Preliminary: Wow what a beautiful beginning screen and music! Hopefully the game is good. This entry made it sound like the Master System port was the original, but this was originally for arcades and directly referenced the song. This screenshot is from the original, arcade version.

Look: 9/10 Yep, the amazing title screen and music was fortunately a leadup to an impressive game. I wasn't entirely sure what was going on, but it was pick up and play able: shoot the enemies (such a cutesy look with brutal shooting gameplay lol), collec their tiny versions ASAP lol, and apparently the levels end at some point? Anyway, within minutes I was at the first bonus area and chose the girl character, who must be Yohko Ishino (I need to listen to the song this game references, it seems!). Such a great screen it led to! 1985! So long from the SNES and Pokemon looks like this!

Sound: 8/10 Catchy tune, technically gets repetitive but fits an arcade vibe perfectly and fits the gameplay very well.

Play: 7/10 As usual with arcade games, tight controls and well-done level designs. I'm never a huge fan of infinitely looping levels, but at least there are 50 solidly different levels I can strive for. So far the difficulty is manageable... we shall see. Since I can't play this on the true arcade machine, the controls were a bit much to get used to, nothing to fault the game tho. Lol at one point, on the 11th round, one of the tiny enemies (which I wanted to collect before it became a time muncher!) was in a loop of falling down where no platforms blocked it, so I had to time my jump perfectly to collect it while keeping up on the alive enemies. It was funny seeing it loop endlessly down then down again then down again from the top of the screen :-p If it weren't for the repetitive feeling the gameplay eventually gets due to the insane amount of unique rounds (and then it even re-cycles, to boot), this would be an easy 8 or higher because it is good gameplay (I mean, cmon, a platformer with ability to fight back) and tight controls. Just the length of it, resultant repetitiveness, and Flicky-style level designs get in the way of a higher rating.

Feel: 8/10 So, near the bottom of these absolutely beautiful screens (which loop around, mind you, so sometimes it's easier to get a tiny enemy that way), it shows the round you're on. 50 sounded like a lot, but before I knew it I was at 7... that should be doable right?! Haha. Sega sure knows how to hook me with games like this, Flicky comes to mind. They know how to make an amazing look, catchy sound, and tight gameplay that culminates into an excellent Feel, even when you're not in the mood for gaming! (I started playing this on a crabby, headachey, irritable mood night heh). Around Round 7 I also felt like I was doing really well: now that I knew the goal of shooting the enemies and collecting their tiny version before they become the time munchers, and otherwise just staying alive, I was flying through the Rounds without having the time munchers appear (the first couple levels, I thought those were helping cuz I'd finish the Round soon after they'd appear--turns out it was just that I had killed all the enemies which allowed me to move on, and the time munchers eating away some of my Time Bonus is indeed not a good thing lol). The tiny versions of the enemies reminds me of the sidequest of collecting the miniature versions of the Pig enemies in Tomba lol

Attachment: 8/10 Welp time to log off for show time. My biggest worry is that the game will start to feel repetitive on my future play sessions, even with such a variety of enemy sprites (so many so far!), it's all basically the same function. Undeniably beautiful, great sound, and great gameplay. Well, they definitely start using more variety of enemy mechanics into the 10th round and on, those snails and yellow blob guys (focus on spamming shots at one at a time) really add another layer especially with the limited time factor. Now my main worry is supplemented by a fear of the difficulty level rising too high!

Welp, indeed, I played another 30 mins or so and while I do truly enjoy it, the Look is great, and the Sound is great--it just felt repetitive by Round 20. One you can pick up and play in spurts, but a bit too much to play all the way through the 50 unique rounds. With how difficult it gets, I doubt I'd get that far without savestates at the start of the rounds anyway ha. Definitely worth a playtest though, especially since the arcade version wasn't even in the database yet so it must be overlooked!

Completion: Round 21 Score 455, 510 Playtime: ~1 hour