You know the drill. The arcade is crowded, but there's one vacant machine banned to a remote corner. It's just another vertical Shmup, one like many. This one is called Stagger I or Red Hawk. It might be named anything else. Who really cares?
The characters look like drawings from an eighties bootleg game, but the attract mode shows some adequate gameplay. Why not waste some change on that one?
Once familiar with the charge blast things get easier. Stagger I is not exactly bullet hell, but nonetheless requires a fair amount of dodging abilities for sure. You have a chance to memorize opponent behavior as there's not much variability, but the game will also try to fuck you up at moderate occasions. As long as you feed the machine, it will let you pick up at the exact same spot, though.
Your shot patterns are different depending on the character you pick, just like the three bombs you shouldn't hold back and go wasted as you die. You're not about to 1cc Stagger I the first instant, though it was fairly easy to finish on a budget, even for me, returning to the genre after a long hiatus from mostly horizontals like R-Type or Darius.
With my sporadic encounters at arcades and some retro collections plus my recent catching up on vertical Shmups I won't be able to tell you what pioneers exactly inspired each and every detail of Stagger I, but I can tell you quite sincerely, Afega, who appear like spezializing on Korean knock offs on first sight, ungracefully nicked a fair share of tropes and good mechanics to combine them in a game that ain't really convincing or special.
The digitized crew pictures in the credit sequence kinda underline this impression, screaming Agefa had not at all been on par with the industry, rather acting on a stale level of at least five years too late. But even that didn't prevent me from rushing into a second playthrough of Stagger I right after the first one.
Once you have collected enough power ups to rely on satellites backing you up and your shots are filling the screen to clear what a possible second player would have helped you out with, Stagger I is actually not the big deal except for the more resilient enemies. The more saddening it is, should you make a mistake and have to build again from the beginning.
Of course the futuristic military theme is nothing groundbreaking and the score hits a spot between catchy and nerve wracking, but in that introductory scenario of Stagger I or nothing, I wouldn't expect genre aficionados to be completely disappointed and casuals might not even notice in retrospect it's only a substitute. There are worse ways to spend 25 minutes, like figuring out why the hell they thought we needed cut scenes of picking up oil after every stage.
The characters look like drawings from an eighties bootleg game, but the attract mode shows some adequate gameplay. Why not waste some change on that one?
Once familiar with the charge blast things get easier. Stagger I is not exactly bullet hell, but nonetheless requires a fair amount of dodging abilities for sure. You have a chance to memorize opponent behavior as there's not much variability, but the game will also try to fuck you up at moderate occasions. As long as you feed the machine, it will let you pick up at the exact same spot, though.
Your shot patterns are different depending on the character you pick, just like the three bombs you shouldn't hold back and go wasted as you die. You're not about to 1cc Stagger I the first instant, though it was fairly easy to finish on a budget, even for me, returning to the genre after a long hiatus from mostly horizontals like R-Type or Darius.
With my sporadic encounters at arcades and some retro collections plus my recent catching up on vertical Shmups I won't be able to tell you what pioneers exactly inspired each and every detail of Stagger I, but I can tell you quite sincerely, Afega, who appear like spezializing on Korean knock offs on first sight, ungracefully nicked a fair share of tropes and good mechanics to combine them in a game that ain't really convincing or special.
The digitized crew pictures in the credit sequence kinda underline this impression, screaming Agefa had not at all been on par with the industry, rather acting on a stale level of at least five years too late. But even that didn't prevent me from rushing into a second playthrough of Stagger I right after the first one.
Once you have collected enough power ups to rely on satellites backing you up and your shots are filling the screen to clear what a possible second player would have helped you out with, Stagger I is actually not the big deal except for the more resilient enemies. The more saddening it is, should you make a mistake and have to build again from the beginning.
Of course the futuristic military theme is nothing groundbreaking and the score hits a spot between catchy and nerve wracking, but in that introductory scenario of Stagger I or nothing, I wouldn't expect genre aficionados to be completely disappointed and casuals might not even notice in retrospect it's only a substitute. There are worse ways to spend 25 minutes, like figuring out why the hell they thought we needed cut scenes of picking up oil after every stage.