June 3rd 2000
Super Contra Review Posted!

Luke O'Sullivan of Ox-Man's Probotector Base sent me the best Super Contra (NES) review I ever saw.. loads of great screenshots too.. so go have a peek if you know what's good for you as it's a bit of a classic. I wish I wasn't so bad at Contra myself, there are stages in there I've never even seen! If you'd like to give it a whirl yourself try http://www.tobbeo.com for the rom (it's under the 'US titles' category). And speaking of roms I've added the original Thunderforce to the emulation page, and it's well worth a download if you are interested in the somewhat obscure MSX title which spawned the legendary series - a bonafide slice of gaming history!

May 15th 2000
Hot from E3.. Shooter Report!

Shooter connoisseur Ben Turner of Planet PS has been at the E3 show (lucky guy!) and has a spot of info of interest to all you shoot 'em up buffs out there. By the way mind and take a look at Ben's excellent and in-depth review of the Gradius 3&4 pack on Playstation 2 - he shares a lot of my own opinions on Gradius 4..
re-assuring to know I'm not the only one...! Anyway, by the looks of things 2D shootemups and action games may well be receiving a welcome revival in the West.. (with even Konami's Gradius 3 and 4 slated for western release recently) and not before time as far as this particular joystick-basher is concerned..


At E3 the shooters were sadly quite sparse, but there were a few gems worth noting. The coolest news by far is that a company called Electro Source, LLC is planning to bring Treasure's DC version of Bangaioh over to the states. The translation already looks complete (at least up to level 8, where I died) and the text is quite humorous/"wacky". Looks great. A few steps away from Electro Source, Working Designs had RayCrisis on display. I knew better than to ask for a release date... heh.

Finally, a
Capcom rep reassured me that Giga Wing is indeed making it out in the States (Dreamcast version), regardless of the slipping release date. The game will be distributed by Tommo, much like JoJo's Bizarre Adventure was. Gunbird 2 is also set to come over, and in fact the translation work on the version I played was already done. That's to be a Q3 release -- let's hope they can keep with that. I'd never played a Gunbird game before, so I was really, really surprised at how similar it was to Strikers 1945 II. It seems like they're two versions of the same game, all the way down to the pre-game menu system. Anyway, you know the score -- it's a fun little game.

Gunspike was running at the Capcom booth, and was pretty much what I had expected from prior reports on it. Basically, you spend most of your time in limited-scrolling arenas strafing around and killing enemies. Sorta like Smash TV, but with a worse control setup (no dual joysticks). I saw Charlie from Street Fighter Zero perform some kind of combo on an enemy -- wee. It really didn't look too interesting, so I moved on after watching someone play it for five minutes. This is one of those games which I'll buy to support the company/genre, but probably won't really enjoy that much.

The Capcom booth also had
Capcom vs. SNK, which looked *great*..

Sat May 13th 2000
Gradius 3 & 4 Deluxe Pack - Playstation2 Preview and Playtest!

Being a massive Gradius nut I've been looking forward to getting to play the latest installment in the Gradius series - Gradius 4 - for over a year now - and finally got my chance a few days ago! This new Playstation release contains arcade perfect conversions of both Gradius 3 and the all new Gradius 4 and you can see what I made particularly of the latter 'all-new' game here. Decide whether it's worth importing that PSX 2 or not now..

Fri May 12th 2000
Lightning Fighters -
Rogues Gallery

It's by Konami, plays a lot like 'Raiden' and has got very cool Gradius-style 'Fire Dragon' super- weapons in it. Reason enough to take a look methinks..

Finally posted the R-type Delta review which I'd lost but should have gone up about 6 months ago. Sorry about that Basi..

