Curse is not one of the best shmups out there but it’s a shame that it became all but forgotten.
The Good:
Fun and versatile option mechanic - Varied weapons really make a difference - Beginner friendly for the most part - Very busy visuals that never slow down
The Bad:
Overpowered arsenal and generous safe areas makes most stages too easy to traverse and bosses too easy to kill - Dying even once on a few stages can make it almost impossible to recover - The final level is a ridiculous test of memorization with no errors allowed
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Curse is a barely known shoot’em up for the Mega Drive that was only released in Japan in 1989, making it one of the earlier shooters for the system. Despite not being particularly famous it’s a worthy playthrough for any fan of the genre, especially R-Type aficionados. The game is not a button masher, coming with an excellent autofire function right out of the box and looks and sounds really good, especially noteworthy is the fact that it never slows down, regardless of how busy the screen is with enemies and bullets.
The main gimmick in Curse is that you will acquire two option spheres that can be freely rotated in 90 degrees increments around the ship. On top of blocking enemy bullets, they can also be upgraded to shoot a useful spread shot forwards and backwards or up and down. This makes them more versatile than other vertical fire modes in games such as Gradius where no correction on the fly is possible without collecting different powerups. By letting you freely rotate your options, Curse allows you to defend yourself from attacks from different directions or to attack where your main weapon can't reach.
The other standout characteristic of the game is the shield mechanic: instead of dying in one hit you can sustain a number of impacts, much like Super Aleste, only instead of receiving a weapon downgrade like in that game you simply lose part of your shield bar, which can be replenished via fairly frequent powerups, though impacts with the scenery or particularly strong weapons will kill you immediately, keeping you on your toes. This works fine, though it feels like a missed opportunity that the shield is recharged through simple powerups and not by more creative means, like slowly replenishing itself by absorbing enemy bullets with your options.
The arsenal your ship can acquire consists of three main fire modes: a pretty standard three way wide attack, a sphere that explodes into shrapnel when colliding with something and a wave beam that can pass through solid matter, such as the scenery. Navigation of said scenery plays a huge part in the game, like in R-Type and Gradius you will be required to navigate tight areas with great precision, such as flying through caves avoiding rock formations or dodging asteroids in space. This is generally manageable, though the game likes to throw obstacles your way that are impossible to avoid without dying at least once to them. This becomes supremely evident in the last stage, where you will feel like you're playing a shooter version of Dragon's Lair, such is the amount of rote memorization required. Furthermore, this is the only one of the five stages that doesn't respawn you in place, but rather sends you back to the start of the level upon dying.
That's where you realize the wave beam is by far the best weapon in the game, since firing through walls permits you to wipe the screen before even getting into a room, making navigation of that space much easier, especially when adding the obligatory screen-clearing bomb and the homing missiles you will acquire, which do a great job of seeking out and destroying up to three enemies before they become a threat. Conversely, the spread shot and sphere attack are blocked by the scenery, meaning you will want to use the wave beam as much as possible. Powerups are abundant enough, however, that swapping between weapons can be done very frequently.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the game is how unbalanced the difficulty is: it is far too possible in some stages to just find yourself a cozy spot at the top or bottom of the screen, set your options in a vertical position and avoid 90% of the obstacles in the middle of the screen. Likewise the bosses go down far too quickly if you reach them with a fully powered ship, some of them in mere seconds, so much so that you'd be excused for never even seeing some of their attack patterns at all. As such, no death runs of the game are very possible, until the last stage that is, and even required almost, since like the games that inspire it (once again R-Type and Gradius) dying can see you respawn in too weak and slow a state to recover, making it quicker to just reset and start over. This is one of those games where you need to collect speed powerups or you are too slow to do much, so dying in the wrong spot can be a disaster.
In conclusion, Curse is worth playing at least once for fans of the genre: it's a fun ride if you play by its rules, it's only a shame that it's so exploitable and then decides to stop you in your tracks right on the finish line.
