Bullet Heaven HD

[@SpiralPegasus]

You must be aware of this, but there is, here on KZbin, a two player game being played by just one man. On the original arcade machine. And he's ridiculously good at it.

[@philmason9653]

I love when players share details like it taking 10 years of dedicated play to perfect a game. The dedication hardcore players have is something I never knew about back in the day, which led me to getting discouraged and turning away from the genre for a long time. I really wish developers of these games had been more transparent about everything - setting expectations, explaining scoring systems and strategies, etc. I think the genre being terrible at explaining itself is why it went so far into becoming a niche.

[@StudioMudprints]

These are great points. All too often, the humble shoot-em-up gets dismissed for being "too short," especially if all these people are doing is credit-feeding the hame to the end. So many of these games have nuance and depth, especially with regards to score, that can sometims go infinitly beyond playing them for a half hour and seeing the staff roll after a bad end.

[@TheCompletionist]

Why is this show so god damn awesome, I hold Ikargua responsible for keeping the shoot'em genre on life support in the early 2000's. The only saving grace you had with shoot'em ups during the 6th generation of consoles in north america was on the dreamcast since shoot'em ups on other systems were very few and far between, the fact that the gamecube was the only console to bring a north american version back then was a testament to how the north american audience needed exposure to this game.

[@VuPrime]

I still have my copy on the GameCube. Never finished it but it was an amazingly beautiful game. I could only imagine how stunning the visuals would be in HD. Such a simple concept yet made for a clean and enjoyable experience. No other shmup has matched its presentation quality in my opinion.

[@LizardkingMario]

This game is so insane. I've had it for a year and a half and my best run is 5 credits on easy. And yet I'm so close to 1cc'ing it, as unlikely as that sounds. I can get up to the stage 3 boss without dying consistently, and I've also beaten everything after it with only one death collectively. It's just so hard to put it all together, and once a death happens I completely lose composure and I burn through a bunch of credits. Also it's the European Gamecube version that doesn't have pal60 so it's not even completely legit. And for now, normal just goes way beyond what I can keep up with.

[@hawkwardd_]

Ikaruga actually brought me into the world of bullet hell, as well as Triggerheart - both on the XBLA. Needles to say, great review! ~

[@Dekkuden]

this is my new favorite channel on youtube keep it up :D

[@StudioMudprints]

DTECHERZ thanks, glad you dig it! So much more to come!

[@hawkwardd_]

Very true! At the time I had played "shooters" prior - Geometry Wars, and Gunstar Heroes - a lost gem from my childhood. Though Triggerheart's anchor mechanic was foreign to me, the requirements to fight the true bosses were so tough I've yet to achieve it myself, but making the player think about the anchor mechanic to achieve a highscore was pretty smart. Also Soul Calibur has it's sequels and has people waiting for the next, Ikaruga doesn't, so maybe that played a part in aging successfully?

[@SoftOtaku]

I feel like it's popular these days to talk trash about this game and RS, saying this one is really a puzzle game and the former is overrated and overpriced. I disagree with this trend. Radiant Silvergun isn't cheap, but there are plenty of more expensive Saturn games now. And it's still my favorite. A physical copy of Ikaruga is still obtainable for the price of a new current gen game, and while it has puzzle elements, it's not like other shooters don't. Plenty do. Humph.

[@StudioMudprints]

I never got the reason for the hate. Snobs, amirite? I loved Ikaruga from the very beginning, even when I wasn't really into shmups. It's Daeruna's favorite shooter as well. At the time we got it, Radiant Silvergun was one of the most expensive shooters on the saturn, top-5. Now it's bottom 10% in terms of cost. It's freaking weird to see games like Batsugun - which we got for $50 when RSG was about $210 - all the way up to $350. And tat was when the Canadian dollar was up over the US one! In Canada, it's worse today because our dollar fell pretty hard, but it's on the rebound again, and might just be better able to cope with the sharp - and often unwarranted - rise in STG cost. This is exactly why we implemented cost to value in our reviews. There's one coming up that will exemplify why it's there.

