the_game_database|| news | latest | gallery | upcoming | search: 
Kyuin
  PS1Shooter_HorizJ  
  opened by paleface at 03:39:37 08/24/03  
  last modified by paleface at 12:25:50 03/05/24  
  paleface [sys=PS1; cat=Shooter_Horiz; reg=JPN]
           
Riding their magic vacuum cleaners, a young brother and sister must defeat wave after wave of fairy-tale foes, sucking mightily all the way in gusty horizontal-shooting action. Once you've sucked enough (most minor bad guys and their projectiles are suckable) you can let it loose in a super big blow attack. The large, simple graphic design and story elements seem tailored for small children, and indeed many of the beginnings and middle parts of the stages seem overly easy, but some of the bosses pose serious sucking problems. If you take a hit you lose your vacuum's suction but soon regain it in the form of a flying health powerup.
 
As your auto-sucking power eats up both incoming foes and projectiles, and some of the weapon upgrades you get fill the screen with destructive death, you're effectively near-invulnerable for vast parts of the game, and sometimes it seems like the game makes up for this by blindsiding you with a completely unpredictable attack: once in the snow level an avalanch popped out of the background, taking up half the screen and damaging me, for instance, and in a watery level a screen-sized hazelnut suddenly fell out of the sky right through the middle of the screen with absolutely no warning.
 
The graphics make much use of sprite scaling, rotating, and warping effects, so there's always something interesting to watch, though the manipulated sprites can look a bit pixilated against the 2D backgrounds. The storybook music adds to the quaint atmosphere but the awful screechy shooting sound effects detract from it significantly--you'll probably want to turn the volume down a tad.
 
Some people rave about this game; not to say that I don't find it enjoyable, but to my mind the later Parodius games, and Harmful Park, provide more silly hshmup fun without some of the cheap ambushes and graphic and audio drawbacks found here.
    

 
© 2024 paleface.net. Game impressions are © the individual contributors. All rights reserved.