Cover Art Theatre
permalinkHaving already been to the Super-Exciting Outerspace future and the cutesy or gritty present of what's popular in European arcades, we begin Week 3 of December 2014's Advertainment Month at a very specific point in time:
High noon.
More specifically, High Noon in the Ollllll' West:
Mighty tough words, video game advertisement -- but just what kind of gol'dern thing IS thissy-here game?
Well, at first you might just think it was a normal shoot-em-up,
...albeit with a (criminally underutilized!) wild-west theme
But there's more to it than that. And the secret ingredient?
Normal shootin', eh?
Au contraire! You only fire upwards when you press A+B!
If you press B you shoot left-ish, if you press A you shoot right-ish!
Your twin six-shooters have enough spread that they cover a fair piece of the screen in their side-arcs! It's a great blend of:
- The shoot-em-up standard of "only shooting directly upwards"
- Without going the other way of "shooting the direction you're walking", which isn't always useful in a game that's auto-scrolling upwards
- And its simpler than the Robotron/Smash TV approach of having one joystick for walking and a second for shooting
Yes, that's what marked CapCom for greatness --
Even its early games tried new ideas and broke new ground. For further examples, we need only zoom in to see the other games they listed on this very advertisement:
Innovators, all!
Commando had its wiggly-aim-as-you-rotate, and its hidden but grenade-able secret rooms,
1942 gave you a supply of loop-de-loop dodges, for when the screen was too crowded.
Section Z was a flying space shoot-em-up that let you brush against walls without exploding, had its weird life meter system, and gave you the mind-blowing ability to SHOOT BACKWARDS!
Trojan mixed post-apocalyptic settings with swords and maces, and...uh, let you block projectiles with a shield!
MegaMan's special ability needs no further introduction, having spawned almost three decades of sequels.
And Ghosts and Goblins figured out that people would pay good money for the video game equivalent of a swift kick in the groin!
(rimshot)
Hmm; that's kind of a crummy way to end an article...
Let's see what me and MSPaint can do to fix that:
— carlmarksguy, 2014-12-19
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