An obscure shoot em' up game released during Comiket 87. All of the text in-game uses an alien language that makes it impossible to understand.
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Abstracting and replicating patterns in harmonizing ways are some of humanity's greatest strengths as a species. Everyone knows nothing is created and that it’s all transformed, but the way in which we apply this logic in creating media is what determines whether our names shall be salvaged by history books or left to rot alongside us. When a groundbreaking title, such as a videogame, is released, everyone wants to have a piece of their own, inevitably trying to subtract what was essential for its success and applying it in different areas, in the hopes of either improving the new established norm or trying to find some success with different audiences drawn out by its newly attained fame. We always fail to take into consideration however, that even the most revolutionary discoveries like gravity, needed some sort of apple like object from somewhere else, to be fully remodeled into a genuine theory.
Dodonpachi, the cult bullet hell from ‘97 didn’t invent the shmup wheel by any means, but it improved on it massively, to the point that the symbol of the game, a quirked up bee, slowly became a cult icon for gaming as a whole. Taking direct inspiration from what it worked previously from games beloved by the recently formed STG fans, it abstracted what worked from games made by Toaplan and Raizing, to produce what some consider to be one of the most important titles to the genre of all time. One of the areas in which Dodonpachi is really memorable, is the story which it tells, mostly because you are treated with no explanations ingame for what's happening until shit hits the fan. The style in which Cave would later adopt regarding exposition would improve in their subsequent titles, however the lack of questions answered in obtuse narratives was not only kept as an already established genre tradition, but was also utterly solidified as one, as the question "Why copy this part too, sir?" wasn't asked enough times.
A lot of classic 90's and 00’s shoot ‘em ups have stories that pass flashing by as remnants of a proper one, due to the nature of how arcade titles were consumed, and how expensive it was to produce cutscenes, usually being reserved for openings made solely to attract new players. What is happening to the characters during the screen flashes of ESP Ra.De? Who are they fighting for in Progear? What do Ikaruga passages between levels tell me about the world? Even games that try to be more in your face, without the previously established archaic arcade limitations, that uphold proper dialogue such as Zero Ranger, Radiant Silvergun and the Touhou series, still give a sensation that something you can’t quite point out is missing whenever you think about the grand scheme of things, almost as if you joined a movie in the second half. The narrative of a classic shmup game are most of the time just the aesthetics, and that's not necessarily bad.
By being exposed to small glimpses of the situation your character finds themselves in, only the pastiche of war stories such as Aces High or Secret Invasion, and other heroic warfare tales being told by shonen anime lenses, remain. In the end it wouldn’t make much of a difference, would it? Your very nature as a player of just assuming the position of an underwhelmingly small war machine, bravely dismantling a whole army just by yourself, requires no explanations, instead just being relegated to something similar as the climax of a mindless yet amazingly produced power fantasy movie. Of course, not all games need to have complex stories (or stories at all), but it makes me wonder if this was a deliberate artistic choice or one made to maximize profit. I believe this unpronounceable title to be the first legitimate subversive shmup story, but to properly explain that let’s talk first about this genre's conventions.
Both in game and in the menus, your eyes will be assaulted by 28 different symbols that substitute not only our usual aramaic alphabet, but our precious arabic numbers as well. Trying to understand what’s happening in the game might seem like an easy task at first if you ignore the dialogue, however eventually you’ll notice that the alien appearance of the game also extends to the way your trusty weapon works. You only have 2 buttons besides the one that pauses, one for shooting and one for switching weapons, which I’ll be calling the cross arrangement since it has no official name and because I think it sounds cool (also because until you master it, you better pray for it).
The way the cross arrangement works is that you’ll spend approximately half a second without shooting and the last input in which you pressed (moving, shooting or even doing nothing at all) will change your shooting pattern, from wide, to more focused, aimed backwards, X shaped, auto guiding… and so on. Early on you have 4 patterns to which you can transition easily, however you can find up to 24 more by shooting on the screen in some specific areas to unlock way more, expanding in your options. Ranging from a curse and a blessing, you might panic sometimes not knowing to which pattern you can transition from. It’s a very unique sensation that I felt during a desperate struggle to maintain control of my own weapons, in an increasingly difficult double edged overly complicated system.
