The Type of Shmup I Hate

 

Shmups, or “shoot ‘em ups” are a genre of video game I have loved since I was a young boy. The earliest one I have any real memories of really diving deep on and getting good at is Thunder Force 4 on the Mega Drive, an intensely difficult title that ate up a staggering amount of my time with that system. I probably played one or two previous titles before that but my memory is hazy. However the one thing that is undeniable is that even to this day, despite the genre becoming as niche as it’s become, it’s a type of game that I have loved dearly the whole time.

Like most genre of game, shmups come with their own series of sub-genres. The big over arching ones being horizontal and vertical. This is self explanatory as it’s simply referring to the direction in which the screen does its scrolling. There’s also a 3rd type that I’m unsure what the internet at large likes to call which is an over the shoulder type game. You know, something like a Starfox. Not a fan of this style personally but I wouldn’t say I hate it. A game like Iridion 3D on the GBA might piss me off but you can give me a Lylat Wars or a Panzer Dragoon and I’ll have a grand old time.

Then there's the other big distinction of your regular vanilla shmup and bullet hell. The first kind being something like Darius or R-Type where the enemies shoot directly at you in easy patterns but some kind of other factor may make things more complicated. The second being something like Touhou or Mushihime-sama where the stage itself doesn’t really factor in at all but the enemies and bosses shoot at you in extremely dense patterns that require some of the prior types skills but mainly boils down to memorization and the ability to adapt to the odd curveball. I have no qualms with either type. I prefer bullet hell but I do love a bit of Raiden, Darius and Thunder Force too.

The type of shmup I absolutely can’t fucking stand doesn’t even really come down to a sub-genre really, at least not one acknowledged by online communities as such. The type of shmup I absolute cannot fucking handle is the type that I’m going to name “checkpoint shmups”. Let’s say, for example, you’re enjoying a bit of DoDonPachi in the arcade. You misjudge the space between some bullets or a stray shot escapes your focus and you eat shit and explode. A couple of power-ups fly out of your ship, it disintegrates and a new one flies up the screen for you to power on and keep fighting. When you eat shit too much, a full power appears, you pop in another coin and keep going. This is the kind of shmup I like, when I die the instant chance to re-power a little and the constant forward momentum feels good. But then there’s a game like Gradius and good lord does Gradius fucking piss me off. You’re flying around, having a good time and then a stray bullet blows you up or you run into a wall trying to avoid enemy fire. The ship explodes, the game stops dead in its tracks, the screen cuts to black and then knocks you back to a checkpoint in the level with no powerups. Sometimes it may give you one notch on the upgrade meter but most of the time it doesn’t. You lost a bunch of progress and now you’re weak as shit so even returning to that point feels like an impossible chore. MAYBE if you’re lucky and the checkpoint was by some enemies that drop upgrades, you can claw it back but upon that first death, your run is basically over unless you’re some kind of shmup demi-god.

THIS is the kind of shmup I can’t stand. Nothing kills my motivation to keep playing more than the game stopping me dead in my tracks to knock me back a few meters through the level. Gradius is a particularly bad example of this too because in that game, ship speed is tied to your power up meter and you need about 2 points in it for the game to feel even remotely playable. You die once, lose all your speed and weapon power and now segments that were at first easy suddenly become impassible without a great deal of practice and the only way to get that practice is to die and restart over and over. The very epitome of unfun dogshit in a genre of game where short, quick play sessions are one of the main draws. It’s mainly found in early entries in the genre and isn’t used as much today but that just means that going back to experience “the classics” is an exercise in frustration rather than fun nostalgia.