Tues May 9th 2000
Raycrisis First Impressions/Review

Added a review of Taito's eagerly awaited new shooter Raycrisis, which is (funnily enough..) the sequel to Raystorm. Thanks to Matthew Ross for the review piece. Looks pretty interesting to me.. for Matt's verdict you'll have to read the review.. Rumours are Working Designs are currently showing interest in bringing the game to the US. For the moment though you will just have find an importers that isn't sold out of the game.. ;)

Did someone mention Xexex? In time for a excellent piece in Konami's legendary shooter on May's Gamefan here's the save-state to get you blasting on the secret Xexex level in Goemon 2 for the SNES. Thanks to the guys at Shmups for this tidbit.. Xexex is a class act.. Enjoy!

Sat April 29th 2000
Crisis Force & Gaiares Posted!

Uploaded the roms for the excellent Gaiares and the rare Konami NES shooter Crisis Force, and also wrote a little feature on why I like Gaiares such a lot!
Also finished off the stage screenshots for the Gun Frontier (Saturn) review as well as adding a feature on Section Z, Sidearms and Forgotten Worlds to the Capcom Rogues Gallery section. Phew!

Fri April 28th 2000
Metal Slug 3 Preview

A Long-overdue preview of the third
entry in SNK's excellent
Metal Slug arcade shooters series. Could this be the best yet?

Raystorm Winamp Skin!

The talented Luke O'Sullivan of Ox-Man's Probotector Base has been at it again! He's created two more lovely Winamp skins for your delectation! Raystorm (right) - based on Taito's PSX shooter - and 'Nebulamp'. Great stuff. You can download them on Luke's page here and get help on installing them here.

Sun April 23rd 2000
Updates!

Just a quick note of a lot of recent updates (see right) which I've been doing over the past few months. Should keep you lot happy for a bit! Also make sure to re-check the links page for a new improved
list of great sites!

Sat November 6th
R-Type Delta Winamp Skin!

Luke O'Sullivan, of Ox-Man's Probotector Base (a site devoted to Konami's classic Probotector (aka Contra) series) has created a rather cool R-Type Delta-themed Winamp skin.. Nice work Luke! You can download it on the right, and read how to install the skin to work with Winamp here.


Gradius 3 and 4 - PSX2

Lightning Fighters

R-type Delta

RayCrisis

Xexex

Gaiares

Metal Slug 3



New Reviews: Gun Frontier,
Sol Divide, Parodius Deluxe Pack

Preview: Great Mahou Daisakusen

New Cover Scan Features: Battle Garegga, Kingdom Grandprix, Mahou Daisakusen, Sengoku Blade, Toaplan Shooting Battle, Radiant Silvergun

New Rogues Gallery Features: Outzone, Prehistoric Isle



Download R-Type Delta Skin




New! Game Cover
Scan Section

To showcase some of the excellent game cover artwork to come out of Japan in the past few years I've started on an archive of cover scans, kicking off with some requested and scarce import Saturn shoot'emup titles, the six games covered (hehe.. no pun intended!) so far being Kyukyoku Tiger 2 (aka Twin Cobra 2), Metal Black, Strikers 1945, Strikers 1945 II, Shienryu and Gekirindan. I've also tried to include a little information about each game, along with some screenshots if possible, as a few of these titles are hard to find out anything much about on the web at the moment. Look out for more cover scans as I get them done!



New Reviews

Darius Twin

Three new reviews: Darius Twin (SNES), Zanac (NES) and Soukyugurentai (Saturn)

ZANAC

Soukyugurentai

Wed July 7th Recent additions to DAM

Hi all. Apologies for the lack of updates on the 'Whats New' page in a while, blame the likes of Radiant Silvergun, Soukyugurentai and Capcom's X-Men vs Street Fighter on the Saturn... Oh and also R-Type Delta! (I'm up to Stage 5 now.. sheesh it's a tough one!). And blame that darn thing that they call 'work'! ;). If you haven't noticed however I have added a few new reviews
and features over the last few weeks as follows:

Einhander Guardian ForceImage Fight/X-MultiplyLayer Section 2

Einhander - Although I already have a section up on this excellent game
in the Rogues Gallery, Basi's review was so good I just had to use it!

