Zanac (1986)

Beat twice on slow motion. 1st time I tried out all the secondary weapons and settled on #4, which created a big ring that moved back and forth destroying everything including bullets. It was great to put on one side so I could focus on the other, and good to use any time I needed to clear projectiles. The bad part was that it could not be canceled to recast in a better location until it vanished on its own. One button fired the special, which was swapped and powered up by picking up # power ups. The other fired the basic shot, which started off thin and slow. It upgraded by picking up yellow orbs until it was a rapid 3 shot. Then the best form spread the shots to the side so you could protect from those directions. This game had some intense bullet hell. The 2nd time I read the guide to learn about the other weapons, and it said #7 was the best. It fired forward rapidly while angling slightly diagonal when the ship moved, which meant it could hit almost the entire screen when you were back far enough. I didn't find it that great at first, but powering it up twice gave the same large bullet destroying ring as #4, only manually fired. This playthrough was much smoother with more enemies killed and bosses killed faster. The walkthrough said there was a trick to getting the spread basic shot involving crashing, but I managed to get it both times without doing anything special. #0 was the default special, which fired in the direction the ship was moving. Fun to aim but not a lot of power. #1 was a very slow firing straight shot. #2 was a shield. #3 rotated around the ship. #5 was like a boomerang. #6 was very slow moving but nuked the entire screen if it hit an enemy. I didn't particularly like the other specials but it could be fun to try beating the game using each. Some upgraded and some had limited ammo. #7 had ammo but I never came close to running out. I liked how picking up specials and orbs gave brief invulnerability, so there was some tactics to collecting them even when weapons were maxed. Enemies had good variety, though I did not like the invulnerable Metroid things. At least I could use them to block enemy shots too. Stages had plenty of bosses, some being larger ships that moved around and bounced your shots back (though at no damage to you), and most being stationary bases. There could have been more boss variety but this was a solid fun shoot em up with mechanics beyond just mashing shoot. I don't really have anything to say about the dynamic difficulty because I was near constantly shooting and slaughtering while save state scumming to never die. Might be the best pure shoot em up on the NES.

8.3/10