It's interesting to look back at the year 1998 as a shooting game fan. It is a year where it feels like every company in the business was firing on all cylinders, yet simultaneously, the genre hung in the balance. In 1997 Cave released Dodonpachi, undoubtedly the most important shooting game made since their former selves in Toaplan put out flying shark in '87. And whilst it's basic formula defined both cave and the post-milennium shooter space, in 98 it was far from set in stone.
When you look at the other games from 98, it's easy to see a world where Radiant Silvergun, Armed Police Batrider, Dangun Feveron, Raiden Fighters Jet, Raycrisis or even Gunbird 2 and Blazing Star come out on top. A whole pile of ridiculously high-quality games that you can all make the case are the dev's finest, all at once. And whilst many of those games are still influencial, particularly RSG and Batrider - ESPrade is the one that truly came out on top.
Which is a bit odd on the face of it. Particulary in the western space a lack of localisation, ports and rights issues left it particularly obscure even among cave games, when it's stupidly important to shmup history and is one of Cave's absolute finest games.
The most important facet to ESPrade is it's presentation. Flying people over a cyberpunk tokyo fighting psychic battles with huge tanks, the psychic Yakuza and old women sitting on the cooles sprite of a statue head ever - it's all extremely cool. There's clearly a lot taken from Akira here (probably among others) but its far from a ripoff and is definetly itself. Artist and Mangaka had been working with Toaplan and it's offshoots Gazelle and Cave since 1991 but ESPrade was his first real shot to lead a whole project artistically and it's absolutely glorious. ESPrade is to this day Cave's best looking game and it's not particularly close. The stage backgrounds alone are some of the best sprtie art you'll ever see, but there's particularly fantastic use of renders here - particularly in the main characters which allows a ridiculous number of animation frames in their movement whilst somehow still blending in well. Cave rarely dropped rendered characters in the years following and they have never looked as good as they have here, it's incredible.
Junya Inoue is also, frankly, whilst an extremely talented worldbuilder and artist, is really best at either adding flavour to existing, drier worlds like he does with Dodonpachi in Daioujou, or leaving a decent amount to the imagination, and ESPrade is the true encapsulation of the latter. You get a tiny amount of short scenes to set up plot and conflict and if you want more all you'll get is a ridiculous barrage of art because Inoue has drawn each of these characters like 900 times, sometimes in his Manga BTOOM! without permission, but nary a lick of story to defile a perfect setup and payoff. As you do.
And there's just great majesty to it. Radiant Silvergun's remarkable storytelling beats it out for sure, and Taito were way ahead of the curve on this in general, but ESPrade's management of tension and minimal storytelling is just done so damn well. It's helped by effectively having 3 Stage 1s thanks to each character have their own and then playing the other twos, and they all benefit from the traditional lengths cave goes to making stage 1s incredible - but stage 5 is the real killer. A brutal part 1 the game testing all your abilities of routing and throwing piles of the enemies you've previously fought in greater density - only then to face an eerie, nigh-horrific stage 5b where you mow down hundreds of creepy psychic clones before facing down Ms. Garra.
Oh and Ms. Garra might be the best shooting game boss fight ever. A 7 phase behemoth, and even if you split them up they'd all make the top 20 cave bosses. Despite the ludicrous amount of amazing artistry the game has to offer, the image of Ms Garra casting huge wings across the snowy tokyo night, firing a beautiful mirage of bullets will always define ESPrade. It, and the earlier, also exceptional fight against Satouro Oumi are basically copied beat for beat by Windows-era Touhou. I do not blame ZUN one bit.
Aside from incredible bosses though, ESPrade just has a fantastic game loop. It does take a bit to get to grips with but tagging enemies with power shot then killing with normal to score is exceptionally fun and in a true CAVE moment, they didnt really give it another go. Stage design is also top tier.
Being such a fantastic refinement of Dodonpachi's ideas and a great encapsulation of it's own makes ESPrade the true shining star of 1998. Flying people, 10 phase bosses, emphasis on pacing and bombast, bullet patterns like blooming flowers fired by cute anime girls - whilst Story of Eastern Wonderland beats it by a few months, and DoDonPachi set the ground work, ESPrade is the true catalyst of the Shooting tropes that would define everything up to the modern era.
But more than that, it's just one of CAVE's finest. I'd say their second best game after Ketsui, and one of the top 10 shooting games outright. Only really Taito has beaten out it's presentation and matched with some of Cave's best ever work, its an utter classic.
When looked at among the class of 98, it's easy to contemplate and lust for the world of shooters we could have got if say, Dangun Feveron was the game to catch on - like if dragons dogma had been the game to define RPGs of the 2010s instead of demon souls, for instance - but like with Demon souls, when you look back on that spark - its hard to blame it for the road it lead us down.