Guardian Force- Success, the softco behind the 'cute' Cotton shooter series, bring a rather interesting little shoot 'em up our way. I've also taken a look at some of the best alternative space shmups on the Saturn in this review, including the aforementioned Silvergun and Soukyugurentai (two of the most stunning shoot 'em up titles I've ever had the pleasure of playing) plus Shienryu, Do don Pachi and Batsagun.
X-Multiply/Image Fight Pack- Two of my favourite Irem titles available on one CD for the Saturn.. beware, in terms of toughness these games go up to 11!
Raystorm: Zach Keene's follow up to his Layer Section review takes a detailed look at the graphically impressive sequel.

Rogues Gallery feature: R-Type: An excellent feature extolling the virtues of the classic R-Type which first appeared in Edge magazine (UK) in April 1998- well worth a read even if you are not an R-Type fan!

Someone who definitely is an R-Type fan is Claudio, who posted the following ode to R-Type, translated from a German gaming mag, on the
Shmups Forum messageboard, where a debate on the merits of R-Type vs modern shooters has, most entertainingly, been raging for a good week or two now..

'Uh, I'm a bit late, just wanted to say that the article at (Destroy all Monsters- R-Type series) really says everything... I found something in an old german mag (3/97) which is quite a summary of the whole thing and I wanted to share it with all R-Type-lovers... consider though that its translated ;)

..If you compare R-Type with a modern Horizontal (!) Scroller, you'll just shake your head; THAT is the way level design has to be, then the fun will come; 8 Levels filled with individual enemies, gags & grimaces; a detatchable unit for multiple usages; a beam for a more powerful shot; no hectic fly through a screen filled with enemy-bullets and casual alien-formations; no energy-bar to compensate 'dunno-how-to-design'; pure Action filled with lots of strategy and ingenious level-design: every turret is at the 'right' place, every enemy is placed pixel-perfect.

'Magic Moment': everybody reaching level 3 the first time had to gasp for air facing that HUGE mothership; but nothing to get excited about: like every other stage, also this alien monster was beatable with the right strategy, an out-puzzled route and pod-attach-tactics; the BEST spaceship level of all time!..


I'm sure Wax will have nodded at the last sentence ;P '

HeHe.. Here's a man who knows where I'm coming from!

Lastly, I have also added a few more downloadable roms to the emulation section, namely a few harder to find SNES titles including Parodius & Ultimate Parodius, Konami's Cybernator (aka Assault Suits Valken), Cotton, and Macross: Scrambled Valkyrie.

More reviews and features are in the pipeline and should be available soon including:

Joshua Kaufman's in-depth reviews of the three releases so far in Konami's wild and wacky Gradius parody series, Parodius: that's Parodius and Ultimate Parodius (packaged as the one CD Parodius Deluxe Pack), Parodius Forever with Me (which had the dubious honour of being one of the largest Nintendo carts ever in its SNES incarnation) and the uniquely surreal (even for the Parodius series) Sexy Parodius!

A Metal Slug Rogues Gallery feature and very detailed Metal Slug 2 review - by Basi, who kindly sent me the Einhander review also. Metal Slug is a great and very photogenic series of Contra-style platform shooters which I've been meaning to cover for some time.. And talking of Metal Slug I've heard recently that Mame now supports the latest in the series, Metal slug X (below) ,though emulation enthusiasts seem to agree that offering the rom of such a recently released game is a bit a a moral (if not legal..) no-no, and I must say I'm inclined to agree. However with import prices of this much-desired Neo-Geo cart being astronomical (Online import vendors Byrite were originally offering it at 299 dollars! - though since then the price has dropped to around the $250 mark..) I can certainly see it being a tempting way for fans to actually get to play it.

Zach Keene's review of the classic NES shmup Zanac. One of the earliest releases by famed Japanese producer Compile, Zanac was the first in a line of evolutionary vertical shooters from the acclaimed (at least among shmuppers) producer, who went on to design the likes of Gunhed (aka Blazing Lazers) on PCE and the SNES's Space Megaforce (we Brits, and indeed the Japanese, knew it as Super Aleste). Both games share design elements derived from features first seen in this NES classic.

