quote: Listen to it and tell me that that isn't some of the finest damned stuff you ever heard
It`s cool, Lou! Although IŽm much more into the really old sounding computer tunes, stuff like Rob Hubbard & Martin Galway on the C-64. But I like it anyway, probably listened to it 5 times now and I can get totally into it.
quote:Originally posted by Hal: What kind of game is it? Never heard of it.
To save Lou some time, I'll just repost one of his excellent synopses of Ikaruga that he originally posted in a different thread a few months back. Here goes:
quote:You play as a man named Shinra, pilot and the last survivor of a freedom federation known as the Tenkaku. The Tenkaku were fighting the conquests of a power-mad dictator named Tenro Horai, who used the power of a jewel he dug up (the Ubusunagami Okinokai-The Power of the Gods) and his followers who have pretty much conquered nation after nation.
Shinra is shot down over the remote village of Ikaruga, where he is rescued by the aged inhabitants who were exiled there by Horai's clan. After his recovery, Shinra makes it clear that he's going to stop Horai or die trying, so the inhabitants entrust him with a fighter plane they've been building in secret named, appropriately enough, the Ikaruga...
With this understanding of the story, the game-play will make perfect sense. The Ubusunagami Okinokai gave Horai the powers of light and dark...i.e. black and white. One power can cancel out the other...all of Horai's ships will follow in this design. The Ikaruga has the powers of both black and white, with the ability to switch off at any given time, so now the playing field is a bit more level...
If a white enemy attacks you, you can attack back with double firepower if your ship is black, and vice versa. If you're the same polarity as an enemy, you can absorb their shots, but it takes a little longer to destroy said enemy. If an enemy of an opposite polarity shoots you, you're deader than fried chicken. Absorb enough shots though, and you can release the energy into tracking beams that do a lot of damage. Mass destruction! Hell yeah!
You following along so far? I hope so, because it gets a bit more complex.
You can blast your way through levels, shooting everything that moves indiscriminately, or you can start making chains, and therein lies the addiction factor.
Destroy three enemies of the same polarity, and you get a piece of a chain. Destroy three more same-polarity enemies, you get another piece, and your score doubles. Example: Destroy three blacks- 1 piece Destroy three blacks- 2 piece Destroy three whites- 3 piece And so on until you make a 16 piece chain. Once there, your score stops doubling, but you can keep adding pieces to the chain... Easy, right?
Wrong! Because once you destroy an enemy of an opposite polarity, you break the chain, and you start over with no chains. You don't have to repeat the level, but all your hard work can disappear in a *poof* of one lousy misplaced shot. Example: Destroy three blacks- 1 piece Destroy three blacks- 2 piece Destroy three whites- 3 piece Destroy two blacks, but then one white- broken chain!
So this adds to the replay value like you wouldn't believe. In the first level alone, it's possible to get a 120 piece chain by the time you fight the boss...I have only maxed 46...
Now, about the bosses...these guys can either be a single polarity, mixed polarities, or able to switch off their polarities, and of course you have to adjust your strategy in fighting them.
The gameplay is classic 2D shooter bliss...with all the added bells and whistles of 3D rendering. The graphics will impress you to no end, and once you hear that beautiful soundtrack you'll be totally immersed.
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Glad you like it Hal, and thanks for re-posting the info CJ!
You're in Germany, right Hal? I don't know how the games get distributed over there, but CJ is right, the only home versions of Ikaruga are on the Sega Dreamcast and the Nintendo GameCube. I heard something about it getting released on Japanese XBox, but I doubt if that ever happened. The game plays identical to the arcade version regardless of which system you pick it up for, but here in the U.S. only the GameCube version ever saw the light of day (and a very limited run at that). If you get an opportunity to get it, please do. I can't recommend it enough. Besides, you're of the old-school gamers, like CJ, mystik, and I, so it stands to reason that a lot of these new games just don't float your boat...well, Ikaruga will not only float your boat but put a jet engine on the sucker and have it cutting some serious waves!
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Although IŽm much more into the really old sounding computer tunes, stuff like Rob Hubbard & Martin Galway on the C-64. But I like it anyway, probably listened to it 5 times now and I can get totally into it.
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