Wheee!

This is a bullet hell shmup. You have a few ships to pick from at the start, each of which have slightly different guns and massively-undersized hit-boxes, then you pick between two bombs (which the game calls “reflects” because shut up) before being thrown into the game. The A button fires your bullets for a second or two, the X button is for rapid fire, and the B button uses one of your aforementioned bombs (which, like other bullet hell shmups, not only damages enemies, but also clears the screen of all enemy projectiles). Most enemies just drop star medallions (points), but you also have your standard shot power-up and +1 bombs.

From what I could tell, the standout feature in this game is that it supports 4-player simultaneous play, which is why I played it before the first one (most other bullet hells, and even normal shmups, only go up to 2 players). Of course, being a bullet hell, having three (or even two) other players and their shots on screen just makes it that much more chaotic, especially once you realize that two of the available ships are blue (I lost my place at least a couple times).

But besides that, it’s a pretty standard bullet hell. You have to get through waves of projectiles that would be impossible to avoid with a normal-sized hit-box (and even then, there are times where I’m pretty sure the only way to avoid dying is to use a screen-clearing bomb), dying resets your gun to its weakest and your bombs to 2, and on top of instantly re-spawning when you die, you have infinite continues (so even the least skilled among us will be able to beat the game). If you like bullet hell shmups, chances are you’ll like this game, too. Honestly, my biggest gripe is with the cut-scenes: the text only barely shows up long enough for you to read it before automatically progressing to the next bit of text. Why couldn’t it just stay still and let us progress the dialogue on our own? This is a home console port, for crying out loud!

Recommended.