As a game it's awful, but it clearly is on purpose.

This is a hilarious piece of political satire, where Bruce Lee's relative CHIN wipes out mainland China's entire population... oh but China's secret weapon is coming to stop him: a revived Deng Xioping (he was alive when this game was made lmao).
This game is so offensive, it's like the grandfather of the many offensive newgrounds flash games.

Play it, just to experience the madness. Be careful though, you may get 我愛北京天安門, 天安門上太陽升 stuck on your head.

There is a moment in Mushihimesama where I started to feel guilty. Not for the act of playing the game or anything but upon hearing Reco the game's protagonist death scream a bit too frequently as I weave her into yet another purple ball of bug plasma. This really struck home though when I paused the game and the music and sound effects stopped but her scream continued, echoing into the void reminding me of my failure.

In case it's not apparent I'm still pretty green to shoot 'em ups though I've been investing time playing them more and more since joining backloggd. I see people here discussing in their reviews completing a 'one CC' run and I laugh at the the very idea of the practice it would take me to do such a thing. You see I normally play a shoot 'em up once, see the credits, take time to think about what I played, what did I like? what didn't I? and then move on. There is something about Mushihimesama though that keeps drawing me to play it again and again. For the first time I feel I almost understand hardcore STG players, at least a little bit.

The immediate thing I need to talk about with the actual game though is the cover art here. It's the thing that made me aware of this games existence. A friend here started playing it before I started delving more into the genre a couple of years ago and my first thought was "what on earth is that?" You only make first impressions once and it's absolutely sublime. Taking a mixture of anime and art nouveau with the curved backdrop, colours and flowing hair. It's like if Alphonse Mucha had become an anime artist and I utterly adore it. The art is one of the stand out elements of this title for both aesthetics and design. Taking influence from studio Ghibli's animated classic Nausica Valley of the Wind, you play the afore mentioned Princess Reco. She is due to be sacrificed to stop the Miasma that threatens her village from the giant Koju insects. On her 15th birthday she takes flight on her Rhinoceros beetle to stop them. The game's theme is entirely about insects bugs and nature, even the game's title Mushihimesama translates roughly to bug princess.

It spans five stages and I love the visuals and details. Lush looking forests, petrified centipede husks with fauna growing out of them, lava stages, crane flies floating on water and not to mention the way the stages are so active in the backgrounds. On one stage you can see this ginormous beetle fortress traveling under the canopy whilst you fight smaller enemies above before appearing as the boss. Another level with a giant beetle attached to a chasm wall that flies up to engage you. It's just a really cool looking title for concept art and in game visuals. Where it's clever though is in it's usage of art and colour in this design. This game is extremely vibrant with hues of green, red, blue, yellow all over but they reserve purple very specifically for enemy fire. Bright purple. Such a small thing but mechanically makes it very easy to understand what it a threat to you and is also very visually striking at the same time. I've played games where I simply couldn't see what was coming at me due to colour blends between backgrounds and fire. This eliminates that issue entirely, just because something is clear though, doesn't mean it is easy to avoid, this is a bullet hell after all.

This is my first real one in fact and I understand a good one for that because it's actually incredibly simple in a lot of ways through how it's been designed as mentioned above. You get one character Reco, but have three firing modes to choose from in how her bullets fire. She gets some basic power ups for her main gun and satellites which can be used either in a spread pattern or more focused fire. Seed bombs can briefly clear the screen of bullets to save you when firing and everything else is positioning and prioritising targets. There isn't a lot to learn at the base level but there is a lot to master. Knowing where to be on a level, taking out a bigger Koju first to control the flow and watching the onscreen bullets fade out or dodging through an absolute torrent of fire and coming out the other side is an absolute rush when it happens. I actually prefer playing it on Manic over normal difficulty despite the increase in bullet density coming my way because the game just feels good to play moment to moment but I am still learning a lot every time I play.

