Maybe it's because I've only played this on PC, but contrary to popular opinion this game looks amazing. Movement feels swift and precise. The colour choices, bullet visibility, contrast between foreground and background are top notch. Bullet patterns are innovative and mesmerizing. Despite trying horizontal shmups in the past, I've leaned heavily toward vertical shmups. However, I found Rolling Gunner to be so enjoyable that I can’t really hold this bias anymore. Visually, a gripe is that the green focus shot sometimes feels like it's coming at you rather than from you like an optical illusion. Another complaint is with the sound effect of enemies that have a propeller, they are painfully ear piercing to hear.

Let’s get this out of the way: the game looks like ass. The backgrounds look like Google Earth screencaps, and the sprites are generic and stocky, like they were pulled from a ‘Big Spaceship’ asset pack on getty images or something. As a whole, Rolling Gunner has this off-putting, sticker-book sanitized look to it that just doesn’t appeal to me at all; and what’s worse, it all resolves awfully (on the Switch at least), with major pixelation issues, aliasing, and smeariness.

It turns out, though, that none of that matters very much… because the game is fun as shit.

The rolling gun mechanic puts an extremely solid spin (pun intended) on the good old-fashioned hori shoot-em-up formula — while unlocked, it points in the opposite of whatever direction you move your ship, and when locked, it stays put and powers up. Consequently, enemies are coming at you from all sides of the screen, making this an instance where the 16:9 aspect ratio really does the game good (often I think it makes for too much empty real-estate in a shmup).

In general, it feels unique, it’s a blast to play, and it’s got a ton of really thoughtful design… and that’s really no surprise, as it’s led by former Cave programmer Daisuke Koizumi.

Lots of modern STGs attempt to channel Cave and, at the end of the day, Rolling Gunner is special because it succeeds. Its hellish patterns and stage layouts and difficulty progression capture the same arcade magic of the likes of DoDonpachi and Mushihimesama — games that, in spite of their almost stupefying challenge, feel fun and inviting to play and eminently fair. Even the music reminds me of Cave, because the stage tracks are forgettable but the boss tracks are awesome.

Lastly, Rolling Gunner sports my very favorite thing in modern shmups: a well-thought-out “easy” mode. There’s Novice mode for super-beginners, but then there’s Casual mode, which (as far as I can tell) uses the patterns in the Original version but keeps the rank from increasing. This provides a perfect challenge for an intermediate player — I got the 1CC with about 10 hours of trying, had an awesome time, feel accomplished, and can now move along. Will always love that sort of thing.