#0013 – Fast Striker – 2010 – Dreamcast – NG:DEV.TEAM – Shmup

NG:DEV.TEAM's second shmup for the Dreamcast takes a completely different approach than Last Hope, and should be a more comfortable outing for most shmuppers as a result.  The boys from Germany have tossed out the slower, memorization-based gameplay and brought in the bullet-hell style popular in more recent shmups from Japan.  Think Cave.

Personally, I prefer this style to R-Type.  It doesn't require memorizing the entire stage, and instead encourages quick reflexes and familiarity with the nastier boss patterns.  (But hey, there's no accounting for tastes.)  Fast Striker also offers quite a bit more variety in the form of game modes that change the feel of the game.  At the main menu you can select from "Novice", "Original", "Maniac", and "Omake".  While those might sound like difficulty levels, they're actually a lot more than that.  Each mode adds new gameplay mechanics as well as overall difficulty, allowing shmup fans of all skill levels to find a gameplay experience that's right for them.  Novice is your basic nuts and bolts for beginners - you can shoot default guns and collect stars for points.  Original forces you to chain score items (gold nuggets) to maintain your multiplier, adds a one-time-use shield system, and the ability to hold the fire button down for more focused fire.  Maniac retains all the features of Original and adds a 'grind' mechanic where focused fire at close proximity prevents gives big points.  Omake is a more difficult version of Maniac.

Maniac is my favorite by far.  Omake is just too tough for this average shmupper, and the other modes seem dull and empty without the grind mechanic.  Seriously - chaining your score and getting in close to heavy enemies to activate your grinder beam is challenging and makes beating your high score a real treat.  It encourages risk/reward tradeoff and forces you to think about how you kill enemies in order to keep your chain going.  Usually in shmups I focus on how far I can get with one credit instead of trying to score big, but for some reason Fast Striker is one of the few that can coerce me to try for the big chains.  (Mars Matrix is another.)  There isn't much to unlock or strive for beyond score, but serious players can upload their scores to NG:DEV.TEAM's online leaderboards.

Fast Striker has endured a lot of complaints for the repetitive backgrounds.  If you look up a gameplay video you can see that they're all CG-rendered sprites that tile after a single screen.  The animation is quite smooth and provides a sense of depth, but I can definitely understand the complaint.  If you really appreciate little details and lost of hand-drawn luxury in stage backgrounds, Fast Striker is going to look like a budget title to you.  The ship designs are also a little generic - bulbous, and with a high-contrast, plastic vibe.  But the bullets are easily visible against the backgrounds this time, and the art has a cohesion from start to finish.  Sound isn't anything to comment on in a good or bad way.  It's perfunctory.  The music, however, is catchy European rave and isn't a bad listen at all.

The Neo-Geo version is notable because of how much it pushes the hardware.  NG:DEV.TEAM came up with some special techniques to get so many bullets to display at once.  Layered backgrounds and sprite illusions, from what I hear.  For the Dreamcast - home of several shmups with much higher bullet counts - it's not nearly as impressive.  Then again, that's a problem with most of these releases.  The Neo-Geo is impressive hardware to this day, but the Dreamcast has it beat when it comes to processing capability (not storage access speed, as can be seen in some of the SNK ports for the DC).  I'm still looking forward to Duranik's Sturmwind as an example of what can homebrew can really get out of the Dreamcast.

As of Valentine's Day, 2013, Fast Striker is out of stock at NG:DEV.TEAM's online shop and eBay listings are completing at around $45 dollars.  If you think Fast Striker is for you, I'd recommend waiting a while to see if NG:DEV.TEAM puts out another "Newcomer Bundle" package deal like they did for the Dreamcast release of GunLord.  It would be a much better value than dropping $45 for Fast Striker alone.  As with Last Hope, it's difficult to recommend Fast Striker to anyone who's still missing out on the Takumi Dreamcast shmups or other important genre staples.  But if you've played everything else and you're hungry for a solid indie Dreamcast shmup, Fast Striker will show you a good time.

#0012 – Last Hope: Pink Bullets – 2009 – Dreamcast – NG:DEV.TEAM – Shmup

How does "in a few days" turn into an entire month?  When it's summer, that's how!  Too many games, too much work, too many projects!  Anyway, I've been able to put some playtime into all of NG:DEV.TEAM's games for the Sega Dreamcast, and this is the first of three mini-reviews.  No promises this time on when the others are coming.

Last Hope: Pink Bullets is technically an updated version of the original Last Hope, but it's kind of wrong to think of it that way.  It's not like this version is a bugfix release for major flaws or game-breaking glitches.  Really, it's more of a case where the original game was not very well received and the designers took a step back and tried to make their game more fun.  Specifically, the original Last Hope was perceived as being unreasonably difficult.  And when I say 'unreasonable' I mean cheap.  The list of new features in Pink Bullets include such things as higher ship speed, instant respawn, a more powerful protection unit, pink enemy bullets, and "overall less hard difficulty [sic]".  Most of those are alterations to general design choices rather than updates and fixes.

