The Greatest NES Shoot Em' Up?! Recca Summer Carnival Review w/ Shmup Junkie!

The Greatest NES Shoot Em' Up?! Recca Summer Carnival Review w/ Shmup Junkie! Today I am joined by special guest ‪@ShmupJunkie‬ to discuss possibly the greatest (and most expensive) NES Shoot Em' Up (shmup), Recca! Recca Summer Carnival was created by the famous Shinobu Yagawa who is the genius behind some of the greatest shmups of all time like Battle Garegga and Armed Police Batrider. In this review we discuss Recca's history, game design, hardware design and limitations, level design, boss design, caravan mode, difficulty, graphics, rank, music, and much more! If you are a fan of Cave and Raizing, as well as old school shmups and classic caravan, this is truly worth checking out. As of right now I believe the game is only on NES, emulator, or 3DS, so it would be great to see it make it's way to modern consoles like the Switch, Playstation, and Xbox! Also shout out to the Patreon for supporting the channel and voting for this review!
Patreon
/ electricunderground
[$2 tier = Monthly Game Review Vote, Name in Credits, Exclusive Monthly Podcast]
[$5 tier = Double Monthly Game Review Vote, By Name Shout-out, Name in Credits, Exclusive Monthly Podcast]
Electric Reddit:
/ electricunderground
Website Archive:
web.archive.or...
👕Official Shirt!👕
amzn.to/2XghV9J
Twitch:
/ the_electric_underground
STG Revision 2020 Discord:
/ discord
#recca, #review, #shmupjunkie

[@retrosuperbox8434]

noun: synergism the interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects. More of this please fellas. Great work.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Oh i dig this a lot ha! Thank you so much my dude!!!

[@etymonlegomenon931]

"Synergism" is not a standard word, "synergy" is and means what you posted.

[@stephenschenider4007]

@@etymonlegomenon931 You're a hipster aren't you....

[@atomicskull6405]

The NES could display up to 64 sprites on screen but only 8 on a horizontal line, any more than that and the lower priority sprites would be dropped. To get around this limit they would rotate the priorities when there were more than 8 on a horizontal line so there wouldn't be invisible sprites which is what caused flicker. It had nothing to do with CPU or RAM it was just a hard limitation of the sprite engine inside the PPU in that it could only show 64 sprite pixels per scanline. If you used 16x8 sprites the pixel limit still applied and you could only have 4 sprites per scanline. NES hardware was pretty weird in that the tile/sprite ROM was exposed due to the cart containing a separate program ROM and tilemap rom with the PPU reading tiles straight from the ROM. So you could add all kinds of enhancement chips to interact with the tile ROM behind the PPU's back like the chip in Battletoads that generated animated tiles on the fly.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Great summary!

[@Steve-Fiction]

I laughed at Junkie's video loop multiple times, that was a fun gag.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Glad you liked the idea ha. I wanted to give him some sort of visual element, so I made an animation from screen caps :-)

[@ashcliffeable]

Hi Mark, I love both of your individual channels but I really enjoy when you "direct inject" and team up. It's like a Venn diagram: you've both got your individual circles with unique content but when they overlap there's magic.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yes the collabs are a lot of fun!!

[@segatouringcar3738]

If you look at the interview about Recca's sound on shmuplations, you'll see that they had complete freedom to do whatever they wanted and that they were looking for something never seen (heard xD). So the entire game was probably a "let's go to the limit" thing. Outstanding game.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Ha that s awesome!!

[@ian-blum]

Just picked this up on the 3ds a week ago, seeing as there's less than a year left before the 3ds eshop closes Such a marvel of an og shmup

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yes great timing!!

[@Steve-Fiction]

I bought it upon reading this, I had no idea it was on there.

[@reagandow850]

This was one of the first games I downloaded on the 3DS when I got the “new” 3DS. Incredibly hard, especially on a small screen but amazing!!

[@realmchat6665]

I like seeing two of my favorite shmup youtubers doing a collab - good stuff.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

It is fun when we do crossovers :-) Junkie is a great dude to work with

[@weebnerdgaming4908]

Recca is one of the most important games of all time. More than just as Shinobu Yagawa’s brilliant start. The music, dubbed Detroit Techno? Is Manabu Namiki’s strong inspiration. Funnily enough, Manabu Namiki went on to work with Yagawa for Garegga around 4 years later.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

That is a really cool connection! Shout out to Detroit techno, love that era of music

[@DonnyKirkMusic]

I love the soundtrack on this game, its actually a super big inspiration to me. I love oldschool edm in general, its raw and engaging with its directness and doesn't need complex melodies to be interesting.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yeah old school chip tunes are interesting since they have to sound harsh by the nature of the hardware

[@pkkingcrimsonrequiem1332]

It was a big influence on Namiki for Battle Garega's soundtrack. You can hear the same sample for Jetter in Garegga's Erupter

[@7thsaga662]

I came across this game on the Nintendo eshop on 3DS!!! I swear I only bought it because of you guys. I never EVER would have never had a clue about this joint. Amazing game. Thanks to you both for your work. People are looking man. I wonder if the 3DS will go up in price if you have this game downloaded. Similar to PT on PS4. Mighty Final Fight is there too. I would jump on these games before the 3DS eshop closes on the 27th of this month.

