes cannot actually be avoided. Indeed, Hacha Mecha is one of the rare cases of genuine resource-em-ups, where bomb planning is everything, as parts of the games were not intended to be done without bombs. Well, I'm all for high difficulty, I love that and that's a big reason why I play shmups in the first place. But this game gets it all wrong. In truth, throughout most of the game, not that much is really going on. Then suddenly a difficulty spike happens and you have to bomb. Then you play some more out of sheer formality, and then another forced bomb, etc. That's what playing this game is like. Well, sometimes you're not necessarily forced to bomb (It's mostly stage 6 in loop 1). What's even more idiotic is the scoring system. While you can get a lot of points just playing for survival and without using this mechanic, it has to be mentioned that the scoring system is one of the dumbest of all time. You get points by going to the right edge of the screen, and holding right towards it. Yes, the right edge of the screen, you know, where new enemies are spawning from most of the time. Obviously there isn't all that much time during stage portions to really use this mechanic, so what happens is that score players may use the entire boss timers, which last seemingly forever, to hug the right and score points. Doing this is usually a matter of sheer formality and not something you really get killed over with some practice. It tests your patience and stretches your run length. It sure takes forever (something like 5 minutes is the norm for a boss to time out). Plus, midbosses can also be milked dry, sometimes by using a glitch to lock them into place for a few mins. If you want to play a super hard game where you are mostly bored out of your mind, then this is the game to play.
While I'm on the topic of stupid shit, how about the bosses themselves from a survival design perspective, without the scoring system. They're still mostly awful. Starting from stage 4, they have ridiculous amounts of HP. All the while repeating the same pattern for near-infinity. Also, the bosses will often move towards the left so that you cant shoot them. Then you need to dodge the same patterns on the right side. All a pointless time waster. Heck, the bosses are recycled. The 5th boss is an upgraded, recycled version of the 2nd boss, the 6th boss is the same as the 4th (and has the same "monkey train" as the stage 3 boss) and the stage 7 boss is recycled from the stage 1 boss. The same midbosses also occur on multiple stages. Backgrounds, music, enemies, everything you can think of gets recycled in the game. The worst has got to the be the looping. The game loops, which isn't uncommon in arcade games, but the loops in this game aren't normal. The 2nd loop Has FOUR TIMES the health as loop 1, on everything. This is despite the health getting quite outragerous in the second half of loop 1. This makes loop 2 IMPOSSIBLE by conventional means as, as soon as you get to stage 4, you will get into situations where not even bombing constantly will save you as enemies simply will never die and will stay on the screen as a gigantic hitbox spawning more gigantic hitboxes. Supposedly, the only way to complete loops of Hacha Mecha, is to abuse a glitch nobody knows about outside of Japan. There are some secrets in Japan to make multi-looping possible, and the WR is a counterstop. Me and some others have searched and searched, and found some interesting and promising glitches, but in the end we found no way to use these glitches to make the loops possible.
As much as I'm damning the game, I do want to stress that I have a soft spot for it. Objectively, the game stinks; but it is a very cute game. It has pleasant aesthetics, and the bullets are fast and are sometimes fun to dodge (when you are doing portions you are not supposed to bomb). Stage 7 is a genuinely great stage and I wish more of the game was like that, most of the stage is obscenely difficult but still doable without using bombs. I mean, this is a mostly bad game, and it's not really worth taking all that seriously, but I just can't bring myself to completely dislike it because I feel like it's missing the point. The game was most definitely not made with any serious intent or even common sense for that matter. You have to let go of your common sense to play the game, and play it on its own terms. If you wanna try out a silly game and not get too deeply into it, you might wanna look into this one, briefly. But playing it for 1cc or (hell no) scoring by milking the bosses dry just isn't really enjoyable.
I've been close to a 1cc several times (with several stage 7 game overs; stage 8 is a free win) but ultimately I didn't have fun so I gave up pretty fast, and I mostly just feel regret over even trying in the first place, because the more I learned the more I knew it wasn't fun. Stage 6 is the real shitter because it requires a lot of bombs. So if you want to 1cc, you pretty much need to no-miss to stage 6. Even just dying once before stage 6 is a huge problem for a 1cc run. So, don't try to 1cc and don't score, and you might at least have some fleeting fondness for this kusoge.
While I'm on the topic of stupid shit, how about the bosses themselves from a survival design perspective, without the scoring system. They're still mostly awful. Starting from stage 4, they have ridiculous amounts of HP. All the while repeating the same pattern for near-infinity. Also, the bosses will often move towards the left so that you cant shoot them. Then you need to dodge the same patterns on the right side. All a pointless time waster. Heck, the bosses are recycled. The 5th boss is an upgraded, recycled version of the 2nd boss, the 6th boss is the same as the 4th (and has the same "monkey train" as the stage 3 boss) and the stage 7 boss is recycled from the stage 1 boss. The same midbosses also occur on multiple stages. Backgrounds, music, enemies, everything you can think of gets recycled in the game. The worst has got to the be the looping. The game loops, which isn't uncommon in arcade games, but the loops in this game aren't normal. The 2nd loop Has FOUR TIMES the health as loop 1, on everything. This is despite the health getting quite outragerous in the second half of loop 1. This makes loop 2 IMPOSSIBLE by conventional means as, as soon as you get to stage 4, you will get into situations where not even bombing constantly will save you as enemies simply will never die and will stay on the screen as a gigantic hitbox spawning more gigantic hitboxes. Supposedly, the only way to complete loops of Hacha Mecha, is to abuse a glitch nobody knows about outside of Japan. There are some secrets in Japan to make multi-looping possible, and the WR is a counterstop. Me and some others have searched and searched, and found some interesting and promising glitches, but in the end we found no way to use these glitches to make the loops possible.
As much as I'm damning the game, I do want to stress that I have a soft spot for it. Objectively, the game stinks; but it is a very cute game. It has pleasant aesthetics, and the bullets are fast and are sometimes fun to dodge (when you are doing portions you are not supposed to bomb). Stage 7 is a genuinely great stage and I wish more of the game was like that, most of the stage is obscenely difficult but still doable without using bombs. I mean, this is a mostly bad game, and it's not really worth taking all that seriously, but I just can't bring myself to completely dislike it because I feel like it's missing the point. The game was most definitely not made with any serious intent or even common sense for that matter. You have to let go of your common sense to play the game, and play it on its own terms. If you wanna try out a silly game and not get too deeply into it, you might wanna look into this one, briefly. But playing it for 1cc or (hell no) scoring by milking the bosses dry just isn't really enjoyable.
I've been close to a 1cc several times (with several stage 7 game overs; stage 8 is a free win) but ultimately I didn't have fun so I gave up pretty fast, and I mostly just feel regret over even trying in the first place, because the more I learned the more I knew it wasn't fun. Stage 6 is the real shitter because it requires a lot of bombs. So if you want to 1cc, you pretty much need to no-miss to stage 6. Even just dying once before stage 6 is a huge problem for a 1cc run. So, don't try to 1cc and don't score, and you might at least have some fleeting fondness for this kusoge.