Hydorah

P.S. Locomalito, if you read this – please use PNGs for your screenshots. Your pixels are too lovely to be wrecking with JPG artifacts and taking clean screenshots is made difficult by the screen-blurring problem. THANKS.

84 megs? Eh.

very nice artwork; the trailer vid looks great too (http://vimeo.com/7066986)

i like that it has voice acting; more indie games should use voice acting!

Good job on keeping the frontpage updated recently Derek :D

Lovely! This is one of those freeware games I've been anticipating and hoping for since the demo.

I'm blown away by the quality of the package. Great graphics, great sound, great gameplay! Everything has been running silky smooth for me and the gameplay remains fun and challenging without being extremely difficult. I love it. And, it's free!!! Ginorminous Awesomeness! Aaaaaaaaannnnd – it has great gamepad support! Everything about this freeware gem feels user friendly, intuitive, and polished.

The only downside – the human body needs sleep! :-)

But I'll keep playing till my eyes fog up and become glazed with a gooey substance and then caked with a crusty film of dry “sleep” also referred to as “chicken doo-doo”.

Don't pass this one up – unless you suffer from some form of mental illness.

Cheers!

P.S. I concur, good job keeping the front page updated! :)

Derek, if you have an NVIDIA card, try turning on NVIDIA Scaling with fixed aspect ratio in the 'Adjust Desktop Size and Position' on the NVIDIA Control Panel. The graphics look perfect on my display.

Then again I'm runing at 1920×1080 and it might so happen my resolution falls on a square number to the base resolution. No idea. But that setting probably takes care of a lot of things.

Looking at it closer though, it appears Hydorah's fullscreen option doesn't actually affect the desktop resolution. Sorry!

Try changing your display to 16-bit color. That fixed the blurriness for me.

That's a little Christmas right there.

Thanks! :)

So now we expect to hear saturated voice acting in the near future, if you know what I mean :P

there's probably far too much text in the game for that, but it's a consideration; it could be used for special parts or highlights perhaps. one of my older games (alphasix) did have voice acting though, and i liked the experience.

No indie game has made me ragequit so hard before.

Press F9 and you get png screenshots that are pixel sharp!

That is some amazing shit right there. Old school challenge, I love it.

Awesome game, but I have a problem – I cant hear any music in game, menus, anywhere. Is there any solution for this?

Is your OS also Windows XP by any chance…?
I have the same problem, which is a shame as I was really looking foward to playing it… but I don't want to try it until I get the music working.

I had the same problem with Iji and other gamemaker games that use an mp3 soundtrack.
I've done a little bit of searching around and it seems to be something to do with the fact that it uses windows media player to play the files, although I haven''t found any clear answers. I'm not very technically-minded and have no clue how programs work. I might try converting the mp3s to wavs later – that may do the trick but the program might only recognise mp3s or something, so it may be a waste of time.
If anyone has the same problem and knows how to resolve it i'd be greatful.

this game is sooo awesome!
great job guys! :)

I know! The huge file size is digusting. It is utterly ridiculous. I would have played this game if it was a realistic size of 5megs, but something as insanely big as this is just stupid for an indie game. It might have been worth my time if it was smaller. I can belive someone actually expects ME to waste my time going to all the trouble to download such an enormous game. Until the maker of the game learns how to compress their game to AT THE VERY LEAST 10 megs, it isn't worth the huge amount of time it takes to download it and the vast amounts of hard disk it takes up.
I can't believe the sheer gall this “Locomalito” has in expecting people to just download and play their gargantuan game. We are Indie Gamers and we deserve FAR better than this insulting nonsense.

Awesome game, gotta play more to comment more in deep, though. So far I love it!

BTW, Locomalito isn't a crew, it's just the nickname of the guy making the game. So shouldn't be addressed as a group. :)

Oh, come on. It isn't that bad, I'll pass on anything 200+ megs no matter how good it looks, but 80 is reasonable. I agree he could've used a better audio format to take up less space, but gamedevs nowadays don't give a shit about making small size games.

Concerning the sound problems, I'll just quote “gamer” over from the IG Weblog:

“To help with sound issue,
I found this at shmup forum:

http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=15…

Download that, and put the saud.gml and the saud.dll file in the game folder.

Music problems solved!

Hope it works…”

I just don't know what to do with you.

Thanks, although I tried that but it unfortunately does not work. I have a feeling it's something to do with Windows media player or perhaps some kind of codec issue with mp3s. I did try converting the mp3s to wavs although that didn't work. I'll try a few more things.

