Sunday, July 1, 2012

Update 7/1 - Aero Fighters/Sonic Wings, Dark Fall, Oniken, Vigilance of Talos V, Paranoiascope, Ether Vapor Remaster

Aero Fighters, also known under the name Sonic Wings, is a series of overhead shooters mostly known for featuring a dolphin named Spanky. Essentially the predecessor to various Psikyo games like Sengoku Ace, they're fairly okay games elevated to extra levels of goofiness due to their cast members. To contrast that, take a look at the Dark Fall games, a series of (mostly) first person horror adventure games from developed Jonathan Boakes. And for just plain flat out craziness, do check out Paranoiascape, designed by a Hollywood special effets artist who calls himself. Screaming Mad George.

Vigilance on Talos V is a game I remember from a PC Gamer demo disc ages ago, mostly because it was a huge ripoff of Super Metroid, blended with a bit of Turrican and some Western design and graphic sensibilities. It's clumsy, but anyone with a thing for exploratory platformers should take a look, at least, because while parts of it seem like heavy infringement, it does have a style of its own. And part 11 of the iOS Shooters article covers Siberian Strike, Sky Thunder, SkySmash 1918 and Shoot It.

On the recent indie side of things, Oniken is a brilliant tribute to NES action games, taking inspiration from Ninja Gaiden, Vice: Project Doom, any number of Natsume games (Shatterhand, Shadow of the Ninja, SCAT), along with a healthy influence from Fist of the North Star and other bits of craziness. It's a ridiculous deal for $5 over at Desura. And Nyu Media, who has been releasing a number of doujin localizations like Satazius and the eXceed shooter trilogy, has published Ether Vapor Remaster, an enhanced version of the classy shoot-em-up we covered here a few years back, also available from their web site for a very reasonable $7.99. And finally, Your Weekly Kusoge is Savage Warriors, one of the many long line of ill-conceived, ill-executed fighting game clones for the PCs in the mid-90s.

5 comments:

  1. Oniken features a guy trying to outrun a polar bear on his motor cycle. He fights the polar bear by hucking grenades overs his shoulder. That one picture sold me on the whole thing.

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  2. I must be the only one who thought the Oniken physics were kinda off model for a NES game. Created with MMF, feels like MMF. Not surprised, but disappointed.

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  3. Hmm, too bad Oniken's controls are locked to a few profiles. I'd like to reverse the jump and shoot buttons on my keyboard without having to use WASD for movement.

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  4. It might be a silly workaround until they fix it, but maybe try Joy2Key and map it to one of the keyboard profiles?

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  5. Thank you so much for the PARANOIASCAPE spotlight! Great game. Still waiting for an article on VIB-RIBBON (or the whole "franchise" if you want), not to mention LITTLE RALPH...

    PS1 forever.

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