On the other hand, don't worry if you're wondering if Pink Bullets will be too easy for you.  It's not.  The game is still tough - R-Type tough - where success is based on level memorization and preemptive maneuvering rather than sheer reflexes.  I play a lot of shmups, but they're usually of the later, mid-90s style. Not quite bullet hell, but a lot twitchier than these sorts of games.  In other words, Pink Bullets hands me my butt on a silver platter.  A lot like DUX, but that's a different review.  I'll admit that this is wholly due to the lack of serious time I've put into the game so far, but I have to say it like it is.  Buyer be warned: Last Hope isn't really a pick up and play game.  If you want to get far on it without credit spamming, be prepared to replay the stages until you have the hazards and enemy patterns memorized.

The good thing is that Last Hope is a very enjoyable game to put time into if you're so inclined.  The prerendered sprite graphics are reminiscent of other Neo-Geo shmups like Pulstar and Blazing Star, with bright lighting glare patches and fluid animations.  The backgrounds sport a more hand-drawn, pixel art look, but the overall vibe is more coherent than you'd expect.  The music is especially good.  The game's OST is mellow and catchy.  If you were into '80s and '90s European PC games you know what to expect, but the execution is very slick and well produced.  If you've got a lot of money to spend, you wouldn't go wrong picking up the soundtrack album.

I'll leave it to you to check out videos of the gameplay for a better feel of how exactly Last Hope plays.  Or, as I said, you can just think of it as R-Type for your Dreamcast with some tweaked features and brighter colors.  I will say that using the protection unit didn't come easily to me, but I grew to love it after I realized that it makes you nigh-invincible to oncoming bullets as well as inflict huge damage to enemies.  The beam chain scoring multiplier definitely makes the game much more complex if you're going for score, but so far I can barely clear the stages - much less worry about racking up a big multiplier!

Pink Bullets is the definitive release of NG.DEV:TEAM's very first game, and it plays well on the Dreamcast with either a pad or a stick.  It works with VGA (and looks fantastic) and isn't that expensive anymore because of the recent reprint.  Unless you're specifically into R-Type style games or Euroshmups it's a little hard to recommend buying this one over the stable of Dreamcast (or, more generally, Saturn) shmups already available, but it's a solid approach to a subgenre of shmups that isn't very well explored on the system post-2001.  And if you already have most of the must-buy shmups for the platform, well...what are you waiting for?

NG:DEV.TEAM's Newcomer Bundle

NG:DEV.TEAM has been the premiere indie games company for both the Neo-Geo and the Dreamcast since their first release in 2006.  That's not quite as dramatic as it sounds, since they have no competition on the Neo-Geo and very little (recently) on the Dreamcast.  NG:DEV.TEAM's trilogy of action games are certainly flawed and highly controversial in certain communities, but there's no denying that they have a level of polish that outstrips other Dreamcast indie titles such as Cool Herders, Rush Rush Rally Racing, and even DUX.  This year will hopefully see the release of Duranik's stunning Sturmwind for Sega's "Console That Could", and maybe then NG:DEV.TEAM will get some competition.

Until then, we have the recent Dreamcast release of GunLord to celebrate, and how better to celebrate than with a series of reviews?  The Newcomer Bundle is a great way to pick up all of NG:DEV.TEAM's games for Dreamcast, and the pricing isn't bad, either.  With the package you get the best versions of all of the company's games: Last Hope: Pink Bullets, Fast Striker 1.5, and the aforementioned GunLord.  My copy arrived yesterday, and though I'd played burned CD-Rs of Last Hope and Fast Striker before, it was great to support the company and bag some legit copies to satisfy my inner collector.  I'll also be getting Redux: Dark Matters and Sturmwind later this year or early 2013 when they release, so look out for more Dreamcast indie reviews on this blog in the future.

My Newcomer Bundle arrived quite quickly from Germany via DHL Airmail, and in general I was pleased with the construction of the actual products.  GunLord suffered from a notably cheaper DVD case than the other two games, but these are all universal-sized inserts.  The first thing I did was switch out the box for a higher-quality commercial-grade case from an old DVD movie.  Fast Striker and Last Hope were fine as-is.  The CD art and manuals are glossy, offset printed, and full of great art.  The GunLord manual especially has some amazing boss art and a two-page spread with cherry blossoms and dragons (you can see a bit of it below).  I think I still prefer the Limited Edition art for the cover, but I didn't want to shell out for it.  C'est la vie.

I also recently got a Hori Sega Saturn stick modded with a Sanwa lever and buttons as well as an additional Playstation 1/2 plug, so playing these arcade-style games was a real treat.  Just use the Total Control 3 for Saturn -> Dreamcast controller compatibility or Total Control Plus for PS1/2 -> Dreamcast.  At any rate, I'll be posting a few reviews for these games in the coming days, so just keep an eye on this space.