24th December 2012, 12:40 AM
SNES
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Space Megaforce - Normal difficulty. See the 'bought' thread for most of my thoughts on the game, but yeah, it's great. Great graphics, great gameplay, that classic Compile style... what more could you want? Well, the Japanese version's full intro and ending and a second Mode 7 stage would have been cool, but that's about it really. It is really hard to choose between the Compile shmups, with how great most of them are, but this is definitely a fantastic one. It plays like a followup to Blazing Lazers' style, except, as I remembered, it's a whole lot easier than that game thanks to having infinite continues and difficulty level choices, with a not-that-tough Normal setting too. On the higher settings it gets much harder, of course, but still, the infinite continues make this easier than Blazing Lazers. I like that I can actually finish this one, and Blazing Lazers' final boss rush was way too hard, but it is kind of too bad that this game has only 9 real stages; 3 of the 12 levels are bonus-ish stages which mostly exist for points and aren't very hard. Blazing Lazers has like 11 levels, but all are full levels. But even so, Space Megaforce is a fantastic game, with some flashy graphics, almost no slowdown, eight weapons all with several modes (press R!), and more. Incredible game!
(Of the Compile 4th-gen shmups, Blazing Lazers and Super Aleste are one style, with a futuristic spaceships theme and 4 or 8 powerup types, each with two modes you can switch between somehow. Powerups will increase your weapon power, but you pick these up one at a time, not in the large bunches the second type uses. MUSHA, Spriggan, and Robo Aleste are a second style, with a giant-robots theme (giant robots in ancient Japan for MUSHA and Robo Aleste, giant robots in the modern day for Spriggan), large numbers of weapon-powerup pickups like the first Aleste had, and weapon combo systems. And Spriggan Mark 2 is its own thing, because of its horizontal-scrolling nature (remember that all other Compile shmups are vertical), though the graphical design is of course similar to the first game.)
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Space Megaforce - Normal difficulty. See the 'bought' thread for most of my thoughts on the game, but yeah, it's great. Great graphics, great gameplay, that classic Compile style... what more could you want? Well, the Japanese version's full intro and ending and a second Mode 7 stage would have been cool, but that's about it really. It is really hard to choose between the Compile shmups, with how great most of them are, but this is definitely a fantastic one. It plays like a followup to Blazing Lazers' style, except, as I remembered, it's a whole lot easier than that game thanks to having infinite continues and difficulty level choices, with a not-that-tough Normal setting too. On the higher settings it gets much harder, of course, but still, the infinite continues make this easier than Blazing Lazers. I like that I can actually finish this one, and Blazing Lazers' final boss rush was way too hard, but it is kind of too bad that this game has only 9 real stages; 3 of the 12 levels are bonus-ish stages which mostly exist for points and aren't very hard. Blazing Lazers has like 11 levels, but all are full levels. But even so, Space Megaforce is a fantastic game, with some flashy graphics, almost no slowdown, eight weapons all with several modes (press R!), and more. Incredible game!
(Of the Compile 4th-gen shmups, Blazing Lazers and Super Aleste are one style, with a futuristic spaceships theme and 4 or 8 powerup types, each with two modes you can switch between somehow. Powerups will increase your weapon power, but you pick these up one at a time, not in the large bunches the second type uses. MUSHA, Spriggan, and Robo Aleste are a second style, with a giant-robots theme (giant robots in ancient Japan for MUSHA and Robo Aleste, giant robots in the modern day for Spriggan), large numbers of weapon-powerup pickups like the first Aleste had, and weapon combo systems. And Spriggan Mark 2 is its own thing, because of its horizontal-scrolling nature (remember that all other Compile shmups are vertical), though the graphical design is of course similar to the first game.)