Reading

Entry tags:

Arcade Archives: Scion

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Scion (Seibu Kaihatsu, 1984)

Arcade Archives (previous-gen consoles)

PSN

Switch

Arcade Archives 2 (current-gen consoles)

PSN

Switch 2

Xbox

Just the one ROM for this, so we don't get the Cinematronics-licensed version. Preference Settings allow players to toggle a bug that, under certain conditions, lets you advance beyond Scene 999 (good luck getting that far!).

It's shmup time again, and once more I'm out of my depth! I'll do my best though, this one's pretty interesting. At first brush this seems to take a few cues from Xevious (as was the style at the time) but this is actually a little different. Taking flight in your Mana Jatatei (that's a fighter jet, the manual says so), you've got to save your fellow citizens trapped inside the super-city Crystal Heaven by digging through the city's layers to get to the core. Each loop is split into four short segments with the first three focusing on you destroying each layer piece by piece. You only start with an anti-air weapon, but special enemies will drop an air-to-surface weapon for you to grab, which you'll use to destroy the weak parts of each layet to destroy it and move down to the next one (which is presented really well, once you blast all the weak points the whole thing crumbles), but if you miss a few targets, the area loops so this is essentially a looping bombing run. On the final layer, a few more ground targets need to be taken out before you can destroy the city's core, and then the game moves to the next loop of four scenes. You have to be careful though- the air-to-ground missile is a physical attachment to your ship, and it can be destroyed by enemy fire so you'll need to grab another one before continuing with your mision!

This is a pretty interesting one- it differs a lot from Xevious in terms of mechanics and structure, the presentation is nice and colourful and there's even some arcane secrets for things like warping ahead by bombing secret targets and extra lives by bombing the weak spots in a certain order. It is, however, quite difficult even for a shooter of this vintage, mostly because your special weapon will get shot down and you have to survive pretty relentless enemy waves until you get another one (if you're lucky it'll appear quickly, and if not you'll have to hold out for a while). If you're interested in early shmup history, this is definitely worth a look, and it's another one I didn't really know existed!

... By the way, they're selling the Dacholer shirt now. It's real. Here's the UK link, here's the US link. Dacholer.

Entry tags:

MS Paint World: Denim Pleats

From Vampire Savior: The Lord of Vampire, it's Lilith in the Denim Pleats outfit from Cross Edge! Cross Edge is a strange crossover RPG kinda thing that has a few Darkstalkers characters, and they gave them a bunch of different outfits that it's hard to find reference pics of. There's a few showcased in this video and the art is in Darkstalkers Official Complete Works but that's it really. So I did my best with this one, and I think it turned out really cute! I also decided to give Lilith the non-binary flag colours on those left hand rings, because I am one and an interview in that book mentions she was designed without being one gender more than the other, so I can say Lilith is a non-binary icon. Anyway, what a cute outfit!

Database maintenance

Good morning, afternoon, and evening!

We're doing some database and other light server maintenance this weekend (upgrading the version of MySQL we use in particular, but also probably doing some CDN work.)

I expect all of this to be pretty invisible except for some small "couple of minute" blips as we switch between machines, but there's a chance you will notice something untoward. I'll keep an eye on comments as per usual.

Ta for now!

Entry tags:

MS Paint World: The Crimson Panther

From Kizuna Encounter: Super Tag Battle, it's Rosa! She's probably one of my favourite SNK character designs from this particular era. She's so cool! This is actually a remake of sorts of a very old piece where I drew Maki Nishikino from Love Live! as Rosa because sure, why not. I was looking for characters to draw and it dawned on me that I've never properly drawn Rosa on her own outside of this silly Love Live! gag and a quick doodle for LordBBH's stream so I wanted to correct that. I suppose I've improved a little in terms of drawing, huh...?

Entry tags:

Arcade Archives: Midnight Landing

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Midnight Landing (Taito, 1987)

Arcade Archives (previous-gen consoles)

PSN

Switch

Arcade Archives 2 (current-gen consoles)

PSN

Switch 2

Xbox

Both the Japanese and English ROMs are included. You can play with gyro controls (PS4, PS5, Switch, Switch 2) and the USB CyberStick (PS4, Switch w/convertor) and adjust the game's analogue settings to have a control experience closer to the arcade game.

One of the more imaginative ways to simulate a 3D environment with just 2D assets, Midnight Landing is a pretty serious flight sim that tasks you with landing this plane safely at the airport without crashing, overrunning the runway or straying too far off-course (Taito Airlines have a strict 'no go-arounds' policy apparently). You join the flight just as it begins to approach the runway with command over the control stick and throttle, so use them in tandem with the instruments displaying things like your pitch, height and speed to gauge the correct approach, with each successive round adding more powerful winds and altering things like distance to vary things up. Don't worry too much about getting it dead-on when it comes to landing, as long as you're on terra-firma, the auto-pilot will correct your angle most of the time so you can safely come to a stop, assuming you've got enough runway left!

Of course, the big thing here is that, as the title suggests, it's in the middle of the night... So no need to render any complex buildings or anything that requires fancy 3D, just let the lights guide your way! This is such a clever way of doing it (as pointed out by BadoorSNK on Bluesky, Atari's Night Driver did a similar thing) and, while I don't like to dwell on nostalgia too much, it does remind me of late-night / early-morning car rides when going on holiday, nothing guiding us but the dim lights on the road... Something a little cosy about that, I suppose. Not a game for everyone- it's pretty straight-laced as far as arcade flight games go aside from the friendly radio chatter you get, and Top Landing would have a lot more variety the next year- but it's novel, there's not many arcade games like it, and technically this is the first 3D Arcade Archives game from Taito. I wasn't really expecting it, so hopefully we can see Top Landing and other 3D games from them in the series in the future!

Oh, and the cabinet? Incredible, superb, amazing, 10/10.