Potentially the best Tengo Project/Natsume title and easily my favorite of the bunch. Know I’m intensely biased towards Wild Guns, as it represented one of the first arcade (or, maybe more accurately, arcade-inspired) games I ever put any amount of time into, but it’s one I’ve only grown more fond of as I’ve played through it over the years.
If there’s anything close to a lynchpin mechanic here, it’s the Vulcan Meter- shoot down enemy bullets and you’ll build up towards a mode that allows for a brief period of invincibility and extra damage, crucial for some of the tougher bosses. The catch is that it triggers automatically, so the process of managing it upends some of your dominant defensive strategies: it’d be easy to get complacent and shoot down every bullet, but because this will leave you exposed on some of the tougher fights, tools like jumping, rolling, and bombing all get their place in the defensive hierarchy- anything to avoid unnecessarily activating it. It additionally helps in keeping some of the repeat fights engaging thanks to inherent variance brought on by these shifting priorities: fight the dualist miniboss on the first stage, and there’s little reason not to try and stun him to build a bit of extra meter, but later encounters will have you re-examining those same strategies, frantically jumping around shots you’d be otherwise tempted to counter.
It’s a system that also speaks to the game’s uncommon generosity among arcade titles, the combination of the game-changing nature of the Vulcan Meter and the way an extra life is always in reach thanks to the low scoring threshold making for runs where pushing through attempts, instead of endlessly resetting them, is encouraged. Improvisational too! Aside from the deviations of the brought on the player’s fluctuating resources, there are also randomized item drops, sometimes granting you extra-powerful weapons, sometimes saddling you with the near-useless “P-Shooter.” The result is a game where multiple runs can vary wildly from one another- and given that a successful clear only takes about 30 minutes to complete, makes the prospect of going for another one endlessly inviting.
I could go on: the way the scoring system encourages you to stay one place and keep firing to build and maintain your multiplier, eating through your special weapon’s ammo in the process, or the constant temptation to lasso and stun targets- a move that'll leave you momentarily vulnerable, but can be so, so worthwhile on some of the deadlier fights.
Remarkable that everything here gels so well together, especially given that many of the other Natsume titles at the time had the benefit of being based on older titles and the tight window of time for the game’s development. Would never have guessed its origin would be so unromantic, but regardless, the end result is one of my favorite titles of all time- if you’ve been thinking of jumping into this style of game, I’m hard-pressed to think of a better entry point.
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While we were waiting for our next subcontracted work to begin, our boss told us to develop a new game with two conditions: quickly and cheaply. I believe from the initial planning to the finished app it took us about five months. I’m sorry the answer is so boring!
Wild Guns creator Shunichi Taniguchi https://shmuplations.com/wildguns/
If there’s anything close to a lynchpin mechanic here, it’s the Vulcan Meter- shoot down enemy bullets and you’ll build up towards a mode that allows for a brief period of invincibility and extra damage, crucial for some of the tougher bosses. The catch is that it triggers automatically, so the process of managing it upends some of your dominant defensive strategies: it’d be easy to get complacent and shoot down every bullet, but because this will leave you exposed on some of the tougher fights, tools like jumping, rolling, and bombing all get their place in the defensive hierarchy- anything to avoid unnecessarily activating it. It additionally helps in keeping some of the repeat fights engaging thanks to inherent variance brought on by these shifting priorities: fight the dualist miniboss on the first stage, and there’s little reason not to try and stun him to build a bit of extra meter, but later encounters will have you re-examining those same strategies, frantically jumping around shots you’d be otherwise tempted to counter.
It’s a system that also speaks to the game’s uncommon generosity among arcade titles, the combination of the game-changing nature of the Vulcan Meter and the way an extra life is always in reach thanks to the low scoring threshold making for runs where pushing through attempts, instead of endlessly resetting them, is encouraged. Improvisational too! Aside from the deviations of the brought on the player’s fluctuating resources, there are also randomized item drops, sometimes granting you extra-powerful weapons, sometimes saddling you with the near-useless “P-Shooter.” The result is a game where multiple runs can vary wildly from one another- and given that a successful clear only takes about 30 minutes to complete, makes the prospect of going for another one endlessly inviting.
I could go on: the way the scoring system encourages you to stay one place and keep firing to build and maintain your multiplier, eating through your special weapon’s ammo in the process, or the constant temptation to lasso and stun targets- a move that'll leave you momentarily vulnerable, but can be so, so worthwhile on some of the deadlier fights.
Remarkable that everything here gels so well together, especially given that many of the other Natsume titles at the time had the benefit of being based on older titles and the tight window of time for the game’s development. Would never have guessed its origin would be so unromantic, but regardless, the end result is one of my favorite titles of all time- if you’ve been thinking of jumping into this style of game, I’m hard-pressed to think of a better entry point.
///
While we were waiting for our next subcontracted work to begin, our boss told us to develop a new game with two conditions: quickly and cheaply. I believe from the initial planning to the finished app it took us about five months. I’m sorry the answer is so boring!
Wild Guns creator Shunichi Taniguchi https://shmuplations.com/wildguns/
2 Comments
@JetSetSet Thank you, glad you liked it!
JetSetSet
5 months ago