[@ajpiskel]

I think it became popular to talk trash about it because it tends to get a lot of undue praise, usually from people who don't have that broad of an experience with shmups and thus has drawn backlash from the crowd who considers themselves more hard core and don't have the nostalgia for the game because they started on shooters either before or a significant time after it's release. Personally, I kind of was hoping for a more measured review from Mudprints, but from going through their videos it does seem like they value nostalgia for certain titles sometimes over taking a more objective view so the perfect score from them isn't entirely surprising. That's not to say that I think Ikaruga is a bad game, certainly I played the hell out of it back on the Gamecube and loved it as one of my favorites for a good while, but time has tempered those views and by the time of the XBLA release, I gave it a pass. Certainly it's a good gateway game as I feel like it brought a lot of new blood and eyes to the shmup genre. And I would absolutely recommend it to people who are looking to get into shmups because it's reliance on memorization and the simple game system seem perfect for getting people interested. And of course the music and mechanical designs are great.

[@The47Oni]

Great review as always man! This is the game that got me into shmups so it's great to see a review that does it justice. It's pretty challenging though. Been trying to 1cc it on easy and after 30 hours of gameplay, still no luck...

[@XxBishop78]

It does deserve a 5 ,good reveiw

[@TheCompletionist]

I'll eventually add the xbla version to mymy collection since I already own the gamecube version, but the best I've ever done is the first part of stage 4. My exposure to ikaruga first game from a little YTV gaming show called gamerz in which they talked about this game before it had a north american release. I'm just grateful I was lucky enough that my wife got it for me for christmas a couple of years ago.

[@LiamITG2]

Just wondering what would you rate the Dreamcast and Gamecube versions?

[@StudioMudprints]

At their core, the DC and GC versions are identical in terms of scoring, mechanics and almost on par in presentation... but not enough to deteriorate the score. The lack of online Multiplayer and leaderboards also doesn't hurt the score overall, since the game is as timeless on the older systems as it is today; I have more experience on the GC version than any other. Still a 5/5.

[@Fattydeposit]

Liam DDR Also, Ikaruga GameCube for European territories is broken with intentional frameskipping (to make the 50hz running speed 'the same' as the non-European 60hz speed). Euro GameCube version is hard coded to objectively be the worst one.

[@Fattydeposit]

Ikaruga came out for the Dreamcast early September 2001

[@StudioMudprints]

yes.

[@adamcozart]

Another great vid, but you said only 1 shmup was released on Gamecube in North America. You forgot Chaos Field.

[@StudioMudprints]

For a second, I was like "WTF, I know I wouldn't have said that in this review, I've had Chaos Feild for longer than this review existed!". Then I saw the comment below; that's obviously just a typo.

[@meghanhause9042]

I'm worry about this game and all of the Shumps that are XLBA that when Microsoft pulls the support for the 360 that a majority of XBone users won't be able to play this game and other Shumps on XLBA snice none of this game on that network won't be transferred to the XBone. The only hope is that Sony convinces the developers of these games to put them on the PSN.

[@gc3k]

its i-kar-ruga not ick-karuga

[@StudioMudprints]

Uhhh...I think you need to get your ears checked son. We've been saying "I-ka-ruga" the whole episode, which is correct given its name's two Japanese characters. I'm not sure what hairs you're splitting, but they're too fine for us to care.

[@gc3k]

sorry if it sounds like im jumping down your throat, but this game is about 15 years old and, people still say "ick-karooga" like "rye-you" or "ninja gay-den." no offense, it's like the same fly buzzing in my for 12+ years now for those who care: watch?v=JW6HjglaApA at 4:32-4:35 the guy says "ikaruga jinja" (ikaruga shrine)

[@StudioMudprints]

I get what you're saying, but unless you think "eye-ka-roo-ga" is how you say it (which is very, very wrong), your original comment has no place here. We've been saying "ee-ka-roo-ga", which is, in fact, correct for the 11 years we've had the game.

[@gc3k]

aw man how many decades do i have to live in japan and understand japanese to earn a little credibility on the hard-headed im never wrong internet? its not just the name of a game-- im appealing to the way the real-world bird, town, and rarely, person's name is pronounced by native speakers. keep believing what you believe, it's okay. i like your shooter-esque video intro

[@StudioMudprints]

Hey now, you're not the only one that understands Japanese or it's phonetics dood. It's ok to be wrong man, but in this case, I'm right.