Great game, unfortunately when a lot of objects are on screen at once things lag horribly for me.

i7, Windows 7 64bit, ATI Radion 5800, 6gb of RAM. So my computer should run it fine.

Size matters! ;-P

it does not work for me too.

@bradf – I have the same problem in Iji as you. and updating wmp, setting it to default player, updating sound card drivers do nothing for me.

I'm loving this game a lot! Graphics and music are great, the game play is old school fun, and the level and enemy designs are fun and varied. I have one minor quibble with the game though…

I dislike the slippery slope that dying creates. Because your ship gets powered down some every time you restart, having a large stock of extra men doesn't aid you much at all. The game gets harder and harder the more you die, so you are best off simply restarting from your save if you lose even one or two ships. This is especially problematic on the bosses, where there is no way to build back up– you have to defeat them the first try or face steeper and steeper odds.

One solution might be after a death to let you select a new location if you want (ie.. back out to the map) So you can enter an easier level and build back up again before trying to tackle the harder level again. This is how say, super mario world works, where you can use easier levels to grab a fire flower or whatever before trying to tackle a challenging level that you can't beat if you enter as just small Mario.

For those of you whining about the download size, pfffft to you sirs. It doesn't take much longer then a good album from iimusic.net does. That is to say, on a 1G connection, with at least 1 or two other users, at least 15-16 minutes. Hopefully I'll get around to playing this one. It just takes a little patience to download it. Honestly, if you want more quality in your indie games then your gonna have to expect slower release times and longer download times. I mean what did you expect? Look at the screen shots and the video. I'm surprised it's not taking me 30 minutes! Get an internet upgrade or stop by a hi-fi hot spot and download it from there, pansies.

May I also say that I'm surprised it's not something like $10-$20 bucks as well. I am delighted that it's freeware.

OK, I gave up trying to get it to work on my laptop due to the sound issues so i'm playing it on someone elses computer.
Even if this game was 5gb and I was forced to brutally punch myself in the face each time I played it, it would still be well worth it. This game is AWESOME.
I cannot not believe that the author has created such a delightful bit of freeware that did not exist previously. I consider myself a privilleged human being to have the oppurtunity to play this.
It has been too long since a game has incited the nostalgic emotion of frustration and kept me going back for more.

The sprites, animations and details are gorgeous, the music is that arcady, catchy, shooty stuff that makes you associate specific music with memories of lamentation of your lack of horizontal schump skill.

I died by crashing into the scenery. This game is excellent.

Disclaimer: OK I am a Gradius fan – but even if you are not this game is highly polished, difficult and very very fun. It even has voice acting – that was a pleasant surprise.

Been psyched about this for a while. Sweet.

Awesome game! I suck at it, but it's really fun, and the artwork, music, and gameplay are perfect.

The game is worth the 80mb file size.

Wait wait wait

Are you the same BradF that was just ranting about how disgusting and terrible the file size is, just a few comments up on the page? Or a different BradF?

Eh. Must have been sarcasm. I guess I didn't read it right.

I wish I was good at these games. I can't get past level 2 yet it has 16?!

I can't tell if this guy is serious or not.

“We are Indie Gamers and we deserve FAR better than this insulting nonsense.”

You don't deserve anything. The sense of entitlement in this post is appalling. If you don't like it, don't play it. No one cares.

Are you serious? Thanks god nobody is going to listen you. Go, continue to download crappy 1 Mb games, that the rest of us will download a game of 50 Mb of shump glory, good music, good graphics, and 16 levels with 30 bosses.

If it is irony, it is a very bad one…

The levels don't really get more difficult – just different. You have to use your saves and just man up. (Or use infinite lives like I did for the first playthrough :-D).

He was being sarcastic, you gigantic dolt.

Jesus H. Christ you guys are something else. You wouldn't recognize sarcasm if it hit you in the face with an iron tire and killed your dog.

Sarcasm is getting a bit long in the tooth isn't it?
Yes sarcasm – what was it again the bastion of pseudointelligence.

hehe, noob :P

Does this mean it is part of the fortification (of pseudointelligence) of irony?

Back in ma day, people just used to call me “idiot trying to talk all smart”. But now they indirectly impy I am “pseudointelligent” and all of this long-word malarkey. I like to imagine that they are slightly sloshing some expensive red wine at me as they look down upon this vulgar peasants attempts to mingle with the gentry.

And I also have problems getting the music to play. Sound is good, but no music. Keep us posted if a solution is found!

