Replayed on NSO and enjoyed this way more than on Wii VC back in the day. I mustve played it using a GC analog stick or something the first time because I remember it controlling much worse than it really does. Game is mostly easy, but the exploration strikes the right balance between obscure/rewarding while rarely if ever feeling the need to write things down or look them up. Not that the latter can’t be rewarding, but the feeling of finding an item and immediately having an idea of obstacles on the other side of the world that you can get past with it is great. Super Metroid is the same way so its no surprise hacks and randomizers of both would be so popular — once youve played them its near impossible to forget “what gets me past this” so even when things are all mixed up you can always have an idea of whats next

Played this just enough to start to stockholm myself but not enough that one credit into DDP wouldnt snap me out of it. Yeah this is playable, has the lasers, has the hidden bees, has a lot of the enemy designs/sprites the later games would reuse, is one of the first bullet hells, etc. But every ship is so sluggish compared not just to DDP but any later cave game — to the extent that I’d recommend everyone just play TypeC since TypeA isnt fast enough to not be frustrating anyway. And all the bullets are RED. Hope you like it and also arent colorblind and if you arent that they never just naturally blend into the background — for me unfortunately 0 for 3 there. It’s always nice to dig deeper into hard shmups and learn some survival, pick up your own basic scoring strats (which here is mostly just short bursts of chaining but whatever), etc. Maybe doubly so for a foundational game like this. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I think the time I spent on this wouldve been better off added to the time I’ve spent on DDP, DOJ, or even Batsugun.

1credit Pb: reached 2-3 with 12.9mil pts, Type C

Really would appreciate if the discussion of this game would shift from centering around how “dated” (it plays like an NES/GB rpg. Theyre practically their own genre. It plays exactly how a modern player should expect it to) it is in favor of how ambitious it is. NES games rarely tried to be funny, affecting, thematically coherent, or even player friendly (yes I would say this, you have maps, constant hinting NPS, multiple options for free heals AND multiple fast travel options to get to them all throughout the game. Play 25th Anniv if random encounter rate is the endall for you) as this one does. That said, I mean yeah Earthbound is better except for the Eight Melodies which are are better here.

Really fun, too easy though, which I guess is an inevitably hard balance to get when youre trying to make a commercial game that also draws upon the creativity and audience of noncommercial and often quite difficult doom wads, but with the amount of difficulty options here you’d hope for Ultra Hard to kick it a notch higher.

I really like the atmosphere and music with the major caveat that I literally cannot see anything when I fire the plasma or chaingun.

Overall, good game, if there are further official campaigns/expansions I would definitely come back to them but otherwise the enemy and weapon roster probably won’t be enough to bring me back to user levels of this over the comforts of Doom II.

Graphics and music are great here, both the NES and FDS versions are extremely impressive for their hardware. Same goes for the character variety and amount of stages/environments though impressive doesn't necessarily mean good in that case -- losing the six-stage, linear, minimal downtime arcade structure of the first game robs some of the impetus to play in my view. Playing CV1 over and over for a 1cc, whip only level clear, beating bosses w/o abusing holywater, etc is rewarding. In CV3, I have little interest in even starting to route a stage order or character path towards a 1cc, let alone seriously attempting one. So now that I've seen all the stages (which is still more content than most NES action/platformers, mind), not really much bringing me back to this one. Oh well, October is over anyway.

Another run and gun people tend to vastly overstate the difficulty of (except on Expert but outside of trying to beat the final stage without dying it really isnt that bad), but that and music quality are as far as the similarities between this and Journey to Silius go. This is probably the only game I think about in terms of being a developer’s “debut title” because it is just that impressive how many things are done and done right in this game. The character moveset and level-to-level selection/progression are well ahead of their time, and while the weapon system isn’t groundbreaking it’s extremely well refined, with almost every weapon and combination having unique features and uses. Weapon balance is far from perfect, but it’s good enough on Normal that the average player should be able to clear the game in a couple hours once they commit to one they like, unless it’s Fire+Chaser as that requires a little more practice. What’s really impressive with the weapon balancing is the approach Treasure took to it wrt difficulty selection; kneecapping easymode combinations shows both understanding and consideration of the mechanics they created that were far from common in the early nineties.

Levels and bosses are almost all good, with the major exception of the shmup section, which, while it clearly resembles enough a real shmup to suggest the team’s background at Konami and the possibility (eventually realized) that Treasure could make a great shmup, is unfortunately really fucking boring and also has no checkpoints. The dice palace, despite being a high point in creativity, is also a lull for those having trouble or otherwise grinding out a challenge/new weapon run due to the waiting around you have to do to roll again, but the music is nice and fast forward exists these days so I won’t begrudge it too much.

Aesthetically Gunstar Heroes is pretty charming, but Treasure would quite outdo themselves pretty soon after this. I do really like how the font/look of onscreen text and life totals is something they kept around for so many of their later titles.

Overall, one of few single player games of this short length that I can say would reward any amount of time put into it, even if you don’t aspire to a damageless clear or WR score etc. Not that I plan on coming back to it super often, just that I can’t conceive of playing this game “too many times”, nor “too few” aside from 0. Classic.