I’ve played a handful of shmups for this blog. It has always seemed to me that shmups are one of the harder genres to innovate in, as it follows set conventions that are difficult to deviate from. That’s not to say that shmups can’t still be creative and interesting, nor that the ones who don’t try to reinvent the wheel are inevitably boring. Today’s game, Super Galaxy Squadron, is a vertical shoot’em up available in two flavors: Original and Improved.
The original Super Galaxy Squadron is a vertical shmup and about as basic as it gets. There is a story of course – the standard space-warring fare with an enemy race and lots of pew-pew-ing. Fourteen different playable ships, each with personal stats regarding attack power, maneuverability, etc. Each ship also has its own main weapon, secondary weapon (both shot with the Z key), and finally a hyper weapon (which is activated by pressing Space), which is charged by picking up the blue bits dropped by enemies destroyed on the screen. You can improve your ship’s main and secondary weapons by grabbing power-ups often dropped by enemies – be careful, however, as upon getting hit by a bullet your ship will lose some of its upgrades, though thankfully they’re easy to pick up again as they will be floating around the area where you got hit. The hyper weapon also has the additional bonus of destroying a lot of enemy bullets on the screen as well.
But if you know anything about shmups, there’s nothing very new here. The story in SGS Classic is given to you through text on the screen between levels, while your ship flies in space.
How to sum up most SHMUPS out there. "Think you can stop us? We have ten million ships!" "We have just one ship, but it shoots a million lasers per second. Bring it on." |
How to have a sphere kick you ass for two hours? Play Super Galaxy Squadron. |
Bullet Hell? Always Space Hell. |
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