Ikaruga
Ordered Ikaruga from someone on Amazon. It’s $300 new but I paid $60 for a used copy. It’s out of print apparently. Searches on Froogle didn’t turn up anything. Sixty was painful but Three-Hundred is insanity. A Wii costs less and a Wii might not even play something like this faithfully. It’s really not worth that just for the plastic wrapping. I’m sure Comic Book Guy would disagree.
The Dreamcast crowd seems to dig it. An out of date and under appreciated should-have-been:
Ikaruga, the “spiritual sequel” to Radiant Silvergun, is an unusual game. It is not colorful or upbeat like most shmups; instead, it looks, sounds, and plays like a shmupping epic war drama. Solemn, oppressive, overwhelming at times. Expected anxiously by Dreamcast fans and shmuppers everywhere, this was seen then as the final blast for Sega’s little white box that could.
It’s just an old school arcade shooter for the gamecube. If it’s like R-Type, I’ll put on Chemical Brothers’ Exit Planet Dust and warp back to 1994. Bottle of Shasta optional.




4 Comments so far
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By edgar on 02.27.07 11:06 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO-bI3lSvfs
the actual Discordance Axis vid. grind.
By Wookie on 02.28.07 8:33 am
Sometimes we all get…COMPLACENT – and think you’ve reached the dark and damp bottom to this mineshaft of nerddom we are all tumbling inexplicably down, but then the ground gives way and we find there is many more miles to fall when you find a basic “shmup” (wtf is that?) plane-shooter and spend $60 on it. This game better be like visual crack and come with its own haram of beer-pouring, sandwich making concubines. Seriously. I can think of zero games I’d pay over $100 for (barring any additional controllers or an obvious ability to resell it for more).
These kind of games used to be my favorite – 1941, D-force, anything where I was a “plane” and didn’t have to worry about altitude, just firing non-stop at attacking enemies whose maneuvers had been choreographed by Brian Boitano.
I can’t wait for the ice-capades version of Galaga. Video games, I hear, translate well to the performing semi-arts.
Seriously though – thats nuts. I hope it’s not only worth it but I hope Mrs. Hexameter finds the lights and sounds irresistably arousing. That would be awesome. I need a game likat for PS3 on demo at Best Buy. “Wife can we get one?” “I already have 3 in the cart and dropped the baby off with my mother…in the car now!”
GameDevGuyMatt – make this happen.
By Chris on 02.28.07 7:58 pm
Edgar: holy crap that was abstract/crazy. I guess it’s a bit of a mashup, saw some recognizable stuff in there from the game — though it was mostly noise. I wonder if that was an ad, a bit of J-POP? The youtube comments are classically stupid as usual “omg that’s not vocals”.
By Hic on 03.05.07 1:33 pm
Done and done. No, wait, not done. These old scrolling shooters are terrific, and some of them are so exteremely over the top that you feel happy playing after only doing so for 3.5 seconds. By that time, your ship has inexplicably been able to fire several thousand laz0rz and has pew pew’d 300 galactic starfighters into infinity.
There’s alot going on, on the screen. Oh, btw, Chris, did you hear the rumors about a co-op expansion for Dead Rising? Begin drooling……….now.
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