Shmups are great, even the ones that piss me off like Gradius I still enjoying playing up until the moment I suffer my first death. Bottom line though, in a genre like this, don’t kill the momentum because of a single mistake and if there’s any developer out there who has made a shmup like this within the last 10 years, sincerely, fuck you. Patch your game and take that shit out. Now excuse me I’m going to go play some Deathsmiles

Free Indie Game Roundup

 Recently I did a event on my stream that I titled "Free Indie Game Dumpster Diving" and despite the word dumpster in the title, most of the games I played during that stream were actually really good.  Here's a quite roundup of those games 

1) Gun Devil 

Gun Devil, avaliable for free on Steam, is a 2D side scrolling platformer.  It starts with a story sequence about your characters wife being kidnapped and its full of semi-edgy early Newgrounds tier writing that's a little bit cringeworthy but once the game gets going its a rather enjoyable experience.  It has tight controls, some very nice pixel art and despite being a quite a short game has some replay value after you are finished because you can get these giant coins at the end of each stage for doing it no hit and killing all the enemies.  I would have happily paid a few bucks for this one but you can play it right now, for free. 

2) The Backrooms: Lost and Found

The Backrooms are some creepy-pasta thing that I dont fully understand but there seems to be a lot of media surrounding it.  This game involves navigating through the backrooms looking for wooden giraffes while you are on the hunt for an exit.  Depending on how much you explore you can get one of SEVEN endings which I have to admit is quite a lot for a free game.  However, the game has a really stupid stamina system that makes running around sort of tedious and after the first run I can't really see myself ever going back to see what those other 6 endings were.  Not terrible by any means but you can do a lot better in terms of free indie horror

3) Freight Hopper

There was a game that came out a while ago on Steam that cost money called Clustertruck (I think) that involved free running across the tops of trucks as they sped down the stages.  It's the kind of game that's made for speedrunning with its emphasis on clearly levels quickly and movement mechanics.  Well this is just a free version of that.  Not many levels and the controls are sort of floaty and weird but once I got used to them I had a pretty good time.  If you liked Clustertruck and you need some more of it in your life, play this one I guess.

4) Workaholic

A first person shooter about shooting your co-workers in the face with finger guns.  There isn't really much more to it than that, you just blast your way through 4 stages that have sort of random layouts and then your done.  The art is cool and the gameplay is fast but its way too short and is just begging for some kind of endless mode which I don't think would have been too hard to implement given that the levels are procedurally generated anyway.  There's a fairly impressive selection of weapons for you to find which is cool but picking up a life steal, super kick or dual weild powerup puts a weird filter over the graphics that make it borderline unplayble.  Pretty good as long as you avoid those items, would play again .

5) Ghost Trap 

Very basic precision platformer that doesn't go too crazy with the difficulty.  My only real complaint is that there's a lot of waiting around for the games 2 bosses that make them quite annoying.  Comes with a cool speedrun mode which lets you play all the levels back to back without having to go through the annoying menu every time.  

6) Resonance of the Ocean 

Some kind of art game about a person on a island trying to communicate with someone by copying strange noises that come from another nearby island.  You have to go around picking up and combining items to make the right sound and then take them to a big megaphone to end the stage.  Very basic, very easy and very much has its head shoved up its own ass.  Nice art though

7) The Night that Speaks

When someone in my chat told me about this game they described it as "a game where you fight monsters by giving them the finger" which got me very excited.  Upon playing it though it's just a bland and boring horror game and giving the baddie the finger to make it go away isn't awesome like I thought it would be and it isn't even really all that funny.  Also the game was made to look like it was on Game Boy, which sounds cool but it just makes all the graphics murky and its hard to make anything out.  I got it for free and felt ripped off

8) Self

A interesting platformer where instead of jumping you sort of expand a big rubber band and use it to flick yourself around the level.  Not much more to it than that but its short, sweet and has some really good music.  Comes with some bonus challenge levels that are actually really hard and its very satisfying to clear them after some practice

10) Grippy

A Pico-8 game where you play as a piece of chewing gum that has to grab its way around a bunch of stages.  Its interesting because you play it by using the arrow keys to direct your fists and then you have to hold and release either Z or X for each hand in order to swing around.  Takes a while to get used to but really fun once you get the hang of it.  Also has multiple routes through each section with the harder ones being shorter so the more skilled player can get a faster clear time, which is a nice touch.  Will probably play again some time to get my time down.  

