Ikaruga

"Perfect"

Ikaruga for the Japanese Dreamcast is a direct port of the arcade version, a 1-or-2 player vertical shooter, made by Treasure.

But you already knew all that, right? So, here's a little ''history'' (read: ''me talking out my ass'') before we get into the nitty-gritty:

This game has had enough hype preceding it to make it the gaming snob's Metal Gear Solid 2. Not that it's anything like that game in any way whatsoever, but you hopefully know what I'm getting at. If you know where to look, the name of this game has been popping up for quite a while, with rumors of a late Dreamcast release, and thereby a redemption for a lagging Treasure. A chance for them to show their (die-hard but dwindling) fans that they still know how to turn some heads.

Insofar as all that, Ikaruga had already become the next ''holy grail'' of shooting games long before an official Dreamcast port was even announced.

In fact, Treasure had never intended to really put it out on Dreamcast, it was just sort of kicking the ''it's a Naomi game, so a DC port would be pretty simple'' idea around, and, of course, someone heard about it and took it to the net.

When you're Treasure, though, you probably realize that you can only kick your fan base in the junk so many times (Stretch Panic, Bangai-O) before they start to get a little irate, and given that you cater to the hard core market to begin with, it's usually a good idea to go with the flow in cases like this, unless you want to wind up like SNK.

Bottom line, I find a big, shoe box lookin' thing on my doorstep when I get home from work on Sept. 9th, and inside the inexplicably large amount of packaging is a shrink-wrapped Dreamcast game with a cool-lookin' picture of a ship on it that says ''IKARUGA''. Neat!

Now, I've played Radiant Silvergun. I don't own it, despite owning a Saturn, but I've played enough of it to make a halfway decent comparison. That comparison is this: Ikaruga is to Radiant Silvergun as Final Fantasy VI is to Final Fantasy IV. Yeah, they have different plots and some separate mechanics and one looks prettier than the other, but in reality, the newer one is just a more refined version of the older one.

Not, in either case, that this is a bad thing. Oh no, very much the contrary. It was mentioned in another review that the game even says ''Ikaruga: Project RS-2'' when you boot it up. This is true, though the R looks a lot like an A, which I hate. A's have POINTS, dammit! I don't care how ''teched out'' you want your writing to look in a game, differentiate the lett-- Ah, whatever, It still gives you a good idea as to Treasure's intention here.

The first thing to strike you when Ikaruga gets going is how faithful to the arcade version it is. And no, I haven't seen the Arcade version. No need: This IS the arcade version, right down to the letter boxed playing field.

Which is the other issue with the game. Since the original had an elongated screen, the only plausible way to port it to a home version is to scale the screen size down until it fits into the range of a television - Sort of like a letter boxed movie, only with the black bars on the sides of the screen. While you can change the screen format to be horizontal instead of vertical, I don't really recommend that. The game is perfectly playable in this way, but it's the same argument you're likely to hear from anyone; the game was meant to be played as a vertical shooter. It's just like letter boxed movies. You get used to it real fast, and then you feel weird without the black bars there.

And there's plenty of other visual to drawn you in, worry not. While a lot of people have some issues with 3D graphics in old-school games, they work fine here. There's typically some 3D wizardry when the game wants to show off (flying your ship into a massive carrier's insides, for example)the game stays put when you're actually engaged in the act of shooting and being shot at.

Oh, and you will be shot at. A lot.

You've no doubt heard of this game's 2-color feature. Well, in theory, it's pretty easy. You can change colors on the fly between white/blue and black/red. There's a momentary pause while your shield drops down and flips colors, so don't expect to switch from one color to the other while in a huge cloud of bullets (which is a frequent occurrence.) It takes a little practice.

If you ship is hit by a shot that matches your color, the shot is absorbed and added to the ''homing-laser meter thing'' on the left of the screen. Store up to twelve levels of homing meter-ness, depress both the ''shoot'' and ''flip'' buttons, and watch the fireworks.

Shoot a ship the opposite color of you and you'll do double damage. Shoot a ship the same color as you and you'll do normal damage, plus the ship you've shot will explode into shots of it's own color. Blasting a white ship and then flipping yourself to black isn't a good idea: The fragments from the white enemy you took down can still hurt you.

Now, this may not be as simple as it could be, but there are no powerups, no different lasers to speak of, and the screen rarely changes speed or does anything else to trick you.

What it does do is send an ungodly amount of stuff your way and expect you to deal with it, VERY fast. The little shots you deal with in level one become thick lasers in level two, which become homing lasers and moving walls in level three, and it just gets worse from there. It's not uncommon to see people just stare at a level, mouth agape, and wonder just how in the hell they are EVER supposed to get through THAT alive.

For the insane, there is also a trick to racking up a very high score. Shoot any three ships of the same color, in a row, and you get a ''chain'' multiplier. You can do these chains using any color you wish, so just shooting down the white enemies and ignoring the black ones will still result in one long chain (though you'll die so much it'll never be worth it). For kicks, let the demo of the game run before you actually play it. Someone with lots of skill shows you the beginning of levels one and two, wracking up a perfect chain. Now go try to do that yourself. Fun, eh? As if staying alive wasn't challenging enough.

As for the extras and periphery regarding the game, you get a decent amount of extras, many of which are time based. The number of lives can be adjusted slightly (note that the credits can NOT be adjusted, so no ''continuing until you beat the game'' dealies here.) The game's difficulty can be set, ranging from ''easy'' (which means ''hard'' in English) to ''normal'' (which means ''extremely hard'' in English) to ''hard'' (which means ''impossible'' in English). There's a playtime clock, and a very useful ''training'' option which allows you to replay levels you've already reached with infinite lives, in order to learn the patters.

Alternately, the game can be played in a ''trial'' mode, which allots the player infinite continues, but only lets you get up to level two. In other words, be a man. Play it on normal. This is the sort of game where you're expected to know all the levels by heart if you ever want to stand any chance of winning, so you may as well get blown up a few dozen times and pay attention.

The only other notable thing about Ikaruga that I haven't mentioned is that, unlike Radiant Silvergun, Ikaruga is a very dark game. Not dark in the lighting sense, but in the attitude of the game. Flip through the manual, and you see haunted looking watercolors, twisted figures that are mostly black or white depending on who they are, and lots of emancipated, ghostly scenery that really gives the game an unnerving mood. The plot, which is practically nonexistent in the actual game save for a few chapter title cards, actually seems to be fairly well thought out if not implemented. Whatever the game is trying to say, it's not a rainbows-and-kittens future we're looking at.

The only thing this game could ever be faulted for is the genre it belongs to. Shooters are, by nature, short, difficult, and devoid of plot. Still, that's like calling RPGs bad because they don't have any action. While some of them do (much like some shooters have a deep plot - See Einhander) it's not the norm, and it's unfair to deduct points for it.

To bottom-line it, this game is flawless. If you're a shooter fan, this is it, folks. Get it, play it, and then laugh when it goes for 200 bucks on eBay in a few years, because as far as shooters go, this game is as good as we're ever going to get. It's everything you would want in a shooter and nothing you don't, with plenty of gravy bonuses on the GD-ROM for your perusal.

P.S.
If you're a Dreamcast fan, there is no reason why you shouldn't have this game, territory lockouts or no. Really, the import scene is the only way to go for Sega's little gray box, and this game just drives the point home; a stateside release, while welcome, is unlikely. Head to www.ncsx.com or www.gamedepot.com for both the purchase of the game, and information on modding up your Dreamcast.

You won't regret either.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 09/11/02, Updated 09/11/02