New Reviews
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 - 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!
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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
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