Earlier in the year when starting to look at retro titles to play I randomly picked 99: the Last War an arcade title from 1985. The Team Crux after going bankrupt went onto form Toaplan the creators of Batsugun. This is a game I randomly chose from my backlog as a quick title to play between other things which also unknowingly happened to be Toaplan's final game before it went bankrupt in 1994. Many of the employees from there went to form the equally legendary CAVE continuing making arcade shoot 'em ups. CAVE's founding history when you go back through the chain like this is fascinating. A lot of their more famous output like DonPachi and Mushihimesama can find their roots in Batsugun often referred to by people as the first bullet-hell.
For the most part this is a pretty standard shoot 'em up, I mean no insult by that after all I'm looking at this from a view in 2023. I can imagine at the time it would have really been something nuts. You choose from several pilots that have normal attacks and bombs. Where Batsugun is semi interesting in it's design is in the weapon system. Boss and level design aside this is the core aspect of a shoot 'em up that they sink or swim with me personally and this one is pretty good. When enemies are killed you get experience points. Depending on the enemy depends on the points gained. A normal enemy might give +1 but the boss +100 for example. With enough points you can level up your ship up to three times which makes it's main gun more powerful. On top of this you can collect some base power ups to make your gun stronger. This means there is an incentive to play well to level your ship as quickly as possible and that dying isn't utterly punishing in response as you only need collect some power ups but will be fairly powerful regardless. Once you hit that point the incentive for killing for experience will then generate an extra bomb for you to collect. These bombs can be pretty vital for getting you out of situations where you are trapped by a plethora of bright bullets and no where to go. They will clear the section of the map as well as damage enemies at the same time adding some additional layer of strategy to it. Despite the weapon system making you feel like a boss hammering a barrage of bullets and electric lasers the game is far from a push over and at times can get quite hard especially with the bosses health pools and multiple weak points.
It's a fun system and it's backed up by some gorgeous art design, colourful flashy visuals, heavy action and massive bosses. Though I listed this as completing on the Saturn I actually played the arcade version and the Saturn version back to back. I actually preferred the more solid feel of the Saturn version but honestly both versions look and play great to me so whichever you prefer really. The Saturn version does have the Batsugun special Version included with it as a separate game. The special Version gives a shield to take a hit as well as multiple loops building challenge rather than just the straight 5 levels the original game had for those that had more. The Special Version was only semi released due to Toaplan going bankrupt so the Saturn Port was released by Gazelle with it included. Gazelle themselves were made up of Ex-Toaplan staff many of which went to work at CAVE after they closed doors themselves in 2002. All roads lead to Rome? All roads lead to CAVE more like.
So there you are, Batsugun. A great little game, the end of an era but the start of another and it's influence lives on.
+ Excellent art and colourful visuals.
+ Interesting RPG like level up system.
+ Challenging but fair in deaths' and abilities.
For the most part this is a pretty standard shoot 'em up, I mean no insult by that after all I'm looking at this from a view in 2023. I can imagine at the time it would have really been something nuts. You choose from several pilots that have normal attacks and bombs. Where Batsugun is semi interesting in it's design is in the weapon system. Boss and level design aside this is the core aspect of a shoot 'em up that they sink or swim with me personally and this one is pretty good. When enemies are killed you get experience points. Depending on the enemy depends on the points gained. A normal enemy might give +1 but the boss +100 for example. With enough points you can level up your ship up to three times which makes it's main gun more powerful. On top of this you can collect some base power ups to make your gun stronger. This means there is an incentive to play well to level your ship as quickly as possible and that dying isn't utterly punishing in response as you only need collect some power ups but will be fairly powerful regardless. Once you hit that point the incentive for killing for experience will then generate an extra bomb for you to collect. These bombs can be pretty vital for getting you out of situations where you are trapped by a plethora of bright bullets and no where to go. They will clear the section of the map as well as damage enemies at the same time adding some additional layer of strategy to it. Despite the weapon system making you feel like a boss hammering a barrage of bullets and electric lasers the game is far from a push over and at times can get quite hard especially with the bosses health pools and multiple weak points.
It's a fun system and it's backed up by some gorgeous art design, colourful flashy visuals, heavy action and massive bosses. Though I listed this as completing on the Saturn I actually played the arcade version and the Saturn version back to back. I actually preferred the more solid feel of the Saturn version but honestly both versions look and play great to me so whichever you prefer really. The Saturn version does have the Batsugun special Version included with it as a separate game. The special Version gives a shield to take a hit as well as multiple loops building challenge rather than just the straight 5 levels the original game had for those that had more. The Special Version was only semi released due to Toaplan going bankrupt so the Saturn Port was released by Gazelle with it included. Gazelle themselves were made up of Ex-Toaplan staff many of which went to work at CAVE after they closed doors themselves in 2002. All roads lead to Rome? All roads lead to CAVE more like.
So there you are, Batsugun. A great little game, the end of an era but the start of another and it's influence lives on.
+ Excellent art and colourful visuals.
+ Interesting RPG like level up system.
+ Challenging but fair in deaths' and abilities.