An absolutely ok shmup from PC Engine. If you've had that console, I can see it being good, but nowadays there's access to a whole lot of games that do the same stuff better, and some of them are on NES.

Blazing Lazers has fairly simple power-up system where you have a main weapon you can switch by picking up a corresponding number and a special thing that acts the same - pick up a letter to receive shields or homing missiles.

Unlike, say, Gun Nac for the NES, I question the latter a bit, since picking up a letter for Option completely cancels your other side-weapon, meaning you have to dodge 90% of power-ups coming at you if you like certain weapons and sub-weapons.

I also find that some weapons suck compared to the others. Weapon 2 is a great wave of death spreading into 3, Weapon 3 is a penetrating lightning which if upgraded covers most of the screen, but 1 is a 6 way shot that's completely unremarkable and 4 grants you a moving shield that rarely hits enemies as you have a normal double bullet.

The game's fairly easy until the last stage, which is, for some reason, not only overly long, but also reuses the setting from the first stages. I know the game's based on a movie, so maybe there's some lore to it, but after deserts and bubbly planets I wanted a bit more.

This game isn't bad, but today you have access to stuff like Gun Nac or Super Aleste which have more weapons and better presentation as well as sense of speed to them.

The last level is a piece of crap. Absolutely ruthless stuff that just made me go "forget it" and rewind my way to victory. A marathon of a level with a boss rush. Yuck.

Before that, it felt like a pretty good beginner shmup... until that bubble stage, which also sucks.

Also not sure how good of an idea is it to have a checkpoint-based shmup, instead of respawning on the spot.

I don't know why I love this game so much. I first played it all the way back during the Wii days. It was one of the titles on Virtual Console right as I was getting into retro gaming. Since then I've played many other shooters for all sorts of different platforms yet for some reason I always find myself coming back to this one. It's a pretty straight forward game as many in this genre are. You've got a decent collection of weapons and equipment to upgrade and collect. The game is pretty easy, perfect for someone looking to get into these games without resigning to letting Ikaruga kick your ass all day. Art and presentation are nice and I feel like I'll never forget the music from this game. Only ever found a physical copy in the wild once and it was pretty darn expensive so maybe go digital if you can or simply emulate it, it's well worth the short ride.

Enquanto Aleste se acomodava bastante com a fórmula estabelecida por Zanac, e apenas tentava polir ela, Blazing Lazers busca ir um pouco mais além. Cada fase e cada boss fight desse jogo são bem únicas e criativas, já rompendo com a repetitividade presente em seus antecessores, o jogo inteiro possui uma ótima variedade de inimigos, padrões e cenários, a todo momento buscando experimentar com mais alguma coisa que possa ser divertido; a fase das bolhas, por exemplo, é uma das fases mais inspiradas e divertidas que já vi em um shmup. Além disso, a Compile continua se mostrando uma dev com um ótimo domínio estético e sonoro, sempre trazendo um charme a mais para seus jogos.

I asked Maru, the resident PCE super fan, on what games I should start with on my PCE Mini that arrived earlier this week. This was one of the three he recommended as foundational games for the system. A good introductory shmup, he called it. I overall agree with that sentiment, as this was a game I thoroughly enjoyed. I beat it in one sitting, nearly 1CC-ing it, but needing to resort to save states at the final boss (who took me many tries to kill XP).

Blazing Lasers was originally a licensed tie-in for the movie Gunhed in Japan, but had all of the licensing scrubbed out of it for its US release on the Turbografx (which is likely why that's the version included on the PCE/TG16 Mini). You're a space ship going through 9 areas on a mission to save the world, I guess. Aesthetically the game is all over the place, going from inside some sort of horrific meat tunnel to over a rocky desert covered with pyramids and Moai heads in the span of going from one level to the next, but the sound is pretty darn good and the framerate & graphics all look great, een for an early HuCard game.

Mechanically it plays VERY similarly to Star Soldier, with 4 main weapons you can upgrade through as well as several sub weapons as well. The main difference between this and Star Soldier that I found was that in Star Soldier is that in Star Soldier your weapon powers down when you get hit (in some games), while in this game you just die XP. I personally preferred weapon 3 (the shield laser) and the shield sub weapon as well. That shield can take a TON of punishment, and even when you get hit, your weapon also provides a shield. Sure, the weapon powers down when you get hit, but the lower rank shield laser weapon is arguably better than the higher ranks in many regards, so that never bothered me much XD. There is also a golden extra life mechanic, where instead of going backwards to a checkpoint, you immediately respawn. While I never figured out how that was activated, it was still nice to get here and there.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. This is a very fair shmup, and there were only a time or two (the last level when you die to the final boss, for example) where the place the game respawned me at was just utter trash and I had no chance of possibly surviving. It's a really good balance of quick reactions and diversity of powerups (although weapon 4 kinda sucks). The presentation is good and the length is just right. It's a nice easing into the genre for newer players (especially with that awesome shield) and a good but fair challenge for experienced players as well. It may not be as memorable as something like Star Parodier or Parodius, but it's still a great time and it absolutely deserves its good reputation.

Funny story, I went to play a random Turbo/PCE game on my backlog here and turns out "Gunhed" is just the Japanese version of this which strips away the original movie licensing. So that was hilarious.