When you look at the other games from 98, it's easy to see a world where Radiant Silvergun, Armed Police Batrider, Dangun Feveron, Raiden Fighters Jet, Raycrisis or even Gunbird 2 and Blazing Star come out on top. A whole pile of ridiculously high-quality games that you can all make the case are the dev's finest, all at once. And whilst many of those games are still influencial, particularly RSG and Batrider - ESPrade is the one that truly came out on top.
Which is a bit odd on the face of it. Particulary in the western space a lack of localisation, ports and rights issues left it particularly obscure even among cave games, when it's stupidly important to shmup history and is one of Cave's absolute finest games.
The most important facet to ESPrade is it's presentation. Flying people over a cyberpunk tokyo fighting psychic battles with huge tanks, the psychic Yakuza and old women sitting on the cooles sprite of a statue head ever - it's all extremely cool. There's clearly a lot taken from Akira here (probably among others) but its far from a ripoff and is definetly itself. Artist and Mangaka had been working with Toaplan and it's offshoots Gazelle and Cave since 1991 but ESPrade was his first real shot to lead a whole project artistically and it's absolutely glorious. ESPrade is to this day Cave's best looking game and it's not particularly close. The stage backgrounds alone are some of the best sprtie art you'll ever see, but there's particularly fantastic use of renders here - particularly in the main characters which allows a ridiculous number of animation frames in their movement whilst somehow still blending in well. Cave rarely dropped rendered characters in the years following and they have never looked as good as they have here, it's incredible.
Junya Inoue is also, frankly, whilst an extremely talented worldbuilder and artist, is really best at either adding flavour to existing, drier worlds like he does with Dodonpachi in Daioujou, or leaving a decent amount to the imagination, and ESPrade is the true encapsulation of the latter. You get a tiny amount of short scenes to set up plot and conflict and if you want more all you'll get is a ridiculous barrage of art because Inoue has drawn each of these characters like 900 times, sometimes in his Manga BTOOM! without permission, but nary a lick of story to defile a perfect setup and payoff. As you do.
And there's just great majesty to it. Radiant Silvergun's remarkable storytelling beats it out for sure, and Taito were way ahead of the curve on this in general, but ESPrade's management of tension and minimal storytelling is just done so damn well. It's helped by effectively having 3 Stage 1s thanks to each character have their own and then playing the other twos, and they all benefit from the traditional lengths cave goes to making stage 1s incredible - but stage 5 is the real killer. A brutal part 1 the game testing all your abilities of routing and throwing piles of the enemies you've previously fought in greater density - only then to face an eerie, nigh-horrific stage 5b where you mow down hundreds of creepy psychic clones before facing down Ms. Garra.
Oh and Ms. Garra might be the best shooting game boss fight ever. A 7 phase behemoth, and even if you split them up they'd all make the top 20 cave bosses. Despite the ludicrous amount of amazing artistry the game has to offer, the image of Ms Garra casting huge wings across the snowy tokyo night, firing a beautiful mirage of bullets will always define ESPrade. It, and the earlier, also exceptional fight against Satouro Oumi are basically copied beat for beat by Windows-era Touhou. I do not blame ZUN one bit.
Aside from incredible bosses though, ESPrade just has a fantastic game loop. It does take a bit to get to grips with but tagging enemies with power shot then killing with normal to score is exceptionally fun and in a true CAVE moment, they didnt really give it another go. Stage design is also top tier.
Being such a fantastic refinement of Dodonpachi's ideas and a great encapsulation of it's own makes ESPrade the true shining star of 1998. Flying people, 10 phase bosses, emphasis on pacing and bombast, bullet patterns like blooming flowers fired by cute anime girls - whilst Story of Eastern Wonderland beats it by a few months, and DoDonPachi set the ground work, ESPrade is the true catalyst of the Shooting tropes that would define everything up to the modern era.
But more than that, it's just one of CAVE's finest. I'd say their second best game after Ketsui, and one of the top 10 shooting games outright. Only really Taito has beaten out it's presentation and matched with some of Cave's best ever work, its an utter classic.
When looked at among the class of 98, it's easy to contemplate and lust for the world of shooters we could have got if say, Dangun Feveron was the game to catch on - like if dragons dogma had been the game to define RPGs of the 2010s instead of demon souls, for instance - but like with Demon souls, when you look back on that spark - its hard to blame it for the road it lead us down.
3 Comments
Thank you :)
is ZUN like zun (like z-un) or like zune (like the Zune)?
BeachEpisode
1 year ago