Suicide Express

Look: 8/10 Very advanced look, even when I just watched the videos, for '84: gave me Metroid/Contra/Metal Slug feels that didn't come till much later. The minimap is essential to the gameplay, rather than just a random add-on.

Sound: 9/10 The jingles were great: the intro song was exciting and represented the fast-paced game to come, and as you let it play, it developed a truly remarkable, beautiful, sentimental overlay melody that really got me. It really seems like I'm, at last, at the starting era of the sentimental, tingles-inducing vibes, sounds, and looks that I've been eagerly anticipating in this project. Oh, well, it took me a few tries in the game before I realized the gameplay song was the same lol. But wow does it match the environment. Great stuff. Definitely some interesting, uh, "voice" parts at Game Over and start of game (?) ha.

Play: 7/10 I feel like this is gonna get redundant to say in the '84, since as I expected, '84 seems to be that official bridge between arcadey/Atari-y games I can just play for a bit and essentially have played it & NES/PS games I have to devote time to before I can determine whether I want to remember it for potential replays/showing-others. But indeed, I must say it for yet another '84 game: this was a game I was just gonna playtest--tho I found the videos incredible due to the graphics and precedent for so many standards in the horizontal scroller shoot em up genre, my initial playtest felt weak. But over time I realized I could really just look at the bottom screen/minimap for most valuable information (tho a lot of shooters from the 80s had the minimap or radar feature, this one felt especially advanced and "modern.").

Feel: 8/10 Not my favorite kind of gameplay, and I tired of it quite quickly (I, personally, felt that I got pretty far ha), but wow the sound and look and advanced gameplay--even if it's not my usual flavor--make this such a stand-out. So far, '84 is really impressing me. While I am proud of how far I got in the game, and proud that I am kinda engaging with straight-up shoot em ups, ugh... I just couldn't get motivated like I do with action platformers... I guess that will always be my main genre no matter how much I try out other genres heh. But anyway, this is top-notch for its time, and the sound and look make a special feel to it that predates all the games I know of with a similar "feel."

Attachment: 8/10 As impressed as I was, and as much as I recommend this to people who like Contra/Metal Slug but didn't know similar titles go this early, I can't claim I will replay this regularly. That being said, this will definitely be a game I show my brothers, it's pick-up-and-play for get-togethers (tho possibly not, since you have to realize reading the minimap is most effective, and that you have limited ammo/can only carry so much ammo), and don't forget as the first example of an advanced/modern horizontally scrolling shoot em up. Plus, sound/look are as important to me as gameplay and replayability to me, as someone who puts Kingdom Hearts and FFX music on in the background of life regularly ha (my coworker hums along and grooves a bit to Besaid Island track at this point lol), so it's no biggie this is quite highly rated despite only getting to < 20k score.

Completion: Score 19,160 Playtime: ~30 mins