11) 13 Gates

A very basic first person platforming game.  You play the 13 levels, have a sort of good time and then never play it again 

12) Guardian Sphere

The game I chose for this posts header image because it was EASILY the best one I played in the entire 14 hour stream.  A top down shooter that has the cool gimmick of your life points also being your shot power AND a form of currency.  There are 5 stages and each stage has a couple of shops in them where you can spend your HP for various upgrades creating a sort of risk/reward system that can be really satisfying when you gamble all your HP for a sick upgrade and then survive long enough to collect a few more hit points again.  The game also has 8 playable characters to choose from each with there own shot type and 3 difficulty settings.  I did a 1cc run of the game on my first try on normal but that's because I'm an actual shmup God rather than the game being overly easy, I think for your average player this game may be kind tough depending on how lucky you are with the RNG shops.  You coulda put that on Steam for $10 and I woulda been happy but giving it away for free on Itch is just Godlike  

13) Plead with the Mountain God

A PS1-like platforming game which rips off the story of Shadow of the Collossus almost enitirely.  Only instead of having epic battles with giant monsters, you're very clunkily jumping up a tower.  Gameplay gets very dull very fast, has no music and at once point I glitched through the floor but not an awful experience by any stretch.  A forgettable game

14) Ashes 2063

A full, stand alone Doom conversion that I didnt finish during the marathon but happily added to my "now playing" list as it was a ton of fun.  Adds a bunch of stuff that base Doom doesn't have like towns, dialouge and shopping.  Quite challenging as well but there's a chance that I thought that because I was 12 hours deep when I started it.  Will post more about it in the future

15) Mini-Doom

A Doom fan game that I played for about 20 minutes but that seems really good.  A 2D platforming version of Doom that has a Mario 3 style world map and elements of a Metroidvania.  Didn't play enough to form a proper opinion but at a glance it seems very interesting indeed

That was all the games I played during the marathon and overall I had a damn good time.  If we get enough channel points via the stream at www.twitch.tv/taurinensis then we'll do another one!

Yurukill Pre-Purchase Impressions: Worryingly Interesting

 

Yurukill is a game that doesn't come out until July this year but after seeing the trailer it's such a weird idea that I have to say a few things about it.

Yurukill is being advertised as an "escape adventure bullet hell" game that is planned to be released for the Switch, PS4/5 and PC.  From watching the trailer it's easy to tell that this means the game is a visual novel combined with a sort of point and click adventure type thing that's ALSO combined with a....bullet hell shooter...of all things.  It's an interesting idea that will either be really good or be the gaming equivalent of chocolate mint ice cream on black pudding.  An idea that's so out there that regardless of what I hear about it from now until release, it's basically guaranteed that I'm going to buy it

Being a cross genre game doesn't inherently make it a bad idea.  Games like Persona 3 and up that combined Tokimeki Memorial style dating sims with RPGs turned out to be a fantastic idea and indie darling Undertale showed that you combine bullet hell "shooting" and RPG mechanics for something really special.  However what a game like Undertale also shows is just how hard it is to make a decent bullet hell shmup.

Let's be honest here, the combat in Undertale is kind of ass.  With the exception of maybe Sans and Genocide Route Undyne, most of the enemies have boring as shit, dull as dishwater attack patterns and the controls feel sort of "heavy" and the combat generally isn't all that great.  The writing and characters in that game is what makes it so special and the sub-standard combat can be forgiven because it's contextualised probably as part of the story.  As a "shmup" Undertale is a pile of ass but when regarded as an entire piece, it's not bad at all.  The other thing that elevates Undertale is that the set pieces in that game are incredible.  Like sure, the controls are kind of dog water and the patterns are basic and a bit dull for a shmup but the overall vibe of a fight like Metaton or the emotional weight behind the battle with Asgore means that it can get away with it.

But then there's Yurukill 

Just from this game player trailer alone you can see that Yurukill is a boring, generic looking ass shmup that looks like it was pulled from the underside of some doujin game freeware site.  Also it's hard to say for sure given what we know right now but it also looks like it doesn't benefit from having story context to help forgive boring game play.  Like there's a bunch of visual novel shit and then "oop, time for a shmup break" and the impression I get is that it's poorly thought out.  Some proper Triggerheart Excellia lookin-ass garbage.

