Shmup

To quote 'Team America': Fuck yeah!!

My eyes are bleeding. My thumbs are blistered. My brain is tuckered.
And it's only been one hour.

No, I haven't been on a date with Mrs Palmer and her 5 daughters.
Nor have I been on an extended trip to drop the kids off at the pool.

No.
Today, my copy of Ikaruga arrived in the post from Sweden.
I am now Hard Core.

"What's Ikaruga?", I hear you ask. Well, let me show you first:


And another level:


See, Ikaruga is a shoot 'em up. More importantly, it's globally recognised as the shmup.

Released in Japanese arcades back in 2001, then on the Dreamcast in 2002, and finally making it's way to the Gamecube in 2003 before disappearing from production forever, it's become somewhat of a rare collectible nowadays.

Nothing has since come close to the brain-meltingly difficult optical assault of gameplay that this title exhibits. There's not much available these days also has the same sense of "must.. try... again..!" addictive replayability.

Like most 'brilliant' things, the concept is extremely simple:

• The ship you pilot can change polarity (from black to white) at your command.
• The rules dictate that, whilst you are (say) white, you will be damaged by the black bullets coming from the enemies, but you can absorb the white bullets and store them as 'energy'. (A bar up the left side displays the amount of energy collected.)
• The same applies in reverse; whilst you are 'black', white bullets will harm you, but black ones can be absorbed.

PS: When I say 'harm', I mean kill. Yup - one hit and you're D.E.D.

To add further to this, the amount of damage you cause to an enemy varies. Hit a black enemy while you are white, and you will do double damage. And vice-versa.

Next, you can release the stored energy (the bar up the left side) in the form of homing missiles. The more energy, the more missiles at your disposal, up to 12 of them max.

Finally, you can score 'chains' by consecutively eliminating three enemies of the same polarity. The more times you do this, the more 'chains' you achieve, ultimately leading to a bonus extra life.


Knowing all this now, watch the videos closely to see how it affects the gameplay.


What's incredible is that the team responsible for this classic game was made up of only four people.
Nerds. :D

So yes - I'm thoroughly chuffed to be able to own a piece of gaming history in my hot little hands. Even more-so that I can simply throw the (Gamecube) disc into my new Wii and play it in backward-compatibility mode without fuss, on the big screen.

And to give you an idea of the sort of money people are wiling to throw into the ring to acquire this title: eBay
And in case it disappears - thats USD$199.00

There's just one more thing to show you..

..hard enough as it is, the game can be played by two players (which ramps things up significantly). Imagine if you were freak enough to be able to play it 2 player, by yourself??

Imagine no more:



Okay - so maybe I'm just 'soft-to-medium-core'.. *gulp