It appears as though Irem Software Engineering -- the company that rose from the ashes of the original Irem back in 1997 -- has gone bankrupt. I'm having trouble confirming this, but they have certainly removed their back catalogue from Sony's PSN Store. If this rumour is true it's very sad news indeed, especially as the current Irem made some great R-Type sequels for home consoles, namely the first polygonal R-Type, R-Type Delta for the PS1 and the expansive R-Type Final for the PS2.
Here is a reminder of why Irem is such an important part of arcade history:
Update (25/03/12): All of the Irem stuff on the Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console store has now been deleted, which lends some weight to last summer's rumour of their bankruptcy.
King of quirky game development, Suda 51, lends his talents to a new Xbox exclusive shoot 'em up, but can it deliver on its promise to revitalise the genre?
The Xbox 360 has become the console to own if you like shoot 'em ups. As well as numerous arcade classics, ranging from Defender and Millipede to Radiant Silvergun and Death Smiles, it has several original titles, including the brilliant Omega Five and Geometry Wars. You can now add Sine More to that list, a traditional sidescrolling shoot 'em up, which is reminiscent of arcade classics P-47, UN Squadron (AKA Area 88) and, in particular, Cave's sublime Progear (a game a PlanetMGC forum member first switched me on to).
For a shoot 'em up, Sine Mora has a surprisingly dense plot, which is told in non-sequential chapters for reasons best understood by developers Grasshopper Manufacturer and Digital Reality. The gist of it is that the planet Seol is being ravaged by civil war, one that is seemingly without end, because the anthropomorphic animals that inhabit the planet can manipulate time. The story is delivered through lots of screens full of text and dialogue bubbles, which often pop-up right in the middle of you dodging flak. As you play through the game you take on the role of different pilots,
each with their own weapons and upgrades. Unfortunately, in story mode your power-ups do not carry over
from level to level, because you are constantly jumping between protagonists.
Sine Mora is Latin for "without delay" and this is a reference to the various ways the game plays with time. The central conceit is that instead of lives or a shield you get a timer, which is constantly counting down. Taking damage knocks off bigger chunks of time and if you run out of time altogether, it's game over. You can earn time by shooting down enemy aircraft; the bigger the enemy, the more time you get back. While this reduces the chance of a one-shot death, it also means you can scrape through a mid-level boss encounter, then die a few seconds later because there's no enemies around. This can make hard-fought victories into something to resent, rather than celebrate, as you are at risk of dying without making any further mistakes.
You can also slow down time for a limited period, which can be used to avoid complex swarms of bullets or focus your fire on a boss's weakspot. This is a mechanic that has been used in games for over a decade, going back to the Matrix-inspired bullet time of the Max Payne games and it's still used today, with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim having a bullet time perk for shield bearers. You can also slow time in the Xbox indie shmup, Redshift, which actually came out about a month before Sine Mora. Again, this idea puts me in mind of Progear, which slowed your fighter if you held the fire button, allowing you to move through sprays of bullets with more precision, even though nothing else slowed down. Combine all this with the artstyle and you would be forgiven for thinking footage of Sine Mora was actually footage of a Progear HD remake -- if only that were true. Sadly, there are other problems that blight what could have been a great game. Although most of the bullets are bright and colourful, but there are some dark-coloured missiles that are hard to see, even on my 37" plasma. Likewise some of the fighters themselves blend into the background at times and there are also times when the scenery blocks almost half the screen, such as during the tunnel sections on the second level. Finally, Sine Mora's weapons take far too long to power up, so you spend most of a level with what feels like a pea-shooter. This is in stark contrast to, say Satazius, which manages to make you feel powerful from the get-go and still provide rewarding upgrades.And once you do get powered up, the level ends, you jump into the shoes of a different pilot and have to start from scratch -- argh!
I was so excited when I first saw footage of this game, because it is gorgeous. In fact, it is without doubt the best looking shoot 'em up ever made. However, once I played it my enthusiasm started to wane. It's not a bad game, but it is so similar to Progear that it's difficult to play Sine Mora without comparing it to Cave's classic -- and it's the older game that comes out on top every time. If you think that is just rose-tinted nostalgia talking, then I have a confession for you all: the first time I played Progear last year, when I posted A Brief History of World War II shoot 'em ups.