But these are just my initial impressions from a trailer, who knows the later shmup levels might be crazy intense with fun game play and story context, don't judge a book by it's cover right?  I have another, slightly more personal reason for being wary of this game.  The first thing that this whole thing reminded me of when I first saw it wasn't Daganrompa, like it seems to in most people, but  Deadman Wonderland.  A fucking HORRENDOUS anime about a high school student being framed for a murder and having to serve a prison sentence in a theme park prison where people have to the death duels with their blood-based super powers.  It's fucking awful and I can't look at Yurukill and not get traumatic flashbacks to watching that pile of garbage.

Yurukill is an interesting combination of genres that means that even despite all the shit I just gave it in the above paragraphs I'm going to buy it and therefore I hope to whatever God may be watching down on us all that I'm wrong and the game is actually incredible.  But a dull shmup and a setting reminiscent of one of the worst pieces of fiction ever made means it has some work to do for a good write up.  

Fingers crossed though, I love it when whacky ideas work

Iron Tank

 

Last night I finished Iron Tank on stream so I wanna say a few things about it

When I first fired up Iron Tank I was expecting something more akin to Jackal but with a tank instead of a Jeep or whatever that game had.  While not completely off the mark it's a fair bit different in that Jackal is quite fast and arcade-like while Iron Tank is a bit more methodical in its approach.  That's not to say Iron Tank is a slow game by any stretch but careful progression into each encounter is very clearly the best route to success with this one.  

The premise for Iron Tank is simple, you are a tank and you start at the bottom of a long map and you're one and only objective is to get to the top of the map and blow up the big bad at the end 

 

While you trundle along the various paths you can get various power ups for your tank that involve a longer range shot, power powerful shots, exploding shots and rapid fire.  There's also a very rare "?" ability which wipes the entire screen of enemies and even some bosses and there's a reserve health bar that you never really get to use because this game is stingy as hell with HP.

Now I'm willing to cut the game a lot of slack given its age but the controls in this game are awful and until you get used to them they will be the prime reason for you eating one too many bullets and blowing up more often than not.  The standard stuff makes sense like moving with D Pad and shooting regular bullets with A and tank shells with B but things get real fucky when you have to start manipulating the direction of the turret.  To do that you have to hold down A and then move in the directon you want the turret to face.  The problem with this is that you cant move the turret by itself so you get into situations where an enemy is right up in your face and you end up taking collision damage because you ran into him when trying to turn the turret to shoot him.  This then has the knock on effect of the turret then being the wrong way so another enemy can come from the other direction and shove a shell right up your exhaust pipe, which is a little annoying to say the least.

But to be fair to Iron Tank, it's EXTREMELY forgiving with its checkpoints.  You get them constantly and each one even comes with a password so you can continue from that check exactly next time you play.  Even if you game over you get to start from that very same check point so considering how mosts games of this era are, Iron Tank is probably one of the most forgiving I've ever played. 

But this idea of fairness goes totally out of the window in the games final stage.  By itself, if you come prepared with items out the arse and you are ready to throw down, it isn't THAT hard.  But if you use your resources getting to that final boss and then dying on him, God have mercy on your soul because you aren't getting back without a fight.  The power up that makes your shot stronger and go through walls (F) is REQUIRED for that final area but there isn't any pick ups of it to refill.  So in my playthrough I made it to the end, pretty easily I might add when I was geared out, but then died to the final guy because if his hitbox comes even 1 pixel on top of you, you die instantly.  This then led to a good while of me trying and failing to even get to that final boss again because I only had a weak shot and the only powerups that the game was giving to me was rapid fire and some useless AOE thing.

What I COULD have done is used a password for an area or two back so I could make sure I had enough F for when I got to the boss but I was at wits end with this nonsense so I pulled out a game genie and gave myself infinite health.  I'm not proud of it really but even with the cheat the boss could STILL kill me with direct contact and that was about the only part of him that was a problem so I'm taking the win, sue me.

