In February, get ready for the return of RF Generation's community playthrough and another great title presented by the Shoot the Corecast!
FEBRUARY 2022 COMMUNITY PLAYTHROUGH
After a few month hiatus, the Playcast boys are back with a different kind of James Bond adventure than you might be used to. In February, join the community playthrough as we make our way through one of the limited RPG titles offered on the original Game Boy, James Bond 007. Released a year after the smash hit Goldeneye on the N64, James Bond on the Game Boy is an action/adventure RPG where you play as the famed Agent 007. While most games in this franchise were 1st and 3rd person shooters, this rarely discussed Game Boy title bunked the typical format and created a fresh narrative outside of the film series. However, fans of the movies won't be disappointed as they can expect some welcome fan service via appearances from a few favorite Bond villains! The overhead view and mechanics are reminiscent of the original Legend of Zelda and similarly, your inventory can be assigned to your A & B buttons. Was James Bond 007's lack of popularity due to its late release on the Gameboy, or is this game best left CONFIDENTIAL? Join us in February and find out!
James Bond 007 is available on the original Game Boy. We are very excited about February's pick, so be sure to obtain your copy as soon as possible and join us.
Also, be sure to join our forum HERE to discuss the game with fellow site members.
Sometimes, a game developer comes up with a winner, a real hit. When that happens, and they follow that up with something different, the results aren't always as successful. That lack of success may be creative in nature, or purely financial. Or sometimes, the enormity of the initial success simply uses up all the oxygen in the room, so that subsequent attempts to replicate that success never quite get the same traction. It could be said that Irem's initial success of R-Type was a detriment to some of their subsequent games, because it's difficult to capture lightning in a bottle in the same manner. Such could be said about their vertical shooting game follow-up, Image Fight. While it was far from a failure, it certainly didn't replicate the success of its predecessor, both in terms of broad appeal, and overall success. Even so, the game was a popular arcade title, and saw conversions on a number of platforms, such as the PC Engine, Famicom and NES, Sharp X68000, and the FM Towns computer. More recently, the arcade version has been made available on PS4 and Switch, thanks to Hamster's Arcade Archives line.
On a fateful day in 20XX, the Earth's moon exploded into four large fragments and a multitude of meteors. Aliens from afar had succeeded in destroying the West's moon base. One after another, mankind's other military industrial space complexes were being lost. What mankind dreaded had come to pass. Scores of unidentified fighters were in the area. In addition, the moon's main computer, still intact after the explosion, had a strange vegetation coiled around it. Their trademark evil exploits being a dead giveaway, invaders from the Boondoggle Galaxy had arrived to take over the Earth. To counter these evil forces, leading scientists from all over the globe created the "OF-1" Fightership. Combat pilots depart the Earth to fend off the invaders and earn everlasting glory. Join the RF Generation Shmup Club in February 2022 as we take on the "vertical R-Type" known as Image Fight!
In Episode 029, Addicted and MetalFRO explore an alternate take on the British colony of Roanoke, but this time, set on Mars! Jamestown+ was developed by Final Form Games, and is the full realization of the original release from 2011, with extra content and tweaks. Does it warrant your time this holiday season? Hopefully, we can shed some light on that for you!
In this month's episode, the Playcast and the Shoot the Corecast join forces with Cammy and her Anti-Robot Special Forces to take on an onslaught of robot terrorists in Psikyo's Cannon Spike on the Sega Dreamcast. Rich (singlebanana), Shawn (GrayGhost81), Josh (MetalFRO) and Addicted discuss the ends and outs of this wannabe twin-stick shooter and determine whether this pricey title is one that you need to add to your collection. During the Concertcast segment, the guys choose three bands/artists that they would like to see if breakups and deceased members were no obstacle. We are extremely excited to present this RF Generation site podcast crossover as we play through this action packed title. Ask yourself, are YOU ready for Baby Mode?
As always, we are happy to hear your thoughts on the games we play our discussion page (linked below). We will respond to your comments and are always happy to discuss the games in more detail. Please be sure to rate and write a review of the show on iTunes and/or Podbean to help us increase our listenership. Thanks for the listen, we hope you enjoy the show!
[img width=700 height=350]https://i2.wp.com/cliqist.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/SwitchNShoot.jpg?fit=1600%2C800&ssl=1[/img] Title screen image shamelessly linked from Cliqist
Do you like Galaga? Do you like Space Invaders? Do you like Gorf? What about Phoenix? If you like blasting alien baddies in 8-bits, with simple, arcade style and fun, then boy, have I got a game for you! Switch 'N' Shoot, on the Nintendo Switch, might just scratch that old school arcade shooter itch you've been nursing.
Posted on Apr 12th 2019 at 12:00:00 PM by (Pam) Posted under video, review, shmup
Sine Mora was developed by Digital Reality and Grasshopper Manufacture and first released in 2012. In 2017 an extended version was released which is available on PC, PS4, Switch and XBox One. It is a horizontal 2.5D shooter, which means the plane you control moves on 2 axes, while the backgrounds are 3D. The game has gorgeous environments, uses some novel time-based mechanics and has a heavy focus on story. However, I found a heavy story in a scrolling shooter wasn't that welcome of a feature. Check out the video for more.
This is Episode 009 of Shoot the Core-cast! In this edition, MetalFRO and Addicted look at Zanac, the classic NES shooter that most of us played as kids. Does it hold up? What's good about it? Why is it so well loved? To help us answer these questions, we called upon Collectorcast members Duke.Togo and Crabmaster2000, to weigh in on the game. We hope you enjoy it!
