So for times like these I love sitting down with a good old shmup like Batsugun picking a ship because I like the way its neon-coloured lasers look, enjoying making everything explode, and watching some fabulous scenery scroll by in one direction at high speed.Īnd the ships really are impressive, with three evolving types split across six characters (sadly permanently separated across player one and two), all armed with one specific type of laser fire that takes mere seconds to be able to fully grasp without any outside help.

The thing is… if I’m being honest with myself… that’s not really why I enjoy playing shmups – and even if I did feel a burning need to claw my way up international rankings it’s never going to happen when it feels like my brain’s been replaced with cotton wool and I’ve got roughly ten precious minutes per day to concentrate on such a skill-intensive game anyway. The game’s often considered to be the birthplace of modern bullet-hell shmups as we know them as well so players can sneak in a little historical game appreciation while they’re at it and I can pretend to be a chronicler of shmups of yore by noticing things in here that I’ve also noticed in DoDonPachi and smugly nodding to myself about it. Sometimes I love sitting down with a good old shmup like Batsugun scouring the internet for the best scoring techniques and all the secret tricks they don’t mention on the little arcade cabinet control panel strip, practising day and night until I know where enemies are coming from before they’re even on the screen while squeezing through the tiniest gap in a haze of bullets and eventually basking in the glory of a hard-earned high score with “-ALL CLEAR!-” proudly displayed next to my gleaming initials at the top of the leaderboard.Īnd if that regard Batsugun’s sure to please even the most seasoned shmupper: There are suicide bullets to avoid, secret point bonuses awarded for destroying (and for not destroying) very specific things at the right moment, hidden cartoon pigs in two colours capable of generating massive score bonuses (and displaying a fun “shocked” animation) if you fly close to them, and minor bullet pattern differences to fret over depending on whether the shot button’s being tapped or held.

Batsugun arcade