[img width=300 height=300]http://imgur.com/6YUoU.jpg[/img]
I've been playing through a GBA shmup lately called
World Reborn. The game is actually a really intriguing mix of not only shooting, but also RPG elements as well. Although Namco's
Sigma Star Saga was a rather brilliant merging of similar genres, I never found it all that great of a game personally. But
World Reborn just seems to get everything right.
First of all as a horizontal shmup, it plays well. The controls are good, the music is excellent, the graphics are a throwback to golden-age 16-bit shooters, the power-ups are plenty and the bullets are from hell. Though it's not up to the perfection of say
Iridion II, it basically offers up everything a fan of retro shmups could want.
[img width=300 height=200]http://imgur.com/2Mclh.jpg[/img] [img width=300 height=200]http://imgur.com/Wbcay.jpg[/img]
On the RPG side of things you have several pilots to choose from for each level, and each can select which ship to take. Each ship and pilot have different stats that can be leveled up each time they're used. This adds an interesting depth to the game because you can choose to stick with one pilot and one ship and just max them out, or create a strategy to level up more than one for more balance in differently-suited levels. Maybe it's going a bit overboard to say that
World Reborn is also an RPG though. If anything it's actually a bit closer to a visual novel. Between levels dialogue-heavy cut-scenes propel the story forward, but the level-route isn't linear. Instead you can choose which level to go to next in a sort of choose-your-own-adventure fork-in-the-road kind of way.
[img width=300 height=200]http://imgur.com/2Tkzm.jpg[/img] [img width=300 height=200]http://imgur.com/IsLIS.jpg[/img]
To say that
World Reborn must be tried by all GBA shmup fans is an understatement. However, here's where the game's major problem comes up: it was never released. Although a 100% finished game exists, the game never actually made it to retail. This is majorly sad, and it's my hope that bringing awareness of this fantastic game into light could perhaps rectify this. With wonderful outlets like Homebrew Heaven out there, it would seem that even a limited run of this game would be a belated gift for GBA enthusiasts out there such as we.
So here's everything I know from googling and pulling bits of the developer's defunct website up using
http://archive.org's Wayback Machine:
The game was designed by a development group known as NeoPong. As far as I can tell, this is the only finished title that this particular team created. Presumably they own the rights to the game as their website actually officially hosted a free download of the ROM at a time. The game was to be published by Destination Software, who is probably better known as DSI Games who was also responsible for publishing the GBA port of
R-Type III. I can't seem to find any history of
why the game was canceled though, so it's unknown if Destination retained any rights.
From my research I believe this is the full team of NeoPong:
Charles Galyor - lead designer/president
Robert Dean - lead programmer
Kirby Thornton - programmer
Bertrand Dupuy - artist
Eric Stamm - musician
If anybody happens to know any of these guys, I'd love to know more of the story behind the abandonment of
World Reborn. I think it would be amazing if there could be even a small release of this game to finally see itself materialize in cartridge form. I suppose the biggest factor would be determining if the demand exists for such a release, though.