The Good:
Fun and versatile option mechanic - Varied weapons really make a difference - Beginner friendly for the most part - Very busy visuals that never slow down
The Bad:
Overpowered arsenal and generous safe areas makes most stages too easy to traverse and bosses too easy to kill - Dying even once on a few stages can make it almost impossible to recover - The final level is a ridiculous test of memorization with no errors allowed
---
Curse is a barely known shoot’em up for the Mega Drive that was only released in Japan in 1989, making it one of the earlier shooters for the system. Despite not being particularly famous it’s a worthy playthrough for any fan of the genre, especially R-Type aficionados. The game is not a button masher, coming with an excellent autofire function right out of the box and looks and sounds really good, especially noteworthy is the fact that it never slows down, regardless of how busy the screen is with enemies and bullets.
The main gimmick in Curse is that you will acquire two option spheres that can be freely rotated in 90 degrees increments around the ship. On top of blocking enemy bullets, they can also be upgraded to shoot a useful spread shot forwards and backwards or up and down. This makes them more versatile than other vertical fire modes in games such as Gradius where no correction on the fly is possible without collecting different powerups. By letting you freely rotate your options, Curse allows you to defend yourself from attacks from different directions or to attack where your main weapon can't reach.
The other standout characteristic of the game is the shield mechanic: instead of dying in one hit you can sustain a number of impacts, much like Super Aleste, only instead of receiving a weapon downgrade like in that game you simply lose part of your shield bar, which can be replenished via fairly frequent powerups, though impacts with the scenery or particularly strong weapons will kill you immediately, keeping you on your toes. This works fine, though it feels like a missed opportunity that the shield is recharged through simple powerups and not by more creative means, like slowly replenishing itself by absorbing enemy bullets with your options.
The arsenal your ship can acquire consists of three main fire modes: a pretty standard three way wide attack, a sphere that explodes into shrapnel when colliding with something and a wave beam that can pass through solid matter, such as the scenery. Navigation of said scenery plays a huge part in the game, like in R-Type and Gradius you will be required to navigate tight areas with great precision, such as flying through caves avoiding rock formations or dodging asteroids in space. This is generally manageable, though the game likes to throw obstacles your way that are impossible to avoid without dying at least once to them. This becomes supremely evident in the last stage, where you will feel like you're playing a shooter version of Dragon's Lair, such is the amount of rote memorization required. Furthermore, this is the only one of the five stages that doesn't respawn you in place, but rather sends you back to the start of the level upon dying.
That's where you realize the wave beam is by far the best weapon in the game, since firing through walls permits you to wipe the screen before even getting into a room, making navigation of that space much easier, especially when adding the obligatory screen-clearing bomb and the homing missiles you will acquire, which do a great job of seeking out and destroying up to three enemies before they become a threat. Conversely, the spread shot and sphere attack are blocked by the scenery, meaning you will want to use the wave beam as much as possible. Powerups are abundant enough, however, that swapping between weapons can be done very frequently.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the game is how unbalanced the difficulty is: it is far too possible in some stages to just find yourself a cozy spot at the top or bottom of the screen, set your options in a vertical position and avoid 90% of the obstacles in the middle of the screen. Likewise the bosses go down far too quickly if you reach them with a fully powered ship, some of them in mere seconds, so much so that you'd be excused for never even seeing some of their attack patterns at all. As such, no death runs of the game are very possible, until the last stage that is, and even required almost, since like the games that inspire it (once again R-Type and Gradius) dying can see you respawn in too weak and slow a state to recover, making it quicker to just reset and start over. This is one of those games where you need to collect speed powerups or you are too slow to do much, so dying in the wrong spot can be a disaster.
In conclusion, Curse is worth playing at least once for fans of the genre: it's a fun ride if you play by its rules, it's only a shame that it's so exploitable and then decides to stop you in your tracks right on the finish line.