{"id":19929,"date":"2020-02-28T00:01:08","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T00:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=19929"},"modified":"2020-02-12T03:07:29","modified_gmt":"2020-02-12T03:07:29","slug":"psikyo-shooting-stars-bravo-switch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2020\/02\/28\/psikyo-shooting-stars-bravo-switch\/","title":{"rendered":"Psikyo Shooting Stars Bravo (Switch)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Back in the 90\u2019s and seeping a bit into the 2000\u2019s, one of the kings of arcade 2-D shooters was Psikyo.\u00a0 Now NIS America has compiled a couple of collections of Psikyo\u2019s games on the Switch, so today we\u2019re going to take a look at the ones in Bravo, as opposed to Alpha.\u00a0 I hate it that I missed out on reviewing Alpha earlier, but I liked this Bravo collection so much that I went out and bought them both, so I can talk about Alpha later.<\/p>\n

Gunbird<\/strong><\/p>\n

So first we\u2019ll take a look at the games on Bravo.\u00a0 The first is Gunbird.\u00a0 It\u2019s a 2-D vertically scrolling shooter and you can pick up power-ups to increase your rate and range of fire, and also pick up screen clearing bombs.\u00a0 If you hit an enemy craft, you\u2019ll lose one of your power ups, but if you hit one of their bullets, you\u2019ll lose a life!\u00a0 Instead of spaceships, you control a cast of somewhat silly characters, like a witch girl on a broom, a lady based on the main character from Journey to the West, a robot, and more.\u00a0 Two players can play co-op as well.\u00a0 This game actually did come to the US back then, but under a different name.\u00a0 If you remember the budget PSOne title \u201cMobile Light Force\u201d with that horrible box art of military ladies running toward you (which had nothing to do with the game at all), yeah that\u2019s Gunbird!\u00a0 Interestingly enough, there was a Mobile Light Force 2 on the PS2, with the same horrible box art, but it was actually a different shooter, this time Shikigami no Shiro!<\/p>\n

Gunbird 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

The real sequel is just more of the same.\u00a0 Even the power-ups are identical.\u00a0 But it has better graphics and new characters to play as.\u00a0 The witch girl is back, along with a fat Arabian dude on a magic carpet and more.\u00a0 This game came out on the Dreamcast in the US, and I own it. \u00a0Since the Dreamcast version was published by Capcom, they added a couple of new characters, including Morrigan from the DarkStalkers series. \u00a0But this version doesn\u2019t have that, so sorry Morrigan fans.<\/p>\n

Gunbarich<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is a Gunbird spinoff game.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know why it\u2019s called that, as it looks like someone tried to say \u201cGunbird\u201d and sneezed about halfway through.\u00a0 If I were naming the game, I would\u2019ve called it GunBlock, but maybe that name was taken.\u00a0 Anyway, after playing the first two games I was worried that every game on this collection would be practically the same, but that\u2019s not the case here as Gunbarich is a BreakOut\/Arkanoid clone!\u00a0 You can choose to play as the witch girl (guess she\u2019s the Gunbird mascot) or a pirate kid that looks like the main character from Zack and Wiki.\u00a0 You\u2019ll break blocks, collect power-ups, fight bosses, and repel bullets with your paddle in levels.\u00a0 Your paddle is actually a pair of pinball flippers and you can press a button to give the ball more power if you time it right.\u00a0 It\u2019s a nice change of pace from the other games in this collection.<\/p>\n

Samurai Aces (Sengoku Ace)<\/strong><\/p>\n

So after that bit of a change, we\u2019re back with another vertically scrolling shooter.\u00a0 It\u2019s a lot like Gunbird, just with a different theme and characters.\u00a0 The game has kind of a feudal Japan setting, with flying enemies based on Japanese folklore.\u00a0 Characters you can play as include a ninja lady, priestess girl, samurai dude, a dog, you know, typical Japan stuff.\u00a0 They fly in these fantasy style airplanes as they shoot anything that moves.\u00a0 If this all sounds weird to you, it\u2019s probably because Psikyo was founded by people who previously made a famous shooter for another company called Aero Fighters.\u00a0 In that one, you can play as a dolphin, baby, or pop star as they pilot fighter jets!\u00a0 Interestingly enough, Samurai Aces was also Psikyo\u2019s first game as a new company.\u00a0 This game is definitely harder than the others in this collection, and has more of a \u2018bullet hell\u2019 feel to it.<\/p>\n

