The core gimmick at play in Bangai-O, minus the unique movement and level structure, is the ability to basically counterfire against enemy projectiles, with the intensity of the attack depending on how many projectiles are targeting you prior. Just so you know, this game was also a test of hardware to see how many projectiles could fire at you.

There are a lot of projectiles.

I'm taken aback by how unbelievably fun this game is, it should have gotten tiring with how oppressively consistent the gameplay is, but the ace up its sleeve is that you'll only get the full extent of the insanity dependent on the insanity of the level design, thanks to you requiring enemy projectiles to do anything truly awesome, and Treasure has endless fun with this. Some levels are like big playgrounds for you to stomp around in 'till you find the boss, others are intensive gauntlets of nonstop fire at you and some border on puzzle-esque elements regarding your knowledge of the games systems and various objects, all training you to improve yourself in a naturalistic way as the game goes on. Every part of the game is constantly stimulating your brain, even if just a little bit, and there's a surprising amount of semi-conscious thought that goes into aimlessly blasting missiles and lasers at everything. First of all the movement + aiming requires constant attention to maneuver around while still locking onto enemies, which is a heavy factor in survival when enemies are so plentiful and swarming you, but the risk-reward you're constantly weighing out in your brain is near unmatched. To do anything effective in this game, you have to actively get yourself into danger and get pummeled. There are no invincibility frames in-between hits; if you're bombarded and fuck up, you're toast. Therefore, to actually get things done, you need to be putting yourself in the face of death, but you're also putting yourself in the face of death in the near future as it's relying on your ability to continually recharge your counterfire, which is likely to recharge but it's not guaranteed you'll do it perfectly, adding an element to consider for going all out. The response the player might consider is that they shouldn't go all out if it's too much of a risk, but this itself starts being a problem as the game goes on. Levels are meticulously designed in ways to pummel you with near instakill death traps and pits of enemies firing bullets at you, with little details like one-way doors, slow domino effect explosive chains that can soft-lock you and walls that are receptive only to one type of fire (often at specific angles to utilize) littering the level design. This means any moment of passive play is actively fucking you over as you go on, and it's wonderful how well this all incentivizes the core fun of the gameplay: blowing everything to hell.

Focused design, focused levels, questionable bosses but an extremely solid circle of player psychology going on either way; check it out!

Famed doctor of medicine, psychoanalyst, student of freud, and eventually, imprisoned fraudster wilhelm reich described a four beat pleasure process. this pleasure process consists of physical tension -> energetic charge -> energetic discharge -> physical relaxation. the obvious example that we're all thinking of is the orgasm the scatter-shot featured here in bangai-o. upon launching into a level your whole body yearns for the 400 missile eruption... bio electricity springs forth from its own inner source, flooding your entire system, causing it to pulsate - expanding and contracting with the flow of your potent energy. this charge builds and builds until it demands relief: the inner production of energy grows too great. a wave of missiles fires at you. at the moment before annihilation you fire off the scatter-shot, finally discharging this mass of built up energy toward the outside. pleasure washes over you - this discharge liberates you from the dammed-up tension. the system pauses in preparation and anticipation for the awesome task of rendering 68000 sprites at once, each with their own accompanying screams of ecstasy. the tv screen begins radiating a healing cosmic orgone energy, relieving you of injuries both physical and psychic. a pure light replaces your consciousness and you are finally Awake. relaxation felt as a bodily state. 'enoughness'. the missiles serve as the fertilizing agent, swimming instinctively towards the numerous receptive eggs enemies. then another wave of missiles is fired at you...

bangai-o is this pleasure process looped continuously and in novel ways. it comes with all these new weird membranes that stimulate the player in new weird ways. it's instinctive and animalistic - just look out for the closest pink projectiles(!) and achieve the big (bangai) O. it's addicting. if I waited too long between levels I'd get irritable and I'd have a hard time sleeping on days that I didn't play it. speaking of - the narrative elements are rather dreamlike as well, characters come back from the dead, dialogue is often nonsensical, and we even get the jungian archetypes of the father and mother. the bangai-o itself represents the unity between the anima (mami - or maybe even mommy... hmmm much to consider...) and the animus (riki). fighting your progenitor over and over again in battles of nuclear fertility - that's robert anton wilson's anal emotional territorial circuit too. what a psychosexual experience this game is. more psychology and sex than pretty much any game I'd say.

not-as-famed thinker of the counter-cultural movement, occultist, and psychologist christopher s. hyatt re-labelled reich's pleasure process as THE UNIVERSAL CYCLE OF JOY. he said that each thing capable of completing the cycle can be considered a success. this process orients us towards life and away from the drive towards destruction, away from the need to return to the womb. it moves us forward (he states that most people are stuck in one of the three stages preceding relaxation, not you or me though, we made it). stanislav grof may have even argued that it releases us from the trauma of birth. if completion of this process does in fact equate to success then bangai-o is the most successful game of all time.

I’ve already reviewed the N64 version, so here I’ll just review the changes made to the Dreamcast version.

Most importantly, the special attack has some slight alterations, not for the better or worse, but which drastically change the way it can be used. The special meter no longer fills by collecting fruit, which are now only here for points, but rather by hitting enemies. Now instead of having to focus on scouring the levels for fruit, you’re actually encouraged to make a beeline to the boss while occasionally blasting a few specials here and there along the way. What makes the special even easier to use is that it no longer needs to be charged, as its power is dependent solely on how close enemy projectiles are. Unfortunately though, the shop is absent here, possibly because specials can be pulled off so much more easily and frequently now.

The CD format comes with improved graphics and music, but at the unfortunate cost of reducing Bangai-O’s signature slowdown. Call me crazy all you want, but the slowdown is one of the most endearing parts of the experience. There’s nothing like seeing just how incapable the hardware is at handling this game.

There’s also the controls, which are technically the same, with the caveat that you’d have to hold half the Dreamcast controller with both hands to be able to use the D-Pad to move and the stick to shoot. But like I said with the N64 version, you’re probably gonna need to emulate this to play it at all nowadays, so you can fix that issue pretty easily.

Had to use a single save-state at the end to learn the trick to the final boss (RIP to anyone who played this on an actual dreamcast)... but holy shit, other than that, what a fantastic game.

The blissful feeling you get when you counter a barrage of hundreds of missiles with your OWN hundreds of missiles at the last second--setting off a massive chain of screen-engulfing explosions--is, frankly, tantamount to orgasm.

'It's Raining Robots' is one of the greatest level designs of all time.