R-Type Delta: As I've said I've been working my way through this fabulous
shmup and I hope to offer my full opinions soon when I finally beat the damn thing.. hopefully soon..er...ish ;)

Other stuff I probably should have let you know about in the last few weeks!!...

Dracula X X6800 !! I haven't had much of an opportunity to play it fully, but
the amazing X68000 version of Castlevania was released last month to much all-round enthusiasm from the emulation community. From what I've seen it at least surpasses Dracula X (aka Castlevania 5) on SNES and possibly near-equals PSX Symphony of the Night in terms of graphical design & quality.. although game-play wise it is far more linear than the aforementioned game. However it more resembles the famed PCE CD version in containing a large number of alternate routes, and also large scale multi-directional scrolling stages (including some familiar areas and some all-new ones) which is as far as I know unique for a 16-bit Castlevania game. Konami and/or Castlevania series fans (like me!) would be well advised to give it a try. If you are interested pop along to the
Japanese Computer Emulation Centre where you can download both the disk image of the game and the newest version of the EX68 emulator on which to run it. Getting it up and running is a fairly painless task, as long as you read the docs, a far cry from earlier versions of this emulator which were notoriously difficult to configure and run. Mind you it didn't help that all the docs previously were in Japanese! A big thankyou for all the hard work done by Vitor and all the other people involved in bringing you this once legendary version of Castlevania goes out from DAM! One last thing to note- although the zipped disc image of Dracula X is fairly small (1.5MB) it unzips to a 45MB or so disk image so make sure you make space on your hard drive before-hand ;)





Dracula X X68000: Beautiful 16-bit artwork abounds...
for more screenshots visit
www1.freeweb.ne.jp/%7Ekakugyou/dra/round1.html

MAME 0.35 fixed final released, with support for 1459 games! A number of nice Toaplan shooters - Outzone, the classic Truxton and the Taito distributed Flying Shark - are now emulated, giving those who were unable to run the 'Shark' emu due to configuration problems the chance to finally play them.. and they all run very well, especially in vertical orientation 'a la arcade'.



Left to Right: Outzone, Truxton (aka Tatsujin), Flying Shark (aka Sky Shark)

Other newly released Mame goodies in the new 0.35 final version include Data East's Act Fancer and SNK's Alien Syndrome-esque shooter Search and Rescue. Still no Raiden emulation though unfortunately.. The Mame Homepage is here.


Raine update: The latest version, Raine 0.23 contained support for a Tecmo shooter Thunder Dragon, as well as two 'hidden' games- Mutant Night and Bio Ship Paladin (some may remember the Megadrive version). Also check out forthcoming emulation of Strahl, a very nice horizontal airplane shooter with a graphical style similar to SNK's Metal Slug series, which I'm rather looking forward
to myself. The Raine homepage is
here.




Recently announced Dreamcast shooters: ;)

Gunbird 2 - the follow up to the first arcade and Saturn release, and a kind of barking-mad Strikers 1945 on mind-bending substances... is looking good. These screenshots are from
Psikyo's Japanese site.

Panorama Cotton 3D II - (below) is likewise looking very nice indeed, certainly a far cry from the original incarnation of this game on the Genesis/Megadrive. The chances are we won't ever get to see an official release of this spinoff from the series in the West though.. :( More info on Sucess's Cotton site)

Shienryu 2: The sequel to the Warashi ST-V board arcade/Saturn title which, seeing as the original (below) was one of the nicest looking shooters on Sega's last console, this sequel should be equally impressive by Dreamcast standards.

I don't have a DC yet myself but the forthcoming release of these games is yet another reason to make the system VERY appealing, another reason is Capcom's awesome Marvel vs Capcom beat 'em up which proves the machine can excel as
a 2D sprite-shifter way up to and beyond the standard of many peoples expectations.

Oh, and in case you haven't seen House of the Dead 2 and Sega Rally yet, it's not bad at three dimensions either, but that's another story.. I for one am looking forwards to getting a look at Dead or Alive 2 and Soul Calibur though.