There is a menu dedicated to leveling up, however because you can’t interpret what’s on screen, it’s a question of trying to decipher how far off from getting an upgrade you are. Even worse, if you gather points by playing solely the last levels, the algorithm doesn’t bend back to upgrade your early necessities, in an incredibly bizarre way that feels like you can only buy such upgrades if you have enough money, but not too much in your wallet. Applying and understanding how each and everyone works (except the obligatory life upgrade), is another challenge in itself, even after beating the game 2 times to make this review, I still don’t properly understand what they do. Googling for help the day before was hilarious, because not only I was trying to understand a really cryptic and specific tool in the game, but also I couldn’t find a way to look for the title’s name itself, as just searching ‘_____’ showed me results similar to the peculiar I’m Feeling Lucky button.
The way in which the story is told is not exactly what you think it is from such an offbeat shoot ‘em up. Riding through different planets with small transitions only to fight against seemingly similar enemies from the ones before, just to encounter a rival that fights using your own moves while speaking complete gibberish, is something that feels oddly familiar, even if you can’t point out a specific title that does it. The alienation to which we have been exposed to STG narratives existed even in its infancy in the 80’s, when it was filled to the brim with nonspecific all-encompassing space odysseys, striking back once again with added relatively modern shmup anime lenses from the 90’s and 00’s laid back game design choices of continuing in a multitude of ways, to the mix. The proper ending of the game made it all worth it, explaining not only the stylistic choices found in this peculiar galaxy adventure, but also the very nature of this game release, which I won’t spoil because I think it is particularly genius. Consider this a challenge to beat the game, for everyone who’s reading.
For a title to have such a unique and hard way to find, it sure was made by a studio that covers itself with unusual stylistic choices aimed directly at those who end up stumbling on the title, like someone who just found out a secret pile of gold. Just to give some small context about Platine Dispositif, they had a game vanish from Steam, in which you had to unlock the ability to walk. Obscurity by choice in a game that plays itself as being an abstracted version of repeating the genre’s usual staples while still carrying purposefully unfamiliar visuals and mechanics that forces you to abstract the genre’s conventions on your own, is what some may call ‘art’. Being inventive even in the way in which it was released, as to having such a name that the only video I could find about it attached a "?" to the game’s title, is a very unfamiliar sensation in the medium of video games. From a regurgitating genre full of familiar sameness, this unpronounceable title shines, in the bottom of everyone’s obscure radar, as a certified shmup ultra obscure classic.
Now, pray and tell me oh local Backloggd user.
How did you even find this page?
Dodonpachi, the cult bullet hell from ‘97 didn’t invent the shmup wheel by any means, but it improved on it massively, to the point that the symbol of the game, a quirked up bee, slowly became a cult icon for gaming as a whole. Taking direct inspiration from what it worked previously from games beloved by the recently formed STG fans, it abstracted what worked from games made by Toaplan and Raizing, to produce what some consider to be one of the most important titles to the genre of all time. One of the areas in which Dodonpachi is really memorable, is the story which it tells, mostly because you are treated with no explanations ingame for what's happening until shit hits the fan. The style in which Cave would later adopt regarding exposition would improve in their subsequent titles, however the lack of questions answered in obtuse narratives was not only kept as an already established genre tradition, but was also utterly solidified as one, as the question "Why copy this part too, sir?" wasn't asked enough times.
A lot of classic 90's and 00’s shoot ‘em ups have stories that pass flashing by as remnants of a proper one, due to the nature of how arcade titles were consumed, and how expensive it was to produce cutscenes, usually being reserved for openings made solely to attract new players. What is happening to the characters during the screen flashes of ESP Ra.De? Who are they fighting for in Progear? What do Ikaruga passages between levels tell me about the world? Even games that try to be more in your face, without the previously established archaic arcade limitations, that uphold proper dialogue such as Zero Ranger, Radiant Silvergun and the Touhou series, still give a sensation that something you can’t quite point out is missing whenever you think about the grand scheme of things, almost as if you joined a movie in the second half. The narrative of a classic shmup game are most of the time just the aesthetics, and that's not necessarily bad.