So, is a FREE, highly polished stg a “insulting nonsense” that offends Your
Highness? Go have your brain checked, they might find a tumor.

Besides, it's the soundtrack that's 60mb, the core game's about 20mb.

Locomalito gets 100K of Kudos of this game!
Old school, arty, perfect execution.

However, the save-system is a brave attempt gone totally wrong. The result, unfortunately, is that the game is too fustrating to be any fun. Most people, like me, will never see any level past level 4 or 5 because it takes just too many runs of level 1-2 to get there, which is probably a pity (due to saving system, you have to do a flawless run of the first few levels to be able to go past farther ones).

I wouldn't know what else to suggest, but to give up the interesting, but flawed, new ideas on the saving system and use a standard one.

(that's the old problem with difficulty. Make it too easy and it is not challanging => not fun. Make it hard, and it is fun to do… the first few times.Force the player to do 1000000 flawless actions in a row, or restart from skratch, and it takes 2^1000000 runs to get it right. Unfortunately it stops being fun after the first few dozens. Well timed save point avoid this problem. Limited saves bring it back, even if it is postponed by a little).

i'd try updating directx and windows media player

but yeah, this is why i don't use gm's sound engine, i use a dll; i wish everyone who used game maker would use a sound dll instead for issues like this

with game maker games what matters is individual cpu speed, not ram or videocard. if you have a quad core at 2.0ghz for instance, you'd run it much slower than someone with a single core at 3.0ghz. game maker relies on cpu cycles more than anything, and only uses one cpu at once.

ya, just how many people missed that it was sarcasm (or called him pseudointellectual after realizing it was sarcasm, and, feeling dumb for missing it, were psychologically forced to call him pretending to be smart) was the funniest thing on the frontpage in a while

although it also actually reminds me of how, when i first posted an earlier game of mine (alphasix) on the game maker community forums, people complained that it was 17 megabytes — SEVENTEEN. and demanded that i create a version without music and voice acting so they could download it.

This game would be fun if there was a way to control your speed. Like, a slow down button like in most bullet hell shmups. As is, the game stops being fun the second you pick up too many of the speed powerups. Once you get going too fast there's now way to make fine adjustments to your position, which makes grabbing the powerups that are close to the walls, or dodging bullets that are close together almost impossible.

A save system that actually made sense would be nice too.

i agree with this partially. indie shmups have advanced the shmup genre far beyond what the mainstream shmups did in the 80s, adding lots of important innovations, but this game seems to be intentionally ignoring those advancements in favor of making it feel like an 80s shmup rather than a modern shmup, so even though in isolation the feature sounds great to add, adding it may have taken away from the retro nostalgia they were going for.

Also the bastion of pseudohumor.

Wow you really analyze the crap out of aggregate frontpage interactions…scary impressive. Any charts for us mister?

post whatever you want about me if that makes you feel good about yourself, i don't care and that comes with the territory of being an editor, just try not to attack other commenters, thanks

I actually agree with the idea of being able to slow down your ship or having the ability to select variable speeds e.g. Einhander. However, the 3 saves idea is actually pretty smart. First of all, this shmup is pretty large, even by todays standards. There are branching paths and 16 levels in total. Classic shmups would give you the option of continuing (usually an unlimited amount of times in the arcade – depending on how many quarters you had left) while pc and eventually console shmups slowly geared towards having limited continues. From my recollection, this was done on purpose to:

A) add longevity to what would normally be a short game (there were always cheat codes – but they're for the weak) ;-)

B) forced the player to become better at the game learning the patterns and methodology behind enemies in order to rack up higher scores and gain bigger bonuses which included increasing weapon strength and power-ups while trying to maintain those power-ups.

C) Dying late in the game always made it more difficult to proceed any further, which sometimes forced people to start over from the beginning. I admit, that probably doesn't exactly seem fair, but it was all part of the game and forcing the player to get better at it.

Some of the most memorable shmups would fall just shy of being very difficult to master while also giving players the ability to recognize that they are getting better ever time (or every few times) they attempt to play and get farther. I think life force did this very well even though it was one of the easier shooters (in the series) it was also very apparent (to me) that I kept getting better and better as I learned the level layout and patterns of the enemies and bosses all while understanding which weapons worked best where and when – with that said, you could never have too many “options”. :-) That last statement is purely based on personal opinion, but it could be applied to any classic shooter that someone was very fond of and required persistence in order to become better at it.

So perhaps there is a slightly better way to implement a save game system without ruining the difficulty or learning process.