Right that's more than enough to keep you lot happy for a bit..!
I'm off to play some more Radiant Silvergun ;)


Mike B

 
 

A little bit about this site..

'Destroy All Monsters!' came about as a result of my longstanding fascination with the sprite-based shooters and action games that I have enjoyed over the many years I have been a gamer. Many of these games, mostly Japanese titles, have fantastic graphical design and styling, huge attention to detail, often unwieldy but highly entertaining background plots/characters, and most importantly of all, great playability and re-playability, something many games these days, whether on consoles or PC, seem to be lacking. Hopefully this site will become a haven for those like me who appreciate the timeless appeal of many of these classic games.

Believe it or not, the actual inspiration for this 'Boss' theme of this site came about due to my longterm love/hate relationship with the classic Irem arcade shooter R-Type... namely the level 3 Mother(-of-a-boss!)ship, which had blocked my progress in the game for years. I was never able to pass this stage until only recently when a little guidance from some fellow
R-Type fans at
SHMUPS! got me on my way (Thanks guys!). That Mothership boss plagued me for so long as to almost give me nightmares!.. which is why I have chosen it as the unofficial mascot for this site on the home page.

The name 'Destroy all Monsters!' hopefully sums up the appeal and fascination of these great titles, that 80's-mid 90's golden-age when games were REAL games, often extemely difficult until mastered, but hugely rewarding when you finally beat them! When blowing away hundreds upon hundreds of aliens/nasty monsters/evil bad guys and king-sized bosses was the order of the day. And when I was always broke due to shoving all of my pocket-money into my favourite arcade coin-ops! Oh, and I realize that there's a pretty corny Godzilla movie of the same name... but hey! ..some of these game plots were pretty corny too. Mind you the games themselves were great..

If you are interested in contributing to the site.. either to the Rogue's Gallery A-Z if you have an all-time fave boss or game, or maybe in the shape of a more in-depth review for DAM Reviews then you would be more than welcome, please feel free to drop me an e-mail or send any contributions in to me (zip them first please if you can!). More content and opinions from others here would make for a more interesting site I think, and I would love to hear from others with similar interests to my own! Like wise if you would like to exchange links with me if you have your own game related site, then drop me a line. In time, with some work, a bit of luck (and maybe a bit of help also) 'Destroy All Monsters' may well become something quite unique on the net. Here's hoping.. fingers crossed!

A little bit about me..

Age: Late 20's..probably too old to be doing a page on videogames but hey!..

Computers I have owned: Commodore 64 (the best 8-bit 'puter ever!), Amiga 500
Amiga 1200 and the PC on which I am writing this..! (best not mention the Commodore Plus 4 though eh? ;))

Consoles I have owned or own: Atari VCS, NES, SNES, PC Engine TurboDuo, Megadrive (Genesis), Sega Saturn, Playstation. No Ninty 64 yet but I must admit to being tempted by the Dreamcast (when it officially arrives).. it looks amazing! (Indeed it is.. I now have one ;))

All-time Fave Videogames: Ooo.. too many to mention all of them but here are a few:

Arcade: R-Type, Nemesis (Gradius), Nemesis II, 1942, Gyruss, Time Pilot, Raiden II, Carrier Airwing,Tempest, Defender, Robotron, Bubble Bobble, Mr. Do, Galaga, Strikers 1945, Metal Slug..

Computer/Console: Gunstar Heroes (Megadrive), Turrican series (C64/Amiga), Sheep in Space, Wizball, Paradroid (C64), Castlevania and Contra series (NES, SNES, PSX), Resident Evil, Einhander, Gran Turismo, Final Fantasy VII (PSX), Thunderforce V, Battle Garegga, Radiant Silvergun, Dragon Force, Panzer Dragoon series (Saturn)

And pretty much anything decent by Capcom, Konami, Treasure, Compile, Irem amongst others..

Yikes! Better stop writing any more in case I run out of HD space.. ;)

Mike B
email: bevhome@globalnet.co.uk

 
 
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