Incredible presentation brushes against great music, fantastic technical use of the mega drive hardware, and solid enough gameplay to make for what would be an extremely compelling and well-aged shooting game if it weren't for being stupidly long and have interminable pacing.

I would of course, be talking about Musha Aleste. And Thunder force IV. or Gleylancer. or Zero Wing MD. And Gynoug, or, sadly - Battle Mania Daiginjou.

It is probably the most annoying trend in the STG genre. You cut out the dead air, tanky boss health bars and endless, boring waves of zako that make up 50% of the game and you've got a great STG here - and in every other game i've mentioned.

BMD does sidestep the problem a little bit thanks to the levels themselves being fairly varied, with a combination of vertical and horizontal scrolling stages, and some pretty cool environments. The adorable story-cut ins between each stage also give nice breaks. But on the other hand, the general shooting is super simplistic and below par, and it's ridiculously easy on it's default settings by STG standards (I blind cleared it without a sweat.

Even if you ignore the lightning fast STGs of the arcade of it's era (Batsugun and Thunder dragon 2 released the very same year), BMD and its ilk are still simply outmatched by the console STGs of it's era that just decided to not waste your time, regardless of technical competency. Slap Fight MD eats their lunch, and - weird as it is - biohazard battle shows how this breed could have been so much better with respect for the player's time.

Its still easy to appreciate the art and the sheer joyfullness of it. It's got some of the best sprite art on the MD, and is absolutely worth a lone playthrough. But I sadly can't reccomend it any more than that.

Reviewed on Oct 26, 2022


3 Comments


1 year ago

dies

1 year ago

i think it being easy adds to the appeal i can kinda just throw it at someone regardless of if theyre good at shmups

1 year ago

being easy is a double-edged sword - yeah, it can be a good recommendation for beginners or if you want something less stressful

however, if you are more skilled the lack of any challenge may be boring and you don't really have much reason to get back to it (at least not for scoring, because scoring in console shmups is lol, lmao)