Looking back at it all this game is very tame in many ways but I believe that's part of its appeal and that nostalgic feelings only adds to the memory of those classics even though this title is very much a game of it's own. I think it's a great achievement to have such a full featured shmup that is also a freeware indie game. The adjustable speed feature would be a welcome addition, but I don't think there is very much else that needs to be changed. It's a memorable title and experience as part of this classic genre.

This is pretty amazing. Very high quality all around. Much improved from the demo that was released a while back.

The only complaint I've got is the boss on the insect level. It enters very quickly from the *back* of the screen, where your ship is. There's no warning and previous bosses have entered from the front of the screen. This means that the first time you get to that boss with your snazzy, powered up ship, you're going to die. Sure it's easy to avoid on subsequent attempts, but getting instantly crushed by something you had no way of knowing about feels like a cheap shot in an otherwise very polished game.

is this game still a euroshmup trying to act like it's an oldschool gradius game? the demo shown on tigsource a while back was pretty much was that. i can't stand euroshmups.

nevermind, it's actually a lot better now. it *almost* actually feels like an actual konami j-shmup now. though I can't help but to laugh at the fake japanese accents and Engrish thrown in, they are trying way too hard to be j.

THIS IS BOSS. Enough said!!

WAIT. The bastion of sarcasm which is part of the fortification of irony which are both part of the larger bastion of pseudointelligence. Or would that be a kingdom of pseudointelligence…? And now there is the bastion of pseudohumor? Is the bastion of pseudohumor part of the fortification of irony, thus putting on the same level of the bastion of sarcasm?

I am not sure what you are getting at….

!

Oh you FIEND! You're just confusing me with your high degree of intelligence. I see what you are up to, you devil! Much like how a cat plays with a doomed rat giving the rat a false sense of hope before finally killing it with its claws of inevitability, you seek to bamboozle and confound a hopeless moron such as myself with an impressive array of architectural metaphors, before shaming me in front of the Community of Indie Gamers and exposing me as the idiot I am, hopelessly (and naively) trying to speak as if I was on the same level as upstanding Intellectuals such as yourself.
OH, what a fool I have been!!

If you're worried about my comments shaming you don't worry! You're doing well enough for yourself already!

Ok…so it's apparently ok if someone posts a tired sarcastic remark that adds nothing to the discussion? Nice double standard there! Thanks. (at least I have the courtesy to spend some capitalization here and there, mr. EDITOR)

Although it is clearly a homage, it is worth playing and a very very fun game in its own right! If you are a Gradius or Thunderforce fan, you should enjoy this.

@judgespear
I'm not sure if their trying to put on a Japanese accent, but I suspect it is due to the voice actors not being native English speakers.

But at the same time think about this possibility: someone else out there manages to avoid this boss on the first try, and feels SUPER good about themselves.

I think that's what balances this out.

You are delightful!

In order to avoid further confusion I will rephrase what you wrote:

WENIS MARTIN ENTERS LEFT

WENIS MARTIN: You are worried about me constructing a bastion of shame for you? HA!HA! Fear not! For you are merely expanding your fortress of irony by building a bastion of shame on your own volition! And futhermore – you are making a fine job of it!

HE SLOSHES WINE ONTO THE DEFEATED FORM OF BRADF

BRADF: Alas! All this time I thought Sir Wenis was constructing me a bastion of shame before the Esteemed Community of TIGSource, he was merely humoring me! It was I that was constructing my own bastion of shame, as he watched my efforts with detatched amusement! Damn my humble origins! I thought I could converse with the gentry upon equal terms, how deluded I was! OH! How I curse the day I was born a fool!

BRADF COLLAPSES IN DESPAIR

Eh, 4 out of 5, should have included a reference to phenomenon 32.

What is wrong with you people?
This is a fucking masterpiece right there. A rare gem.

I boot it up, and the whole vibe about – the intro, the title screen, the menu, the music and the first level – it all sends chills down my spine, and i go like “fuck yeah!” in an instant – i know i'm in for a treat!

It's that good.

Only peasants with lowly dial-up connections can complain about the dl size of measly 80 megs (it takes no more than a minute to download this for normal people)

That's not Engrish, the developers are Spanish and the voices are in Spanish-accented English.

Is it really worth randomly killing everyone else though? It only affects players who've never seen the boss before; the people most likely to not have a lot of lives.

It's 2010. I'll download anything any size, especially if it's free and made with love, and I won't bitch about it.

