For my money, CAVE have 4 standout titles. Ketsui, Dodonpachi DaiOuJou, Mushi Futari and Progear. The former 3 are incredibly tightly designed, traditional-ish bullet hells. Progear, on the other hand, is more of an experimental mess of cool shit put in a development hell washing machine, that somehow came out as a rad tie-dye T-shirt.
Because Progear, both by the standards of the day and even now, is an almost unique bullet hell. It's horizontal for one, something rare to see for this kind of shmup in the first place, but the true difference comes in it's heavy focus on it's core bullet cancelling mechanic.
Essentially, when bullets are caught up in enemy explosions, they're deleted in Progear. The more bullets you delete in one explosion gives you more points, and then the ability to switch shot type and cause bullets cancelling to cancel other bullets themselves, turning them into precious jewel point items instead - all for huge scoring benefit. It's a frankly, unintuitive, weird system that is awkward as hell to explain and get your head around - especially without the flyers in the original arcade kits that explain it, and without paying attention to the attract mode demos - but when it clicks, dear lord does it click.
CAVE are specialists at making satisfying scoring systems, but Progear's "Jeweling" goes further than any of their others, forming the whole basis for playing the game at any decent level - cancelling huge waves of bullets to gain screenspace to move into, timing enemy kills, streaming enemies to make lines of bullets that lead to full screen cancels. It has such a fantastic flow to it, and gives the game a really unique edge.
This system, along with CAVE experimenting with the weird and wonderful horizontal realm, also leads to Progear having some of my favourite bullet patterns of any STG. Progear's bullets are often fired in weird trajectories and acceleration - partially so they cover up the enemies that fire them for a period - and often behave like snooker balls hit with backspin. Its a totally unique style of bullet pattern for bullet hell, and I am personally a huge fan of it. It all adds up to a system with a great balance of Micro and Macro dodging, where control of the screenspace is a huge factor.
And all of this is contained within a fantastic steampunk setting from frequent CAVE collaborator Junya Inoue. Without getting too into it, it's essentially a lot like a doomer version of Ghibli's Castle in the Sky, and whilst obviously there's only so much you can do with that in a 20 minute long STG, the whole thing provides a great melancholic vibe (gotta love a game that starts with mass infanticide), a fantastic aesthetic that contrasts well with all the bullet rain, and establishes a feeling of desperation that works well with the game system. Inoue in general is one of those artists that gets so into the aesthetic they create that manages to impart a feel of a larger, realised world even in the tiny amount of content in the game itself, and its a huge contributor to why I like this game so much.
The failings of Progear are there - as I said before, it's messy. The scoring system ive been gushing about so much kinda falls apart when played for world records due to it's absurdly powerful max bomb bonus. The rough development cycle with the underpowered Hardware also really shows in the final product - the arcade version of the soundtrack uses crunchy kinda awful samples that make half the songs sound kinda shite, there's a lot of sprite reuse (particularly in the final level), and the slowdown, a hallmark of CAVE's shooters, is incredibly severe. It's still arguably the best looking game on the CPS2 (the same hardware that powers Street Fighter 2), but its pretty obvious CAVE were hamstrung by some combination of Capcom and their Hardware. It's telling they didn't work together again and Capcom were intent on keeping Progear in their Vaults for the better part of 20 years.
And it's a real shame they did. Progear has become one of their least well known games partially due to a complete lack of porting, revisons/arrange modes or a successor. That leaves Progear as CAVE's most unique masterpiece. There's a scant one game that feels like it - Battle Traverse. And for me, one of the kindest things I can say about that game is that it reminds me of Progear. I wish more did.
If you want to try out the game, I reccomend MAME, where it runs very accurately - despite being a CPS2 game, Final Burn Alpha doesnt work well for it - You will also need a rom for QSound. You're best off playing the JP version, as the American release cuts out some voice acting and makes some questionable gameplay changes - it is easier, but that can be adjusted in the service mode of the JP version regardless. And make sure you flip the setting that binds FULL AUTO to button 3 - it will save your fingers. Enjoy!
Because Progear, both by the standards of the day and even now, is an almost unique bullet hell. It's horizontal for one, something rare to see for this kind of shmup in the first place, but the true difference comes in it's heavy focus on it's core bullet cancelling mechanic.
Essentially, when bullets are caught up in enemy explosions, they're deleted in Progear. The more bullets you delete in one explosion gives you more points, and then the ability to switch shot type and cause bullets cancelling to cancel other bullets themselves, turning them into precious jewel point items instead - all for huge scoring benefit. It's a frankly, unintuitive, weird system that is awkward as hell to explain and get your head around - especially without the flyers in the original arcade kits that explain it, and without paying attention to the attract mode demos - but when it clicks, dear lord does it click.
CAVE are specialists at making satisfying scoring systems, but Progear's "Jeweling" goes further than any of their others, forming the whole basis for playing the game at any decent level - cancelling huge waves of bullets to gain screenspace to move into, timing enemy kills, streaming enemies to make lines of bullets that lead to full screen cancels. It has such a fantastic flow to it, and gives the game a really unique edge.
This system, along with CAVE experimenting with the weird and wonderful horizontal realm, also leads to Progear having some of my favourite bullet patterns of any STG. Progear's bullets are often fired in weird trajectories and acceleration - partially so they cover up the enemies that fire them for a period - and often behave like snooker balls hit with backspin. Its a totally unique style of bullet pattern for bullet hell, and I am personally a huge fan of it. It all adds up to a system with a great balance of Micro and Macro dodging, where control of the screenspace is a huge factor.
And all of this is contained within a fantastic steampunk setting from frequent CAVE collaborator Junya Inoue. Without getting too into it, it's essentially a lot like a doomer version of Ghibli's Castle in the Sky, and whilst obviously there's only so much you can do with that in a 20 minute long STG, the whole thing provides a great melancholic vibe (gotta love a game that starts with mass infanticide), a fantastic aesthetic that contrasts well with all the bullet rain, and establishes a feeling of desperation that works well with the game system. Inoue in general is one of those artists that gets so into the aesthetic they create that manages to impart a feel of a larger, realised world even in the tiny amount of content in the game itself, and its a huge contributor to why I like this game so much.
The failings of Progear are there - as I said before, it's messy. The scoring system ive been gushing about so much kinda falls apart when played for world records due to it's absurdly powerful max bomb bonus. The rough development cycle with the underpowered Hardware also really shows in the final product - the arcade version of the soundtrack uses crunchy kinda awful samples that make half the songs sound kinda shite, there's a lot of sprite reuse (particularly in the final level), and the slowdown, a hallmark of CAVE's shooters, is incredibly severe. It's still arguably the best looking game on the CPS2 (the same hardware that powers Street Fighter 2), but its pretty obvious CAVE were hamstrung by some combination of Capcom and their Hardware. It's telling they didn't work together again and Capcom were intent on keeping Progear in their Vaults for the better part of 20 years.
And it's a real shame they did. Progear has become one of their least well known games partially due to a complete lack of porting, revisons/arrange modes or a successor. That leaves Progear as CAVE's most unique masterpiece. There's a scant one game that feels like it - Battle Traverse. And for me, one of the kindest things I can say about that game is that it reminds me of Progear. I wish more did.
If you want to try out the game, I reccomend MAME, where it runs very accurately - despite being a CPS2 game, Final Burn Alpha doesnt work well for it - You will also need a rom for QSound. You're best off playing the JP version, as the American release cuts out some voice acting and makes some questionable gameplay changes - it is easier, but that can be adjusted in the service mode of the JP version regardless. And make sure you flip the setting that binds FULL AUTO to button 3 - it will save your fingers. Enjoy!