Blazing Lazers

The Hotness.

I remember when this came out for the TG16. I had a TG16, but it took me like a month to earn enough cash to buy games, and after only getting Legendary Axe, I sold the system so I could buy a SNES. It wasn't till college and ebay that I could revisit this gem of a game.

Basic deal: it's a Compile SHMUP. That means it's amazing. I don't remember why, but I had ZANAC for the NES. I think it was the only game I could afford. I never beat it, but I did love the tons of different weapons and weird crap hidden in the game ( like shooting that little statue on LV3 that made you mega powerful--WTF?). Blazing Lazers is pared down, as there's not as many weapons, and one of them totally sucks (i'm looking at you #4), but the gameplay is tighter and it's on teh TG16 which makes it kind of magical to me.

Mostly though, it's a Compile shooter, and there just aren't enough of them. No one's ever done another one and the current trend of these bullet dodging games coming out of Japan is just boring to me. Choose between the spread weapon and the forward lazer, then dodge pink bullets. Booooriiing.

Ikaruga's tight, but I'm missing that ability specific to the Compile games, the ability to power up your ship to ungodly levels. Screen filling lighting lasers or whatever that V laser is called. (the other two weapons pretty much suck). There's nothing out there like that. Complete dominance over the screen.

Of course, if you die, you're gonna have the shittiest weakest ship (see also Gradius 1-4) in the universe and are gonna have to unload all your bombs in a desperate attempt to get at least a level 2 lightning laser or a shield powerup, and that sucks. But shit. Totally worth it to have those moments of just leveling things onscreen.

Compile needs to make more games like this. I read on wikipedia that some of the crew is still out there but Chaos Field and Karous look more like the new style shooters than old Compile. They may very well be fine games, but not the same. Not since Space Megaforce has the glow of this brilliance been upon us.

3 stars.