Tengai (Sengoku Blade)<\/strong><\/p>\n

They decided to change things up in the sequel because instead of being a vertically scrolling shooter, now it\u2019s a horizontal one.\u00a0 Still plays pretty much the same, though.\u00a0 It was called Tengai in the US but I don\u2019t ever remember seeing it in the arcades.\u00a0 Some returning characters include the priestess girl who throws cards, but now she\u2019s a bit bustier than before.\u00a0 There\u2019s also a ninja princess who has a lemur animal pal with her.\u00a0 They don\u2019t pilot planes anymore, though, as they just fly around by themselves.\u00a0 Guess they took their vitamins.\u00a0 The 2-D pixel artwork in the backgrounds are especially nice.<\/p>\n

Samurai Aces 3 (Sengoku Cannon)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Apparently this game was on the PSP, but I\u2019m not sure if it made it to the US or not.\u00a0 It\u2019s pretty much the same game as before, except with 3-D backgrounds that are a bit lacking in detail and can get choppy sometimes.\u00a0 The busty priestess lady returns (guess she\u2019s the mascot of these games) along with some other characters.\u00a0 It\u2019s not quite as good as the second game, but they did add a neat gameplay feature that I do like.\u00a0 Along with your rapid fire shots and bombs, you can shoot out a charged beam and if it delivers the final blow to an enemy, all the bullets on screen turn into coins and can really boost your score.\u00a0 I also really like the character art in this game.\u00a0 It was done by Jun Tsukasa, and I really like some of this artist\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

And those are all the games on Bravo!\u00a0 At any time during these games, you can pull up an options screen and toggle all sorts of things, like how you view the screen and difficulty selection.\u00a0 You can make the games super easy if you like, which is great for people like me who love to play these kinds of games, but are horrible at them.\u00a0 One thing you can do is rotate the screen on vertically scrolling shooters so it\u2019s on the side.\u00a0 This is also called \u201ctate\u201d mode.\u00a0 Only problem is that you have to take out the Joycon controllers to play this way, and there are no stands that I know of to make the Switch screen to stand on its side like that.\u00a0 Someone should make a Labo cardboard arcade cabinet!\u00a0 Luckily if you play the games in the original format, it\u2019s not too hard to see the action, even in handheld mode.\u00a0 I guess it\u2019s because since these games are older and have lower resolution.<\/p>\n

The only other problem I had with this game is that it\u2019s a bit bare boned.\u00a0 It\u2019s just the games and that\u2019s it. Which is fine, but last year, NIS America released a collection of SNK arcade games on the Switch, and it had all sorts of cool artwork in the game and facts that even I didn\u2019t know!\u00a0 It just would\u2019ve been nice if that was on this collection as well.\u00a0 And I also don\u2019t like that they split up the games into two sets.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any reason why they couldn\u2019t have been all in one collection.\u00a0 And if you want to buy this game physically, you have to get the special editions, which are a bit overpriced.\u00a0 There\u2019s no regular edition you can get cheaper that I\u2019m aware of.\u00a0 But even with these problems, I enjoyed playing this collection and learning more about the games.\u00a0 It’s hard to describe, but there\u2019s something about these kinds of arcade games that just draws me into them.\u00a0 So yeah, I still really liked it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Psikyo Shooting Stars Bravo is rated T for Teen with ESRB descriptors of Fantasy Violence and Suggestive Themes.\u00a0 You shoot lasers and missiles and other projectiles at mechanical flying ships that explode or fall off the screen when defeated.\u00a0 Some of the anime styled female characters are well endowed and wear revealing outfits.\u00a0 All games have two player support so more folks in the family can enjoy it together.\u00a0 I certainly enjoyed playing games like this with my brothers when they were younger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in the 90\u2019s and seeping a bit into the 2000\u2019s, one of the kings of arcade 2-D shooters was Psikyo.\u00a0 Now NIS America has compiled a couple of collections of Psikyo\u2019s games on the Switch, so today we\u2019re going to take a look at the ones in Bravo, as opposed to Alpha.\u00a0 I hate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":19923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19929"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19931,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19929\/revisions\/19931"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}