Despite my final area frustrations though, I had a lot of fun with Iron Tank and it has a pretty good set of achievements on Retro Achievements.org so I'm more than willing to git gud and give it another go.  It's hard to suggest because of its janky controls but if you feel like thats something you could get around then give Iron Tank a try, a solid 6/10 NES game

Gun Nac 1 Credit Clear

Had this video set to private for ages, oops!

Gun Nac 1cc [Stream Highlight]

Echoes+

Generally speaking, I've been trying to avoid games released this year for the duration of January.  This is because I want the stores to fill up with a few releases before I dig in AND it gives me a month to smash a game or two from my bottomless backlog.

But then one day over the weekend I stumbled across Echoes+, a freeware game on Steam.  I hear a lot of people comparing Echoes+ to Asteroids with a lot of comments being "Asteroids on steroids" but I disagree ever so slightly with this statement.  The game is essentially Asteroids and there is so much shit flying around the screen that "on steroids" is an accurate comment too.  However if there was one game I would compare it to it's Geometry Wars.

Geometry Wars was an arena shooter where you shoot neon shapes and shit gets so crazy it's sometimes hard to see whats going on.  Echoes+ is an arena shooter where you shoot at neon orbs and shit gets so crazy sometimes it's hard to see what's going on.  While Asteroids on steroids isn't wrong I think the term "Freeware Geometry Wars" much better describes what you are getting with this game.

Comparisons aside,  Echoes+ is a really fun little game.  You just shoot like crazy and get as many points as you can before you die.  There are various power ups to keep you going and games are fast and don't last too long so it's great to kill a little time with.

The game also comes with an absolute fuckton of modes.  There is a standard "blast through 10 levels" mode as well as a time attack, survival, special enemy modes and a classic Asteroids type game.  The game also comes with leader boards so you can compare your scores with other people online.

Just go play Echoes+, just give it a go.  It costs 0 money and a single play won't even take up that much of your time.  If you do enjoy these kind of games I'm warning you it's rather addictive and contains a lot of content considering its price point.

Bug Princess Duel

So one night I was looking through the app store for weird shit to try out when I came across this thing for FREE! It blew my goddamn mind.

For those who aren't in the know, Bug Princess became fairly notorious on the internet for having "the hardest boss in all of video games" in this video.

The game featured in this video is a Japanese shmup called Mushihime Sama (or Bug Princess in English) and recently a phone version of the game was released for free.

The phone version is basically the first game scaled down to work on a mobile device.  It also comes with all these weird leveling systems that are a bit shit but it doesn't really tarnish the overall experience.  There's also a multiplayer mode where you can connect with a friend or random to compete for score and whoever has the highest score at the end steals the other persons rewards, it's pretty cool.  The leader boards also offer prizes for people who rank high up at the end of every week so there are lots of chances to get the games various currencies without actually spending a penny.

Last time I played a shmup on a mobile device it controlled like complete bollocks but this one actually plays pretty well.  There's a dedicated area at the bottom of the screen for moving yourself around but moving out of it doesn't prevent you from controlling your character.  There are two transparent buttons on the side that let you switch between the shot mode and beam mode for you ship as well as use your bombs.  Each character also has a unique skill that can be used by double tapping the screen which is a nice little touch since the ability comes online quite often.

It's not exactly what I'd call a perfect shmup and I imagine a lot of people who are hardcore on the genre may turn their nose up at something like this.  However, for me and my long train commutes to work, Bug Princess Duel is a nice little change from all the match 3/monster breeding puzzle games on the app store.  If you're looking for a quick dose of shmuppy goodness for your train rides or to kill time with, the Bug Princess is pretty good considering it costs 0 money.

Sweezy Gunner

What the fuck is a Sweezy? Does not knowing that make me stupid?  Well I'm sure someone will tell me.

Sweezy Gunner is a game I bought during the Steam summer sale for exactly £0 thanks to DotA providing me with large amounts of Steam credit and this game being really goddamn cheap.  I didn't really know what to expect when I first started playing other than that the game was sort of a shmup but not really.

So what is Sweezy Gunner?  Well, it's like of a mix between a shmup game and Metroid.  You have a big world to explore and as you go around you collect power ups like life containers, huge coins, badges and other things to make yourself more bad ass.  After some exploring you'll eventually come to a dungeon and when you get to the end of a dungeon you'll fight a boss.  Upon victory you'll get a power that will let you cross water/lava, smash gates or break boulders which in turn opens up more of the world for you.