Though I am reviewing the arcade game here I played through once I would recommend getting the Mushihimesama HD release on steam for it's crisper visuals and extras I'll review separately another time. Regardless of version though I'm really glad this actually lived up to both the word of mouth around it and my expectations based on the art, fun music and footage I've seen. This is actually my first Cave game having weirdly played some games that eventually led to their formation prior. It's probably not my favourite shoot 'em up but I must say it's an extremely good one and I look forward to playing more of Cave's works.

Reco's death scream however will continue to haunt me for some time but I am getting better to prevent her suffering.

+ Concept art is gorgeous.
+ In game visuals and art are also gorgeous.
+ Simple clear design but still a challenge.

A globe-trotting adventure set in modern times featuring a nondescript boy, a blonde guy with guns, a pink girl (x2), and a martial artist monk, all of whom boast psychic abilities and team up to defend Earth from invading aliens… Released only two years after MOTHER 2 (and just a few months after it came West as EarthBound), this is surely the first MOTHER fangame in history. Though where EarthBound leans absurdist, G.O.D. examines the consequences of that absurdity hyper-literally. The alien invasion witnessed at the top of a hometown mountain is not a mystical start to a fairytale, but a grizzly armageddon that immediately wipes out the significant majority of human civilization. Aliens with goofy, surreal designs approximating real-world creatures are met with justified confusion and terror. Firearm-bearing militiamen attempt to take back the world from these invading forces through a decade of war – a fight they’re nearly on the brink of losing. Even something as unassuming as staying at a typically RPG-styled inn has a mature, lasting ramification on the narrative. That’s not to say it handles all of this particularly well (unfortunately, the aforementioned globe-trotting nature of this adventure leads to repulsively frequent cultural stereotypes and racism), but to see G.O.D. actually applying these ideas of “What if EarthBound was like, realistic, dude,” before a South Park-loving American preteen could even get their hands on a cartridge at all is historically fascinating. MOTHER fangames – or even just indie games in general – have grown similar thesis statements, and yet I’d struggle to say many are as successful as this was (barring the racism, of course… if that even needs to be said). Hell, G.O.D. even beat Yoko Taro to some of his most famous narrative punches by 15 years – note for note, the exact twists that NieR would go on to accrue so many accolades for can be found in almost identical form here. To play G.O.D. is to see a shockingly forward-thinking condensation of borrowed ideas that would unknowingly predict the cultural zeitgeist decades into the future with crystalline accuracy. I just wish it, uh, wasn’t so racist!!

P.S. ~ Batty is the funniest character in any MOTHER-inspired video game

Video gamists have a nasty habit of forcing intensely literal parameters on works that present themselves in vague or abstract ways. In my experience with these kinds of people, it comes from a place of truly and authentically appreciating the work, but not having the imagination to accept that art can serve something other than a comprehensive series of tangible events. I always presumed this was largely on the fault of video game players, but this adaptation of Inoue's paintings proves that developers can be just as bereft of imagination as well. What a shame.

My kneejerk reaction is that l feel super weird about loving what is essentially an architectural achievement. I can't help but have, a sense of unease at a lot of the surroundings of this experience. The basic copypasta-like clearly House of Leaves-rip that doesn't really have much of a personal soul to it, and more the boxings of one, just rides on me (especially if the trauma part of that is actually real, which makes things even more complicated). Especially when it pulls memes and such of the internet to congeal here, and especially when I'm literally in an in-progress read of the book that leaves me too numb to feel the lovings of a homage without kind of scoffing at the quality attempt.

,,,on that same token though, it is a homage. A very carefully crafted one that manages to utilize its medium in ways that lift the ech-beginnings into something that emotionally feels haunting and winding. It's a very terrible reduction, but sometimes being a meticulous, loving director can help transcend a pretty shitty script. I really was terrified constantly. I found each exploration vast and visceral. Cheating (because this derg, is scared) doesn't even help when more often than not you get lost in ways that unnerve. Walking down the first long corridor and hitting ~The Labyrinth~ I immediately closed the WAD reflexively knowing there was a beast around the corner. I don't want to even talk about the dogs.

