This was always something I wanted to review just because no one else bothered to give it a decent review. Not even from like the usuals I see on this site. With how much people like to play Kusoge on here, it’s surprising this one isn’t laughed at too much. Deep Blue is one of those PC Engine games you probably know about if you’re aware of the system due to the poor reception it's gotten. I wanted to dive into it to see just how true this all was and what makes it so bad.

With my eyes I noticed immediately the screen size which is oddly small. It’s like letterboxd for some reason. The music and graphics don’t seem too bad so far but it’s when you start playing is when the flaws go in. There’s so many enemies hurling at you, no attacks just collateral damage. The health on your ship is a lot and can regenerate. It’s hard to even move with this big hitbox angelfish ship and before you know it, you’re dead and the word FIN is written on the screen and it’s back to the title screen. Well I sure am excited to play this sea jaunty now am I? Let me try again.

You’ll find out those sunfish enemies spit out power ups. The one that’s a green circle is the Pulse Bullet which you start off with and it’s a rapid fire shot but is the weakest of the bunch. The one that’s made of bubbles is the Bubble Beam which shoots out a stream of bubbles like a laser beam but you’ll need to hold the button to get the most out of it. Lastly there’s the one that looks like wind called Swirl Cutter that is easily the strongest but you’ll need good aim as only one shot can come out. While these are helpful, they can only be powered up 3 times and getting hit just once levels it down. It’s actually best to not use the Pulse Bullet if you can’t master the game or don’t wanna use save states because supposedly from what I read, the game becomes unbeatable with level 1 Pulse Bullet. You can also find Healing Power to heal off any damage you had and lastly a Speed Power to go faster. The manual says you can speed up more than once but I don’t think that’s true. It doesn’t matter anyway because for some reason you start at the slowest speed for each stage. Sadly this won’t make the game much better with this help you can get.

There’s 4 scenes in total you’ll go through which is awfully short for a shmup. This game loves to just throw enemies at you with 0 effort and non-existent level design. It reminds me of playing Earth Defense Force but somehow even that had a lot more thought. There are a lot of fish enemies but I noticed some borrow the same patterns which feels a bit lazy and a lot of them are just not designed well with your size and slow speed in mind. It should be reminded there are no continues unless you know the cheat so while this game is short, it won’t play fair. The sections in the middle remind me of Gradius but feel thoughtless and shallow. There’s also bosses at the end but they are shockingly easy to kill. If you are expecting the same fun a Darius boss can give then you might be insane, seriously stop reading and ask for some help. It's more important. The final stage is also a trash fire as it has enemies that can drop so fast I had to pause buffer but there’s this huge foreground pillar that will screw you over at least once! Once you beat the last stage the game says Next and it loops over and over. No ending or credits here, how lame!

Deep Blue may have some nice looking graphics and decent music, the game however is inexcusable. It does so much wrong and I feel bad for anyone who bought this back then. Though as much as I want to be angry, there is this blog that shows the game probably went through some rough development so in the end it’s hard for me to be really rude and explosive when it’s not really fair. Still the game is really bad and it almost makes me feel bad for hating on shmups like Curse and that’s saying a whole lot. I’m not even sure if you should play this just for the fact it’s Kusoge. Eh why not, give it a try if you’re that curious. I can’t 100% say this game is the worst shmup on the system but it’s probably bottom 3 at least. At least I’ll never have to play it again.

"do you have the time old man?"









"no."