I love playing retro games. Seeing how gaming has developed as a medium, as well as just the styles and ideas developers used to get around technical limitations. Thanks to mostly fans but also slowly the gaming companies themselves game preservation is the best it has ever been allowing people to play and enjoy games they didn't grow up with or even going back to those they did. Good or bad these games should be celebrated and that's what makes 99: The Last War kind of sad on Backloggd. 1 Backlog, no banner and a description that may as well say 'This is a game that was released'. So here I am to add one lone review to bring attention to this much forgotten title.
99: The Last War or Repulse as it was originally known was one of only 2 titles developed by Crux before going bankrupt a year after being founded in 1985. (The other being Gyrodine but I can't find the arcade 1984 version made by Crux on Backloggd). Some of the employees later went on to form Toaplan creating games such as Truxton and Zero wing before going bankrupt again in 1994 sadly. More interestingly 99: the Last War was technically never finished, at least traditionally. In an interview with former Toaplan staff Tatsuya Uemura and Masahiro Yuge:
"Repulse was a Crux game, but in the middle of developing it the company dissolved. After that, the remaining members finished it anyway. We were surprised to see it selling later, and wondered if Crux had actually dissolved or not? But they had, legally at least."
Irrespective of their history as a developer, 99: The last War is a decent little game if a little derivative. It's essentially a take on Space Invaders in format. You control a ship that moves horizontally across the bottom of screen firing up at enemies above. You have one gun that you can upgrade once a level when an ally helicopter drops a supply package making it a more powerful faster firing weapon. Additionally the helicopter will replenish your energy bar which you can manually use to activate a shield taking hits for you that drains as you use it regardless of if you get hit or not. There are 6 levels most of which have a mother ship boss at the end you have to fight though those fights are all near enough identical. Where there is some variety is in the enemy types and this part I actually thought for a 1985 game was pretty impressive. There are walkers, ufos, pods that come out of water and land etc. The way they are used like they are flying away or looping when attacking you is a surprisingly cool effect I didn't expect though when they are tiny and far away on a couple of levels they can blend into the scenery which is a little annoying.
Where the game falls down really is the last couple of levels just don't add anything new to the formula or enemies except some different backgrounds. The final boss is also just unbeatable to me. It spams these blue and white beams I couldn't avoid enough, dodge or shoot and hit the ship at the same time so I raised the white flag at that point. Overall though I enjoyed the visual style, balance of shooting, dodging and managing my shield bar in a faster version of Spaced Invaders. It's an interesting little arcade game barely finished that led to much more interesting titles in shoot 'em up history and I hope more people at least try it just for that alone.
99: The Last War or Repulse as it was originally known was one of only 2 titles developed by Crux before going bankrupt a year after being founded in 1985. (The other being Gyrodine but I can't find the arcade 1984 version made by Crux on Backloggd). Some of the employees later went on to form Toaplan creating games such as Truxton and Zero wing before going bankrupt again in 1994 sadly. More interestingly 99: the Last War was technically never finished, at least traditionally. In an interview with former Toaplan staff Tatsuya Uemura and Masahiro Yuge:
"Repulse was a Crux game, but in the middle of developing it the company dissolved. After that, the remaining members finished it anyway. We were surprised to see it selling later, and wondered if Crux had actually dissolved or not? But they had, legally at least."
Irrespective of their history as a developer, 99: The last War is a decent little game if a little derivative. It's essentially a take on Space Invaders in format. You control a ship that moves horizontally across the bottom of screen firing up at enemies above. You have one gun that you can upgrade once a level when an ally helicopter drops a supply package making it a more powerful faster firing weapon. Additionally the helicopter will replenish your energy bar which you can manually use to activate a shield taking hits for you that drains as you use it regardless of if you get hit or not. There are 6 levels most of which have a mother ship boss at the end you have to fight though those fights are all near enough identical. Where there is some variety is in the enemy types and this part I actually thought for a 1985 game was pretty impressive. There are walkers, ufos, pods that come out of water and land etc. The way they are used like they are flying away or looping when attacking you is a surprisingly cool effect I didn't expect though when they are tiny and far away on a couple of levels they can blend into the scenery which is a little annoying.
Where the game falls down really is the last couple of levels just don't add anything new to the formula or enemies except some different backgrounds. The final boss is also just unbeatable to me. It spams these blue and white beams I couldn't avoid enough, dodge or shoot and hit the ship at the same time so I raised the white flag at that point. Overall though I enjoyed the visual style, balance of shooting, dodging and managing my shield bar in a faster version of Spaced Invaders. It's an interesting little arcade game barely finished that led to much more interesting titles in shoot 'em up history and I hope more people at least try it just for that alone.