For a long time now if you’re in the middle of some situation and someone yells “Worldstar!” while holding their phone up, that’s your signal to stop and get away from there.
I can’t say that’s ever happened to me, but then again, there haven’t been many situations for me to be in the middle of for two years.
GwG for January has been announced a bit early -
I already have Radiant Silvergun but that’s a pretty great game. If you’re into shmups, that’s a classic. I’ve heard good things about the Space Invaders game but haven’t tried it. Don’t really know anything about the other two.
The video makes them all look neat.
Oh man I loved Space Invaders Infinite Gene when it first came out on iPhone. Such a cool visual spectacle.
Wait, so Tom is the resident shmup expert round here? I thought maybe it was @WarpRattler, or maybe @TimJames.
Radiant Silvergun is massively overrated, much like its successor, Ikaruga. However, while a lot of the ongoing popularity Ikaruga continues to enjoy comes from people who hadn’t played a shmup since the early ‘90s hyping it up for years as this new and totally unique experience within the genre, RSG’s main claim to fame is that it was effectively impossible to play prior to the XBLA release, unless you lived in Japan or were willing to spend $100+ on an import copy on Saturn. That inaccessibility, combined with the Treasure prestige and the ongoing Ikaruga lovefest, gave it a lot of free hype, even though the game itself really isn’t that interesting outside of the “seven different weapons, each of which is leveled up separately in the course of a playthrough” mechanic.
Space Invaders: Infinity Gene, on the other hand, is well worth getting excited over if you’re at all interested in the genre. Its whole gimmick is that the gameplay “evolves” as you move through stages, first adding vertical movement, then adding additional shot types and other genre staples. It also has a stellar ZUNTATA soundtrack.
Hey, it worked for Panzer Dragoon Saga.
At least PDS wasn’t import-only!
Why was it so well received in Japan at the time?
As with the vast majority of expensive Japanese console games, the aftermarket price was driven up by importers years later, not by domestic sales. In this case, they were largely chasing the allure of “the shmup Treasure made before Ikaruga.”
But that doesn’t explain why it was popular at the time of its release in Japan. Even casting aside all of the hype that was later generated through scarcity, when it first came out on Japan it was one of the most popular arcade cabinets in Japan. It seems like people legitimately regarded it as a pretty awesome game on it’s own merits.
I can’t stress enough how far that Treasure prestige goes for making even mediocre games they were involved with have strong followings. (Just look at the McDonald’s platformer they made, or how Light Crusader made it onto the Genesis mini.) Their company Twitter can’t even tweet about one of their games being in the Genesis collection for Switch online subscribers without people latching onto the tweet as “Treasure is making a new Switch game!”
That said, at the time RSG was released, it did have one distinct advantage over its contemporaries: they actually went to the trouble of making a shmup with 3D graphics, while companies like Cave, Raizing, and Psikyo were still all-in on 2D.
Eh. I don’t agree with @WarpRattler and I don’t think most shooter fans would either. Radiant Silvergun is a unique game. Its levels and bosses are designed to force you to use all the weapons and you are given all of them right from the first level, something most shooters did not do.
Heck, I don’t agree with anything he’s said up above. Gunstar Heroes is one of the greatest games ever made. There is only one real Treasure “Dud” and that’s Stretch Panic and even that game has some crazy ideas in it that no other game had at the time.
I guess he’s the expert though since he was summoned to the thread so that’s all I’ll post about this. It’s free. Play it for yourself.
Considering about half of Treasure’s catalogue is mediocre anime-licensed games on GBA, GameCube, DS, and Wii, it seems weird to say they only had one dud.
Like, come on, they made a Bleach fighting game on Wii where the motion controls don’t work right and the best way to make anything happen is to wildly shake the controller. Astro Boy: Omega Factor is the exception for Treasure anime games, not the rule.
I do agree that you should check out RSG for free! The game certainly isn’t bad, just overrated. The XBLA version even has a cool bonus mode that changes the chaining system to that of Ikaruga…but it’s only available if your Xbox LIVE account has at least one achievement earned on the XBLA version of Ikaruga.
I’m afraid I’m still back on Radiant Bronzegun. :(
-Tom
Ikaruga is balls hard, and I think being elite that way does attract a certain fan base that still lives on with Cuphead and it’s ilk.
But I’m here to rep for Gunstar Heroes. Still great.
Trueachievements has a little personalized stats thing for Xbox 20th:
That was an interesting link to click on for me.
Apparently TrueAchievement doesn’t track my achievements at all. I looked into why, and it looks like back in 2012 someone complained about me, and they had an investigation, and they concluded that the four achievements I suddenly earned on March 5 2012 were impossible on Fuel (PC), so they banned me from getting achievements tracked on their site. And I went back in my achievement list, and they’re right, I did earn four achievements that day in Fuel PC worth 15 GS each, and one of them was to unlock all the bases in the game (without first earning the achievements to unlock other bases). So yeah, something weird went on that day. It was a GFWL game. Is 2012 a time when we had trouble even getting GFWL to even boot up anymore? When did it go dark? Man, I don’t remember this from 10 years ago at all.
I didn’t even play that game much, it sucked.