There's a big inner giddiness of "gosh I want to see more like this", a nerd-like love from experience looking at the ins-and-outs of WAD-making, feeling the rush when it's all demystified and going "gosh how did they do this??? Amazing!!" Sicker than suburbs have any real right to be. Manages to defy my usual personal distaste for the 'innovative' meta without a concrete narrative heart (e.g. Inscryption (sorry), Pony Island (not sorry), etc.).

My favorite in the series, and I am not saying that because I had to go through the dull process of soft-modding my Wii to get it (and the Fatal Frame 2 Wiimake) to work.

Despite it's use of an over-the-shoulder camera, Fatal Frame 4 feels decidedly classic in a time where classic survival horror was no longer in-vogue. I wouldn't be surprised if that were the reason Nintendo got cold feet when it came to publishing it abroad (among other reasons).

Luckily, in the year of our Lord, 2023, people from across the globe can finally play this bad boy through it's remaster, it's just a shame it took so long to get here. Better late than never, though!

I never truly grasped the concept of OutRun up until now.
I’ve played bits of it a few times but, by never truly playing it extensively, I only thought of it as a “sit and relax” type of game, with the only objective being driving through different scenery for as long as you could.
Well, I forgot this was an AM2 game. The focus is still the raw fun, but there was, indeed, a true objective behind the gameplay.

After getting bored of playing Kirby Triple Deluxe, I took advantage of my 3DS being still turned on and decided to give 3D OutRun a try, completely unpretentiously. And I’m glad that I did it.

Whilst not a racing game, OutRun is a driving game. You hit the gas pedal and go through different roads, trying to hit checkpoints with remaining time until the finish line, all of this while trying to dodge nearby vehicles, making sharp turns and shifting the car’s gears to reach higher and slower speeds depending on the situation at hand.

The concept and controls are very simple, but what truly hooks you in is everything else that makes this a really compelling and fun arcade experience.
It looks great, sounds great, but, most of all: it plays amazingly.

The real fun of this game comes from trying to maintain your speed whilst shifting gears and not hitting on other cars and objects by the sides of the road, and the game presents enough variety to always keep you on the edge of your seat.
And, oddly enough, by still keeping a chill, relaxed vibe behind all of it.

Not only that, but every once in a while you’ll be granted the choice of going on different paths that lead you to a different roads with their own scenery and obstacles. Going through all of these will grant you six different “endings”, and it is super fun to play your best to see them all.

On top of all that, this 3DS remaster comes in as one of, if not the best version of the game. Whilst the original Arcade port (which runs at 30 FPS) can still be unlocked by getting all six endings, it runs by default at 60 FPS, making the game run extremely fluidly and enhancing the feeling of speed present in the original. You can also unlock improvements to your car that can make the gameplay easier, but combining different parts also changes the look of the car itself. With the addition of two new music tracks, there’s more than enough variety here to keep the game as engrossing as it was back in the late 80’s.

OutRun was a very, very pleasant surprise. Now I truly get why it is the classic that it is. Games like these are the exactly the ones that remind me why I love videogames so much!

Some will tell you Deadly Premonition is an offbeat genius masterpiece with a great story, some will tell you it's basically a "so bad it's good" game. It unquestionably contains elements of both, but what makes the game special and an absolute must-play is where those two modes intersect and muddy each other; the patently awful gameplay is funny in a way that's simultaneously clearly unintentional but also clearly intentional. A lot of genuinely smart design elements (see: long, boring car rides) are wrongly dismissed as unnecessary padding because of how clearly unfinished so much of the game is. Best played with friends, but you'll find yourself spending as much time discussing how great the ending (unironically) was as you do laughing at the game's comedy (intentional or otherwise).