| paleface [sys=PCB; cat=Shooter_Horiz; reg=NA] |
| | | Also known as "Progear no Arashi" or "Progear: Storm of Progia." According to GameFAQs this was released in Japan only but I'm pretty sure the version I played had an English title screen that just said "Progear," and klov.com says that the game had a "wide release."
Developer Cave is much better known for their vertical shooters (the DonPachi series for instance--see entry 69, entry 70, entry 71), and Progear stands as their lone foray into the horizontally-inclined world, as well as their only game (I think) on Capcom's CPS-2 hardware.
The character art is superb, and it's a joy just to select which plane and copilot you'll use. The backgrounds likewise are gorgeous and also unusual, in that they feature a raised ground plane that goes up the screen as it recedes, so you can have a tank in the background at the bottom of a hill shooting at you, and another tank in the background at the top of the hill, higher up the screen. Reminds me of Renaissance Flemish paintings.
There are lots of enemies in intricate little war machines, all busily firing swarms of bullets at you. You've got a trick up your sleeve though: destroy the enemy and their bullets get converted into valuable gems, worth lots of points! So the trick is to wait until you're cornered by a huge herd of bullets, then fire past them and take out the guy who launched them, and suck up all the resulting treasure. Or something like that, actually it's been a while since I last played this and the details are sketchy in my head now.
I certainly remember the huge and tough bosses though--they fire tighter and tighter bullet patterns at you, just daring you to spend one of your bombs to save yourself, but if you can hold and kill the boss with your guns, leaving his bullets intact, they suddenly convert into points for a HUGE score. |
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| | | | On second thought, it probably was Japanese. |
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