By being exposed to small glimpses of the situation your character finds themselves in, only the pastiche of war stories such as Aces High or Secret Invasion, and other heroic warfare tales being told by shonen anime lenses, remain. In the end it wouldn’t make much of a difference, would it? Your very nature as a player of just assuming the position of an underwhelmingly small war machine, bravely dismantling a whole army just by yourself, requires no explanations, instead just being relegated to something similar as the climax of a mindless yet amazingly produced power fantasy movie. Of course, not all games need to have complex stories (or stories at all), but it makes me wonder if this was a deliberate artistic choice or one made to maximize profit. I believe this unpronounceable title to be the first legitimate subversive shmup story, but to properly explain that let’s talk first about this genre's conventions.
Both in game and in the menus, your eyes will be assaulted by 28 different symbols that substitute not only our usual aramaic alphabet, but our precious arabic numbers as well. Trying to understand what’s happening in the game might seem like an easy task at first if you ignore the dialogue, however eventually you’ll notice that the alien appearance of the game also extends to the way your trusty weapon works. You only have 2 buttons besides the one that pauses, one for shooting and one for switching weapons, which I’ll be calling the cross arrangement since it has no official name and because I think it sounds cool (also because until you master it, you better pray for it).
The way the cross arrangement works is that you’ll spend approximately half a second without shooting and the last input in which you pressed (moving, shooting or even doing nothing at all) will change your shooting pattern, from wide, to more focused, aimed backwards, X shaped, auto guiding… and so on. Early on you have 4 patterns to which you can transition easily, however you can find up to 24 more by shooting on the screen in some specific areas to unlock way more, expanding in your options. Ranging from a curse and a blessing, you might panic sometimes not knowing to which pattern you can transition from. It’s a very unique sensation that I felt during a desperate struggle to maintain control of my own weapons, in an increasingly difficult double edged overly complicated system.
There is a menu dedicated to leveling up, however because you can’t interpret what’s on screen, it’s a question of trying to decipher how far off from getting an upgrade you are. Even worse, if you gather points by playing solely the last levels, the algorithm doesn’t bend back to upgrade your early necessities, in an incredibly bizarre way that feels like you can only buy such upgrades if you have enough money, but not too much in your wallet. Applying and understanding how each and everyone works (except the obligatory life upgrade), is another challenge in itself, even after beating the game 2 times to make this review, I still don’t properly understand what they do. Googling for help the day before was hilarious, because not only I was trying to understand a really cryptic and specific tool in the game, but also I couldn’t find a way to look for the title’s name itself, as just searching ‘_____’ showed me results similar to the peculiar I’m Feeling Lucky button.
The way in which the story is told is not exactly what you think it is from such an offbeat shoot ‘em up. Riding through different planets with small transitions only to fight against seemingly similar enemies from the ones before, just to encounter a rival that fights using your own moves while speaking complete gibberish, is something that feels oddly familiar, even if you can’t point out a specific title that does it. The alienation to which we have been exposed to STG narratives existed even in its infancy in the 80’s, when it was filled to the brim with nonspecific all-encompassing space odysseys, striking back once again with added relatively modern shmup anime lenses from the 90’s and 00’s laid back game design choices of continuing in a multitude of ways, to the mix. The proper ending of the game made it all worth it, explaining not only the stylistic choices found in this peculiar galaxy adventure, but also the very nature of this game release, which I won’t spoil because I think it is particularly genius. Consider this a challenge to beat the game, for everyone who’s reading.
For a title to have such a unique and hard way to find, it sure was made by a studio that covers itself with unusual stylistic choices aimed directly at those who end up stumbling on the title, like someone who just found out a secret pile of gold. Just to give some small context about Platine Dispositif, they had a game vanish from Steam, in which you had to unlock the ability to walk. Obscurity by choice in a game that plays itself as being an abstracted version of repeating the genre’s usual staples while still carrying purposefully unfamiliar visuals and mechanics that forces you to abstract the genre’s conventions on your own, is what some may call ‘art’. Being inventive even in the way in which it was released, as to having such a name that the only video I could find about it attached a "?" to the game’s title, is a very unfamiliar sensation in the medium of video games. From a regurgitating genre full of familiar sameness, this unpronounceable title shines, in the bottom of everyone’s obscure radar, as a certified shmup ultra obscure classic.
Now, pray and tell me oh local Backloggd user.
How did you even find this page?