As you explore you have plenty of things to shoot at which are also shooting at you.  At first it's not too bad but after a while it starts to get really hectic so you better make sure to grab those life-ups because catching a stray bullet to the face is extremely easy.  There are also other temporary power ups to make dying less of an issue or special guns that make murdering hordes of enemies just a little bit easier.

The game also has a few side quests to do which give decent rewards and don't feel merely like busywork.  The first side quest is monster cards which is a system where every monster has a card that it has a low percentage chance to drop.  When the card drops and you kill a certain amount of that monster then you can use your money to buy a badge to upgrade your ship.  This sounds like it would be mindless grinding but there is so many enemies in a given area that you can play normally and get the card AND the required number of kills for the badge.  The other are these fetch quest type deals where it tasks you to collect X of a certain item from a certain enemy.  Once again this sounds like it would be complete bullshit but you don't actually have to hand them in.  Once you get the items the quest is done and the reward is just dumped into your inventory which saves you the hassle of going back and forth so I have to give them props for that design choice.

The game can get a little monotonous if you play it for long stretches of time but it's the kind of game where you can save absolutely anywhere so if you do suddenly end up getting bored you can quit without having to worry about save points or any of that crap.  My biggest complaint is with the final dungeon where I kept taking damage from bullets that I couldn't fucking see.  The bullets are either red or bright blue and while the bright blue ones were easy to avoid the red ones would sometimes blend into the background and you couldn't see them properly, it's bullshit.

But apart from that Sweezy Gunner is actually a pretty good game.  It's cheap on Steam and takes up barely any disc space so if you like shmups or Metroid clones then I suggest that you give this one a go.

Jamestown

The top down shooter and the side scrolling shooter are both genres that I really enjoy.  Yes, back in my day when you said "shooter", you weren't referring to a silly semi-realistic military game, you were talking about driving in a spaceship or something and blowing the FUCK out of everything on screen.

However in recent years, the "shmup" as it's now known has kind of died a bit.  Very rarely do you see any of these kind of games get released anymore, and when you do they are almost always small downloadable games that aren't very good.  Either that, or they are Japan made ports of arcade games that are so niche that the only people who play them don't want them for a console or PC because they are too busy in a game centre enjoying it there instead.

Jamestown is part of the small downloadable title camp, but instead of being sort of rubbish it's actually rather good.  To sum up the whole review of the game for those in the know, it's kind of like Donpachi.  For those that don't know I'll go on a little further to explain what that means.

In Jamestown you play as a ship and you are tasked with blowing up anything that moves.  At the start of the game you have access to one ship that has a standard rapid fire button and a slightly stronger beam move but firing this makes you move slower.  As you play you can buy other ships that are all slightly different but if you have ever played a game in this genre before then the selections are going to blow your mind; however the favourites are all there.

Now every shmup has a gimmick to set it apart from the rest and in this game we have something called a "vaunt".  As you blow stuff up, you collect little gold cogs which fill up a gauge and when it's full you can activate your vaunt.  This causes a circle to appear that cancels out all the enemy shots for a short time and during the vaunt you're damage goes up and you get twice the points.  Once the metre drops to 0 you are given a point bonus and you start all over again collecting cogs or you can cancel it early to deflect a few more shots so this whole system does add some strategy to each stage.

In Jamestown there are 5 stages and you can play them all individually or back to back in what the game calls Gauntlet mode.  On top of that there are some bonus stages to play that task you with fulfilling certain goals and some unlockable difficulties for those who enjoy a bit of the old bullet hell.

The game also comes with 4 player co-op which is nice but if you're like me and don't have any shmup friends then there are also online leaderboards to keep you entertained.

So if you're a fan of shmups I'd give Jamestown a go, it's not going to set the world on fire but it's a fun game and it's a good break from a lot of the harder games in the same genre.  If you DON'T like shmups, then give Jamestown a go anyway, it's a good entryway into the series and clearing the higher difficulties will make you feel like a complete boss.