Welcome to Episode 006 of Shoot the Core-cast! This time around, we take a good look at the HOT-B Sega Genesis classic, Steel Empire! We dive into the original game, and dissect the re-releases since then, talking about the changes, and getting into the game's steampunk world. MetalFRO and Addicted go into great detail about the game's history, talk strategy, share high scores from the month's participants, and discuss how this game has lived on since its initial release.
Episode 04 of Shoot the Core-cast is online! MetalFRO and Addicted discuss the RF Generation Shmup Club game for September 2018; a lesser known Japanese doujin shmup called Warning Forever. This is a free to download PC game that is essentially a 25-stage boss rush. Have a listen, and see what we thought of it! http://rfgeneration.com/p...de_04_warning_forever.mp3
[img width=700 height=525]https://blogs-images.forbes.com/olliebarder/files/2017/08/rtype_boss.jpg[/img] Get ready to blast off and attack the evil Bydo empire!
Do you like shoot-em-up games? I do! I'm a long-time fan of the genre, and have spent the better part of the last 20 years, or so, collecting as many of them as I can. While I have played and enjoyed many of these games, I have never felt like I got full enjoyment out of them, because I haven't engaged with other players to talk strategy, compare scores, or revel in the games themselves at the level I would like to. Now's my chance! I'm starting a new monthly series here at RF Generation, where we can play and discuss classic scrolling shooter games!
[img width=320 height=286]http://img.gamefaqs.net/box/1/4/0/21140_front.jpg[/img] Image shamelessly linked from GameFAQs. I love classic video game box art like this. It symbolizes the imagination many artists put into the artwork. Imagination that unfortunately, rarely ever captured the true look and feel of the game. Still, it gave us hope of the contents within.
One of the video game genres that I've been a big fan of over the last 20 years or so is shoot-em-ups. No, I'm not talking about "shooters", those fast-paced, first-person games where you brandish a firearm of some sort and snipe guys at 300 feet, reveling in every headshot. I'm talking about the scrolling shooter, one of the staples of what we now know as classic, or "retro" gaming. You see, from the early-mid 1980's, until around the mid-late 1990's, the scrolling shooter genre evolved tremendously, from humble beginnings like 1942, Vulgus, Star Force, and the like, to highly sophisticated games with deep, complex scoring systems like Battle Garegga, Dodonpachi, Radiant Silvergun, and many more. While I appreciate the complexity and replayability of games like that, give me a simple "shmup" (a term, coined by Zzap!64 Magazine) with twitchy game play, a simple control scheme, and solid action any day. While there's room in my heart for "danmaku" games (aka bullet curtain, or "bullet hell" shooters), I generally prefer classic shoot-em-ups to their more grown-up descendants.
The Gamecube is sorely lacking in arcade style games and more specifically vertical scrolling shootem'ups. The two that it does have (in North America) are both quite well done. Ikaruga gets a lot of attention, and rightfully so. So I'm going to spend some time talking about Chaos Field, your only other choice for this style of game in the Americas.
During the 32-bit era some of Irem's best shmups were ported onto the PSX and Saturn in two different collections. Depending where you go it's either a hit or a partly miss.
Released in the US thanks to ASCII Entertainment (later became known as Agetec), R-Types is perfect port of R-Type and R-Type II on one disc. R-Types comes with a nice intro video, a Museum mode, and of course both games. Shmup fans and arcade fans in general will love the collection because the gameplay is still hard and fun after all these years.
[img width=315 height=279]http://www.retrogame-shop.com/shop/images/image-xing.jpg[/img] Note: Playstation version looks just like the Saturn cover except it has the Playstation logo on it.
Released only in Japan and in Asian counties (Hong Kong, Singapore, etc.), Arcade Gears was Xing's line of retro arcade games that was published in the late 90s. Xing didn't develop any games, they just ported other company's games to mostly the Saturn and some on the Playstation (like Tatio's Gun Frontier, Capcom's Three Wonders, etc.). Image Fight and X-Multiply were two great Irem shmups that were released after R-Type. While these games didn't get the same fanfare as R-Type, they're still fun and hard like R-Type. Image Fight is a vertical shmup where the first five stages are a simulation. Do well in those stages you can go to the final three stages. X-Multiply is more similar to R-Type but it tends to focus a lot more on organic backgrounds and enemy designs (like Konami's Salamander/LifeForce).
Anyway, about the ports. Both the Playstaion and Saturn ports were mostly good except for some few faws. In both versions when playing X-Multiply you have to move the status menu (which tells the score, lives, etc.) by using the L/R buttons in order to see the whole screen. The original arcade game didn't have this problem at all. You can't change button configurations in the Saturn version (only in PSX version). In both versions, when playing Image Fight it appears that the bullets move a little too fast (compared to the arcade version). On the PSX port, when playing Image Fight in TATE mode (true Vertical mode by flipping your TV on its side, aka true Arcade screen mode) you'll sometimes get graphical glitches.
Funny thing because unlike R-Type where the menus look nice, Image Fight & X-Multiply's menus look really rushed. Of course when does having pretty menus mean anything (never)? If you want to get Image Fight & X-Multiply it's going to cost you a good bit of money. The Saturn version goes for $70-$100 and it's more common than the PSX version (but the weird thing is that the PSX version is cheaper, around $60-$80).
The Saturn version was only released in Japan while the PSX version was released in both Japan and in Asian countries.
