I first encountered this at Cidercade Houston. Never had I heard of this game, and I was also surprised to see that it was a game not made by Capcom running on the CPS2 board. Needless to say my curiosity was peaked and I decided to give this a go while my friends played Ultimate MK 3. This ended up being a very nice surprise!
Visually this game is amazing. It's incredible to see what Takumi Corp was able to do with the CPS2 hardware in 1999. At that point we had Capcom putting out SF3 Third Strike and Heritage for the Future on the CPS3 board (Which was being slowly phased out). Takumi Corp really showed that the old board that gave us the SF Alpha was still capable of amazing visuals in 1999. Not only are the animations pretty immaculate, but there are points where it felt like they were using polygons but no those are all hand drawn sprites.
The gameplay is rock solid. It feels good to blow stuff up, and the collectables being gold trinkets does set off my dopamine's. The shield is a mechanic I very much enjoyed. At first I thought I could use this whenever I could and get away from bullets scot free, but then I noticed that it took just a few seconds to start up. That opened up a decent amount of strategy as I had to pick the ideal time to use it, and at the perfect threat to use it against. It can be used on weaker enemies, but then you could immediately face a bigger more aggressive enemy and then struggle more than needed. It's a great mechanic!
If I had one gripe with the game, it's that I think the final boss is kinda bs. Rarely did I feel like the game was being needlessly mean. But there were points in the final boss fight where I wasn't sure what I did wrong or how I was too anticipate something. Didn't help that it's attacks can get way too fast for the planes speed to keep up with.
If you see this game in an arcade, definitely give a shot. It's the most Capcom SHUMP not made by Capcom.
Visually this game is amazing. It's incredible to see what Takumi Corp was able to do with the CPS2 hardware in 1999. At that point we had Capcom putting out SF3 Third Strike and Heritage for the Future on the CPS3 board (Which was being slowly phased out). Takumi Corp really showed that the old board that gave us the SF Alpha was still capable of amazing visuals in 1999. Not only are the animations pretty immaculate, but there are points where it felt like they were using polygons but no those are all hand drawn sprites.
The gameplay is rock solid. It feels good to blow stuff up, and the collectables being gold trinkets does set off my dopamine's. The shield is a mechanic I very much enjoyed. At first I thought I could use this whenever I could and get away from bullets scot free, but then I noticed that it took just a few seconds to start up. That opened up a decent amount of strategy as I had to pick the ideal time to use it, and at the perfect threat to use it against. It can be used on weaker enemies, but then you could immediately face a bigger more aggressive enemy and then struggle more than needed. It's a great mechanic!
If I had one gripe with the game, it's that I think the final boss is kinda bs. Rarely did I feel like the game was being needlessly mean. But there were points in the final boss fight where I wasn't sure what I did wrong or how I was too anticipate something. Didn't help that it's attacks can get way too fast for the planes speed to keep up with.
If you see this game in an arcade, definitely give a shot. It's the most Capcom SHUMP not made by Capcom.