The January Retro Game Hunt

First of all, sorry I've not posted anything in the last couple of days.  On Friday I was busy and on Saturday I was sick with a hangover.  I was planning to make these Game Hunt things a series of videos, except my camera is complete arse so I'm hoping to get a new one, or at least a spare battery very soon.  So for now, here is the stuff I bought in text and picture format.

So just in case you missed it, here was the video with the initial 4 games that I purchased with my FC Dual system.

Except there's been a few more purchases since that video was uploaded, so allow me to share them with you

The first two I'm listing were actually donated to me by a friend, so big shoutouts to him.  First up we have Xevious!

I don't think there is anyone who doesn't know what Xevious is.  Released in 1983, Xevious is one of the big grandaddies of the whole scrolling shooter genre.  Great little game, fun way to kill an hour or so at home.  Sure, there are tons of better shmups than Xevious, but if you're in that retro mood then you can't go wrong with this one.

The second game that was donated to me was an RPG

Drakkhen is a game I know very little about.  In fact, I hadn't even heard of this game until yesterday, and for a mere 250 Yen what do I have to lose really?  From what I have read on the Wikipedia article, it's a port of an Amiga game and it's a 3D RPG where you wander around a big world and do missions for dragons....or something.  When I popped it in there was a cleared file with maxed out guys with the best equipment and I couldn't really figure out what the fuck I was doing so it's the kind of game I'm going to have to sit down with and properly figure out.

Next up is a strange space themed game called Daiva

Sorry about the picture being sideways, no matter how much I fuck with it, it keeps coming up sideways.

Anyway, Daiva is some kind of strategy space thing.  I couldn't really figure out what the fuck I was doing in the 5 minutes I gave to test it out, but it looks like you have to fly around a map and take over all the other planets and destroy all the other enemy ships or something.  I could be totally wrong, yet another game I'm going to have to spend a long afternoon with.

Then there is battle commander.

Yet another one that is just sideways for no reason, fuck my camera.

I have no idea what the fuck this game is aside from being some kind of strategy game.  I fired it up and as soon as I got in game, BAM!, wall of fucking Kanji, so it's on the pile of long afternoon games like Daiva and Drakkhen.  As far as I can tell it's some kind of Gundam game...or it least has giant robots in it and I know fuck all about Gundam so this one is really going to take some time to get going with.

Finally, the best find of the month!

Once again, fuck camera etc.

Chrono Trigger!  Do I really need to say any more than that?  Chrono Trigger for 350 yen (that's £2!).  Popped that sucker in and played it for a few hours, great RPG, absolutely classic.  There was also a file already on there from the previous owner with some really high level characters on it, so it was fun to muck around in that file as well.

So there you have it folks, that's all the retro stuff I got over January.  I'm not really going to have time to do another retro shop which is why this post is coming a little early but next time I hope to get this in video format.

Also let me know if there is anything I should look out for!  I'm hoping to get a PS2 in the next few weeks so I can start buying PS1 games!

(Just as a side note, yes, the price stickers do come off easy, I'm just lazy)

Button Mashing....Serious Business

Things such as APM (Actions Per Minute) are an important aspect of games such as Starcraft, but APM has been an important concept to many gamers way before people started playing Real Time Strategy games seriously.

What you are looking at in the above picture is something known as the Hudson Shuwatch (or Shooting Watch) and it was designed for players to practise and improve their skills at the top down shooters of the time.

If you play a top down shooter now, you may be familiar with the idea that you can just hold down the fire button and the ship or whatever it is you are controlling will just fire constantly.  Well, back in the day people didn't have it so easy, you had to mash, and mash hard if you wanted a fast rate of fire.  So not only did the old school shoot em' ups test your spacial awareness, but also your ability to mash like a motherfucker.

The idea behind the Shuwatch, as far as I understand it, is that it let you test your mashing ability and gave you something to practise with outside of the game.  As far as I know it didn't do much else, but the existence of this thing just blows my mind.

I know that I'm going to be hunting one of these things down in the local retro shops so if I pick one up I'll do a video of it in action or something.