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Battle Garegga -Raizing (1996)
You are a hard-working miner who's sick of the propaganda that's fed through the media to the good people of your nation. You have lived by your oppressive government’s laws for long enough. It’s time for a revolution. You and three other miners have secretly built four powerful planes deep within the mines. These machines can help you break though the government’s trained dogs of armed forces to rebuild your nation. Let the revolution begin!
I have played a lot of shooters, overhead and otherwise, but when I am truly impressed by one, you know it’s something good. Battle Garegga is one of the best overheads I have played. First, the graphics are incredibly detailed. You can tell the developers really took time to make sure everything looked as good as it could. Even the tiny missiles that the enemies fire have little details on them. The backgrounds are outstanding, especially the storm stage where layers of storm clouds and lightning stream by. You have a choice of four cool–looking ships, each with their own special weapon: Silver Sword with napalm, the Grass Hopper with super vulcan, the Flying Baron with missiles, and one of the best-named shooter ships I’ve seen – the Wild Snail with "flame-on" action. But the best thing about these ships? When you use the special, part of the plane opens up or transforms to reveal the hidden weapons. This adds a great deal of realism to the planes. In most shooters the ship will just fire the special weapon and you won’t know where the heck it came from, but here you get to see it. Man, it looks so good to see your plane do that. The enemy designs are equally impressive. All the enemy ships look great and the bosses are all cool. Each has their own hidden weapons and unique attacks. The game is not frustratingly hard like some shooters, so it’s more accessible to the average player. There was only one time when I felt a boss was cheap. It’s the Stealth Bomber type plane and its machine gun attack. If you check out the screenshot it doesn’t look too cheap, until it quickly rotates the guns as they are still firing. You need to try and guess which way the guns are going to move and stay between them, but you probably won’t get it right and be shot down. But, back to the outstanding detail of this game. When you destroy enemies you see pieces of shrapnel fly from the explosions. Every enemy does this and it looks great. The only time all the detail of the ships, backgrounds, and explosions is a hindrance is with the tiny missiles. Sometimes they blend in with everything so you don’t know there’s a missile at your nose until it’s too late. The only other small complaint I have is there is no story. If they only created a matching story for this incredible game. But this is such a great shooter; it doesn’t really matter since most don’t have stories anyway.
-Shawn
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