This is a pretty amazing game. Everyone's already touched on the good stuff, the music, the graphics, the variety of stages…

But I gotta say, the way the cutscenes and voice acting are slipped into the game is absolutely top notch. Short, short scenes with pretty graphics and short sound clips, you're not left feeling like you downloaded a movie with some game attached. You have absolutely the perfect amount. Enough to be fun and exciting without getting in the way. I've probably started half a dozen new games now, and I watch the intro scenes every time because they're sexy without being so bloated to make me want to get them out of the way.

Absolutely perfect on that, guys!

-SirNiko

Brilliant. Thanks for writing it up!

Hahahahah, bradf is fucking amazing. +333338938383 internets

pay close attention to the launch sequence, right after it jumps to the level. then again you probably don't even understand what it's blatantly referencing so I'm not going to bother explaining.

Oh shit I didn't get the sarcasm, better make something up…

Errr…

PSUEDOINTELLIGENCE

Yeah, that'll throw em off.

So this IS Game Maker after all. I started suspecting it after the ridiculously long load time. Stuttering music made me sure.

Man, that save system is genius. It lets you practice a tricky level as necessary without letting you just brute-force your way through on unlimited continues. Removes the boredom without removing the challenge. Perfect.

My only two complaints have to do with the low-res (unscaled) mode. It ought to display in 2x 640×480 instead of 320×240, to improve compatibility; and it ought to remember settings between sessions.

Other than that, love it. :)

“Ok…so it's apparently ok if someone posts a tired sarcastic remark that adds nothing to the discussion?”

Beautiful, just beautiful. I think I love you.

I don't get the problem, do you people still use dial-up or something? When 1.5 terabytes costs around a hundred bucks, and everyone on the face of the planet has broadband (or at LEAST DSL), it isn't an issue. Even on 1Mbps DSL it'll download overnight.

By the way, it was painfully obvious that bradf was being sarcastic.

Just sayin', yo.

Also this game is fantastic.

Yeah, I like. My only gripe so far is that the ship's hitbox is too big. Or maybe it's just that I suck at not hitting the damn walls all the time. Or platforms. You know, the brownish things that the yellow cannons walk on. The ground? BACKground… nah, the background's in the background.
Anyway, I suck at not hitting it. Crashing, that is. Yes, much better.

I completely agree with the save feature. I love it.

As for mapping the pause button to the gamepad, it actually does work on my gamepad. I didn't really even have to configure it. I'm using a Saitek gamepad and it appears to be mapped to button 8. Quite convenient actually, although a way to configure which button is the pause button (including all other buttons) would be great for other people. I got lucky though, the layout is perfect. :-)

I fixed the problem :D, ran it in compatibility mode XP sp3 and as an admin and it works flawlessly so far, music and all :D.

I really want to be able to say that I'm ASTONISHED that so many people thought BradF was being serious. But this is the internet, and being incapable of recognizing sarcasm seems to be the status quo! Y'all are in painful need of reading comprehension lessons. :C

As for this game: I downloaded it just for the music.

Awesome game, but I remain under the impression that world 2 is harder than the next 3 of them. The boss at the end of world 2 is insanely hard for where he is in the game.

I had trouble with him, too… I think it's the green lasers. They always manage to psyche me out for some reason.

>>Removes the boredom

Really? I've given up, seeing how I still couldn't pass level 2 after spending a whole week-end on it. Maybe beause I suck or because I'm over 30 & lost all the required patience I don't know. This game would turn the Dalai Lama bitter, so I prefer to stop rather than start punching everything around me. Will wait a couple of months until all the kids are proud of having beaten it, & a cheat will be revealed for us mortals to have a chance to see level 3.

yes, there's a big difference between making a humorous, good-natured joke and calling someone pseudo-intelligent because you took the joke seriously.

ya — i was very surprised that even smithy took bradf literally, usually smithy's smarter than that

i mean, when someone starts talking in absolutes and using all caps they're usually faking it

This is my kind of game. Thank you Locomalito! 3 years of development and free, you didn't have to do that. I am donating.

Are there any mirrors ? The site seems to be down.

It doesn't get any easier I am afraid to say. Just wait until level…whenever the paths re converge after the first split. Oh my goodness. Takes me back to Einhander's factory. But it's a bitch and a half.

I would download 84Mb of something that looked interesting, but not a gradius clone with bells and whistles. I don't give a shit about voice overs.

Am I the only person here that is brutally defeated by this game? Usually, I don't mind playing a game over and over to beat it. I played Spelunky over 700 times before I finally won. But I just run through the first few levels a couple of times and I'm already bored out of my mind. I understand the reason why: Repeating a level over and over and over again is never any fun.