I hate to play the bad guy here, but I feel almost like I've been lied to about this game, because the pacing is absolutely abominable. The first two-thirds are so easy I could probably beat the stages with my toes on another controller, all while still practicing my Super R-Type pro difficulty 1CC with another gamepad in my hands. By the time I started getting drowsy Blazing Lazers decided to hit me with a low blow from behind in the form of an absurdly long bubble stage that suddenly wanted to bring in checkpoint respawns, and all 50,000 of my bombs were getting use finally. This all capped off with a finale that dared to bitchslap me with a boss rush, and mood whiplash from an attempt at seduction with a final boss woman who can shoot lasers at me. The titular Blazing Lazers maybe?! I assume she was in the movie.

Looking again at the release date I can get why people were impressed by it visually, but man, as a shmup I think it reeks. Having such a toothless difficulty for a long time only for it to suddenly put it's dentures in five days later is the worst way to do it I feel. I could try a replay to reaccess it, but by the end of it all I was sick of looking at it and that's a death sentence for any shmup to me. I ain't going back to 1CC this anytime soon I'm afraid, not enough slowdown like Super R-Type.

Seriously, I can't tell you how severely my brain was rattled when I thought I was playing a middling/below average PC Engine shmup called "Gunhed" only to find out it was actually the acclaimed "Blazing Lazers". Like shit, do I have bad opinions or is everyone else wrong? Maybe both....

its got all the foundations of a good compile shmup with high speed, hella weapons to mix and match with, and tons of stuff onscreen, but the overall balance is godawful. The upgraded powerups are so broken that levels 1-6 are practically braindead to go through even for someone who is ass at this games like me, with level 7 being a slight challenge, 8 actually being a really solidly fun challenge and 9 being an absolute rocket punch in the dick. I'm talking "lose all 20 lives you've been piling up from the easy-ass first two thirds of the game in minutes" levels of brutal at the end.

I feel like part of the appeal of shmups (and difficult retro games as a whole, really) is watching that slow skill progression through restarting the game at the end of every bad run, with game familiarity allowin ya to not only get to the part you last died at more quickly, but also usually with more lives/continues/just generally better odds at winning. This games pacing really doesn't allow me to experience something like that, as the piss easy nature of the first 2/3rds of the game makes it so that my punishment for getting pot shotted on level 9 and losing all my powerups is having to replay the stupid boring ass first 30-45 minutes that I already mastered on my first run all over again.

For a 1989 game it def is impressive on a technical and game feel level but I guess compile still hadn't gotten proper pacing down by this point. Honestly if they cut out the first 3 levels and put a few more powerups in level 9 to make death at least somewhat recoverable, this'd be a banger.

A standout launch window Turbografx-16 showcase, demonstrating massive pools of enemies and bullets on screen with hardly any slowdown. But with hindsight of Compile's better games, it's hard not to see its glaring flaws.

Simply put, it's too long - something Compile usually falls victim to, but is especially felt here. The first three levels go on forever and all use similar tilesets. The final level pulls out an agonizing boss rush - none of which were particularly memorable in the first place.

The WEIRDEST thing about this game is the final boss. Its second phase is just a lady? But not like a hologram or an AI or ancient spirit - just like, literally someone in a blue dress and mini cardigan, throwing lasers and bombs. Then they turn into a red sentry unit as if nothing happened. What Were They Cooking.

I could say more about the difficulty issues, but Torbern's review already hits those bullet points on the head. The combination of poor balancing and long runtime just make for an exhausting run, without enough impact or lasting moments to spice up the trip.

MUSHA and Super Aleste on competing consoles feel like much improved expansions of this game's groundwork: The former having perfect pacing and a kickass motif, and the latter being a better realization of this game's experimental side.

Blazing Lazers, while fun and cool in general, is too long and too bipolar in its difficulty to be truly great. It never feels good to coast through the first six-ish levels of a game so easily you can check your phone during play, only to hurtle against a brick wall in the final stages. Recovering from an accidental death early in the game can be tricky but rewarding; however, late in the game it’s extremely close to impossible (huge hitbox + pea shooter + no shield power up + fuckloads of enemies is a recipe for a great time!), and you can just rip through 20 stashed lives in a few minutes if you’re unable to thread the needle.

The bubble stage is deservedly iconic, and I kind of love it. I only wish many of the other environments matched its weirdness. And, the music in stage 9 absolutely bangs.

Esse game tem seis compositores. Eu não sei se alguém em específico ficou responsável pelas baterias ou se foi um trabalho conjunto, mas seja lá que ou quais pessoas trabalharam nessa parte da trilha sonora, eu quero contratá-la(s) imediatamente para a minha banda de rock progressivo dos sonhos. Não tem uma música sequer no jogo todo em que a bateria não se sobressaia. É uma energia e intensidade que só faz me pensar que o espírito de Rush estava presente na equipe - um espírito tão infeccioso que foi capaz transcender os seis canais de som do TurboGrafx 16.

O resto do jogo é ok. Relativamente fácil e com níveis bem diretos, mas nunca chega a ser entediante, já que o resto dos devs fazem o trabalho hercúleo de tentar acompanhar a bateria.

Cara, é sério, que bateria boa é essa?