Havoc in perfect symmetry
It has finally happened, Ikaruga, the timeless shoot 'em up classic, has been polished and released for the 360 on Xbox Live Arcade.
For those of you who aren't fans of the genre, here's a quick summary of the game:
Ikaruga was created by a team of only three people, a studio called "Treasure co. ltd.". They did hire other people from time to time but essentially, all credit belongs to them.
Ikaruga was released as an arcade game in 2001, it was developed for SEGA's Naomi-system (a brilliant arcade system made in-house). One of the major advantages with creating arcade games for the Naomi platform was that it could easily be translated to the Dreamcast which, of course, Treasure took advantage of.
When the Dreamcast ceased to be, Treasure made another conversion of Ikaruga for the Nintendo Gamecube, that means that if you don't have a 360 but a Wii instead, go find Ikaruga for the GC. It might be sort of difficult to get a hold of but trust me, it's so worth it.
The gameplay is a bit staggering at first since the screen is as good as always filled with enemy bullets and that's where the polarity-system comes into play. As you can see in the image above, there are two colours of bullets, black and white. In the image the ship the player controls is black, that means that if you get hit by a black bullet, the meter in the bottom left corner starts to fill up. When activated, each field within that meter represents one homing missile. In the image, the player has just released such an attack and is charging his next attack by getting hit with matching bullets.
If you either get hit by a bullet of the opposite colour, you die. If your ship hits a wall or an enemy, you die. Easy, right? It could be, however, by pressing a certain button, your ship flips and becomes the other colour. This means that most levels become a juggling act where you have to switch between the two colours in order to stay alive.
When you start playing the game, you might feel a bit odd, trying to get hit by enemy fire but once you become comfortable with that mechanism, the game really takes off.
I have to admit that this game is beyond difficult, I haven't been able to beat it yet, not even on the easy setting. It is however madly addictive and seriously fun.
If you do happen to own either a Wii or a Gamecube, make sure that you get a hold of Ikaruga and treat yourself to an X-arcade joystick with the GC-adapter. This is real arcade gaming, a coin-muncher if I ever saw one and now it's available to anyone.
Now, if you'd excuse me, I've got some shooting to do.