The limited save system doesn't make sense to me. It makes this tedious task all the more aggravating. Couldn't there be some sort of easy mode where I get unlimited saves? As it stands now, I have no interest to play this game. Well, technically I'm not playing the game, I'm just playing level 1 and 2.

is it any easier than the demo?

I must say I was well and truly humbled by it, considering i have finished every r-type, fantasy zone, ikaruga and a few others. Although I was always terrible at gradius so maybe there's something about that style.

Just played it and I believe it is easier than the demo. Still hard, but I made it to the boss of level 2 at least.

'Repeating a level over and over and over again is never any fun.'

If you feel that way, then this style of game is just not for you.

Most commercial games nowadays seem to be designed to challenge the player -just- enough to make them feel a sense of accomplishment. Designers consciously avoid forcing the player to hone his skills in order to progress further, because there's a fear (justified, as your comments illustrate) that 'today's gamers' will be turned off by having to repeat a portion of the game until they become good enough at it to advance further.

Some of us are still partial to the uncompromising nature of classic 8- and 16-bit console games. Getting through the games usually involved playing through the early levels repeatedly, and starting over from scratch whenever you ran out of lives or continues, until you gradually mastered each stage. Unlike today's epics, it would often be possible to beat these games in a half-hour to an hour if you could play straight through without dying. It's the practice and repetition and slow process of mastery that gave these games their longevity.

Some of us still enjoy games like that, and they're becoming increasingly rare nowadays. I'm glad Locomalito went that route with Hydorah, even if it meant sacrificing a potentially broader audience.

In some ways, I like the “uncompromising nature” of those old games… I remember replaying Megaman many, many, many times. Each time you play through you learn better ways to play.

When I played through Half Life 2, however, I rarely died, if at all. I never got the chance to try a level more than once because the game always pushes you forward and kind-of lets you win.

I agree! The boss was otherwise very simple, but the green lasers had me confused for a long time!

and despite the risk of looking like i'm talking to myself here; this game is great.
I used my second save after beating level 2 and I'm scared to use my last one now before at least getting to the third section. the intermediary levels are easier, I believe it's designed that way to encourage you to play through them in one go. getting absolutely destroyed at the moment by the floating things in the level with the wind and sand.

awesome game, I'm terrible at it though :( I can't even beat the second level lol.

these replies are getting really narrow, i wonder if it'll go down to one character per line?

Obviously you've never played 'I wanna be the guy.'

I dunno, I kind of want to find out though!

if anyone's having a bit of trouble with the boss of lvl 2, try this strategy…it sorta worked for me:

stay around the top of his head so ur bullets and bombs both hit it. it's a rather safe zone from the green lasers it shoots out, and u only have to dodge the normal shots. but every time he finishes shooting those lasers, be prepared to duck back a bit the moment it jumps up so u can dodge the falling rocks.

the 2nd phase i'm not so sure about…unless ur lvled up and/or lucky, ur toast :p

can't seem to find the other 5 secrets…

After spending days with this, I must declare myself beaten.
The last few levels (specifically the very last one, and the snake segment of Path of Schylla) are just absurd. When I had really enough, I want and see the youtube video of people beating these two levels. Well, they makes no sense IMO.

Hard is fine, but it was pushed too far to be fun. In these levels there is literally no location where you can dodge, you just need to <spolier removed> instead, which is not fun, reduces the spectrum of strategies to just one, and reduces the effective number of attempts you have before you have to redo it from start to ONE ship, regardless of number of lives. That's just bad design, I say.

Apart from that, terrific game, very nice from concept to polish, and a true sign of love and dedication from the authors. If only it was tuned better to be “just” extremely hard (as hard as, say, the pre-last all-bosses level) it would have been TOP NOTCH.

(Go the other way first)

I think the save system is designed to have you redo the entire game from level 0 after days of joyful playing and getting better. It is great to find out you are now so good enough that you can go much further before saving the 1st time. And then… again, a lot later.

Not a bad design, if you ask me. It makes different “you”s play the same level twice (or even three times).

Yes, it's hard, but not unfair. You want hard? Try Vulcan Venture on MAME.

This game is really awesome, many games I download for my psp are over a gig. As are many of those I download for my computer. As long as the game is good I see no reason to be upset over the file size.

I've choosen this game to record a easy earned 1cc and now i know how i was wrong! Anyway i'm still trying to beat Hydorah.