If I was going to spend 1200 on an XBLA shoot 'em up, I would spend that money on Radiant Silvergun or R-Type Dimensions before Sine Mora, although I would buy this game before Raystorm HD or Trouble Witches Neo. I feel it's only fair to point out several top game magazine's have raved about Sine Mora; IGN, Games(TM), Destructoid, Joystiq and Eurogame all awarded it around 90%, which I think is a little generous. I don't do scores in my reviews (I'd rather people read the text), but if I did it would not be nearly that high. There is a demo though, so download it and check it out for yourself. Oh and if you can, use an arcade stick, it really helps.
Plays like
Progear
P-47
UN Squadron/Area 88
Highs
Gorgeous 3D graphics. This could be the best looking shmup ever!
Tries to inject some life into one of gaming's oldest genres.
Plenty of options for fighters and pilots.
At around two hours to play through the story mode, this is a good deal longer than most.
Lows
The weapons feel weak, do nothing interesting and in some modes do not carry over between levels.
The heavy-handed story telling gets in the way of the action -- often literally.
Poor visibility leads to frequent frustrating deaths.
Dying because there's nothing to shoot to top up your time/life just plain sucks.
Sine Mora is out on XBLA now, priced 1200 Microsoft points.
For this month's Boss Fight post I have decided to go for what superficially appears to be one of the most politically incorrect bosses encounters in arcade history, the wheelchair-bound final boss of Final Fight, Belger.
After battling their way through the streets of Metro City, Haggar, Cody and Guy discover the Mad Gear gang, who have been terrorising the city for months, are controlled by an invalid bussinessman, living in the penthouse of a luxurious tower block. Worse still, he's holding Jessica Haggar captive and pointing a crossbow at your head(s).
Invalid or not, Belger must go down, so the team of street fighters set about laying the boot in. His wheelchair promptly breaks, in a scene that would send the average Daily Mail reader reaching for their typewriter. But wait, he's not disabled, it's all a ruse and now he's on his feet, Belger unleashes his crossbow and -- in typical Final Fight style -- more of his goons. When you finally take the final chunk of his life by in the final fight of Final Fight, Belger takes a dramatic tumble through a plate glass window and falls to his doom.
Well, if he was faking his disability before, he certainly isn't now -- not that you actually see him hit the floor.
In the late 70s and early 80s, Atari released a lot of vector graphics games, including Asteroids, Lunar Lander, Tempest, Space Duel, Centipede, Millipede, Gravitar, Missile Command, Black Window, Red Baron, Star Wars and this month's classic, Battlezone. This is as pure a game as you can get. You take the controls of a lone tank, battling wave after wave of other tanks on a stark, vector wasteland. You trundled along, waiting for the next enemy tank to appear on your radar, hoping all the time that you spot them, before they spot you. If you were off target when you fired, there was a moment of panic while you waited for your canon to reload before the enemy got a shot in. If they fired off a direct hit, the chances were you wouldn't get out of the way before it cracked the screen and took a life. For an arcade game, the pace was slow and deliberate (although not as slow as Lunar Lander), but that only added to the tension. And it was a level playing field, with never more than one enemy and never anything with more firepower or armour than you, so it wasn't so much cat and mouse as spy vs spy.
Graphics and sound in video games has come along way in the past 40 years, but their ability to capture our imagination and provide an immerse experience has always been there. I've been playing a lot of The Elder Scroll V: Skyrim, which is a wonderful, vast, rich world, full of interesting characters and impressive scenery; it's easy to see why people get lost in such a world. It's also easy to say that in comparison Battlezone is primitive, linear and rather dull little game. How could a load of green lines on a screen ever be immersive, but in its day Battlezone was just that. And somehow, it still holds up today, a fact that was proved to me when my 5 year-old boy started playing the Xbox Live Arcade version and (crucially) came back for another go a few days later.
There are actually two versions of Battlezone on the Xbox 360, the aforementioned XBLA port and the Game Room emulated version. Purists will want to check out the Game Room version, available in game pack 3. As with any of Game Room's more playable titles, Battlezone benefits hugely from the service's challenge mode, where you can set your online friends tailor made challenges, such as shoot 10 tanks without missing a shot or dying. If however, you would like to play it with a few modern trappings, check out the "Evolved Mode" of the Xbox Live Arcade version. It maintains the same aesthetics, but bumps up the resolution, adds some subtle shading and tops it all off with some nice particle effects, none of which have spoilt the game's eerie atmosphere. What's particularly nice about the Live Arcade version is as well as provide classic and evolved versions of the game, you can set the controls so each the left analogue stick controls the left tracks and the right analogue stick control the right tracks, with the triggers for firing, just like the arcade.
