Preliminary: At first I wasn't sure. I haven't been in a shmup mood as much lately, but the Look was quite unique and pulled me in. Then I really liked the power-up where I had little flexible uh arms/appendages that can shoot and do damage, and then even more and more power-ups that I enjoyed! I'm thinking the power-ups will be what get me into this game. Cuz that first "mini-boss" was pretty neat (good Look for sure), but I didn't like that it started forcing me on before I was finished :-p I see there are only 7 stages, but I also read that it gets super hard. Hopefully it doesn't get un-fun-even-with-save-states hard! Haha.

Stage 1 wasn't too hard. But.. that was stage 1 haha. And ngl the Look is quite cool and tho I usually hate death sounds, this death sound effect zap thing is pretty neat :-p

Argh but during the 2nd stage I downgraded with one of the power-ups I picked up >.< I can't even shoot straight anymore? But I got through it and got a new power-up soon on the 3rd stage. Flying along! And I like how the backgrounds give "depth" like in a Mortal Kombat background

Day 1

Yay right before the Zelda-esque mini boss thing in Stage 3 I got my preferred special weapon back (the red/orange laser thingies) and now Imma try to keep these going forward :-p

Hm now these four corners boss thingies... I sure wish you could turn around? I guess I see the benefit of that other kind of power-up where you can shoot backward but uh. This is just odd design. Ohhhh just discovered that any part of your appendages do damage, so I didn't need the ball/shooting part to touch. Still a bit odd of odd design to have so many enemies behind you throughout game.

Oooo the tune in Stage 4 is real good. But uh it's getting obnoxiously hard here. I almost gave up but I watched a longplay and realized the little arm thingies are pulling the stage closed so I believe if I kill those fast enough it wont be as obnoxiously hard... butttt I have to start with no power-ups since I died. This'll be the test for the game :-X If I drop it here...

Ok I got past that part after 1 more death, but like... this vertical gap I had to get through because of where the level ended up lying... yes I had to use savestates

Welp I wound up dropping it during the boss of the 4th stage. The difficulty was getting to the "un-fun" point and I'm kindaaaa sortaaaa slowly learning to drop a game once its levels get to the un-fun difficulty. Nothing wrong with making your later levels very hard. My main beef with the mid to late 80s was how often it was even just half way through the game, sometimes sooner, that it got to that point. Plus, difficulty doesn't always have to be un-fun. But coin eating became such a thing. So it goes. By dropping a game at this point tho it actually helps the game. If I pushed through and resorted to outright savestate abuse, then I likely would've wound up even more frustrated by the end of the game like I've been learning. So it's good for both me and the game to accept that sometimes not finishing the game is fine, and that one can enjoy the earlier levels of games.

Look: 8/10 Really neat look. Nothing spectacularly advanced for an 89 arcade game, but a neat setting, consistent, kinda gross, R-Type esque etc

Sound: 8/10 Another highlight. Some bangers in here.

Play: 7.5/10 Too hard for me from Stage 4 and on, but the first 3 stages were solid shmup fun and reinvigorated sommmme interest in the genre.

Feel: 7.5/10 The Look and Sound make for an overall nice Feel, but if the difficulty got higher while maintaining doability and fun, I'd likely boost this higher since would build up a greater Feel with it.

Attachment: 7.5/10 Similarly, I can't say I want to play through it again since I know it gets un-fun hard at a point. But, I also have to recognize that I did give it a couple more tries after dying a few times and that it's a unique Look and Sound I might want to show others/not forget.

Overall: 7.7/10

Completion: To the boss of the 4th stage

Plsytime: ~30m