[@arronetchells4363]

Two of the best there is lighting up my KZbin!! Great work guys, it’s awesome to see you both doing videos together and sharing your knowledge with the hungry masses. Looking forward to the next 😊💪

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Glad you enjoyed the episode!!!

[@ghoulsarefree]

Very good coverage of a very great game. As for the difficulty, I think this is one of the *easier* NES shmups, at least among those still widely played. The combination of speed selector, bombs, bullet eating, frequent power-ups, and instant respawn make for a much more flexible and forgiving challenge than was common at the time. Glad you guys recognized that it's really more bark than bite. It's also among the easiest to pick up and quickly comprehend, which pairs hand in hand with the high starting difficulty as Mark praised. As for the forward-looking design elements, I do think Yagawa was mostly following in the footsteps of Compile and Hudson when it comes to power-up items (and his later rank-heavy games may have been inspired by Zanac, since that seems to have influenced Recca in other ways). But that bullet eating bomb is really something else - that along with the speed of play were truly unparalleled at the time.

[@Jikkuryuu]

Ah. good. I was thinking the video could have referenced Compile and Zanac a couple of times. Glad I'm not the only one who sees a connection there. I haven't compared Recca and Zanac directly, but I remember being shocked by Zanac's scrolling speed my first time playing it.

[@DanielSavageOnGooglePlus]

Given the Famicom had a huge install base in 1992, I could see "getting the kids to try" being a good idea for a caravan release.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

I think you're right! That was my hypothesis as well actually. Shame the poor game *bombed* commercially, but such is the fate of many innovative shmups.

[@MixologistMilo]

Definitely do this kind of collaboration again! 🙌✊

[@TheElectricUnderground]

For sure!!! I ll rope junkie into another one in the future :-)

[@Joe-Rad]

These bros dodge bullets like Neo in The Matrix. Respect. Cool video dudes.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Thanks my dude!! 😎

[@j.l.9689]

Hell yeah, you guys have been a wealth of knowledge for me. I have always loved shooters, but only played a couple growing up. In my late teens and early 20's I got a lot more into the genre, but ZeroRanger was a breakout title for me. Really got me serious about the genre. Other than maybe ARPG's like Dark Souls etc., STG's are my favorite genre. And thanks to the both of you I have learned so much. I've even found some new favorites!

[@TheElectricUnderground]

I m really happy to hear zr was the hook for you! Gotta check out my podcast with the devs if you haven't heard it

[@j.l.9689]

@@TheElectricUnderground oh that's sick! It's on your channel somewhere I assume? I would LOVE to give that a watch/listen. And thanks! ZeroRanger is one of my favorite games of all time now. It left such an impact on me. I didn't know shooters could be THAT good, on every level, until then.

[@AKTANEARCADE]

Theres so much I have to say on Recca but boy this game is somethin else, its hard but, its so playable - its a really good intermediate shmup and makes you feel good to clear, its also a fantastic length and packs SO much into the game. not even counting all the other modes. This game is an insane package. and its the real deal.

[@StrnGuy]

But is this a $60 shmup???

[@AKTANEARCADE]

@@StrnGuy hehehe great question... 🤪 Not sure! Probably not! If there was an M2 port of this with some gadgets and stuff and training modes and maybe some parameters to tweak, an arrange soundtrack... with removed flicker and flashing - I'd go with $30-40 max!

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yeah easily my fav nes shmup and 8 bit shmup. Yagawa was miles ahead in a lot of his design ideas

[@AKTANEARCADE]

@@TheElectricUnderground highly agree 👍🏾😎

[@paulanderson3772]

Great video dudes. Also, EU t-shirt delivered! Super happy with the quality and the design is awesome. Thank you Mark. I will wear it with pride.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yay thank you so much for buying the shirt and supporting the channel!!!

[@Ishmokin]

I love Recca! And the music! Yagawa's techno head for sure. He made the music composers use the Underground Resistance techno as peg.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yes love the Detroit techno style of the 2000s

[@eddygreen3631]

Recca, Crisisforce, and Gunac are my favorite vertical shmups on NES. Of course, Gradius 2, Lifeforce/Salamander and Jackel are great too! The last two, like Crisisforce, being fantastic two-player STGs. I've always wanted to love Zanac due to my love for Compile, but never could flow with it for long.

[@JGrove303]

Sprite flicker is because too many sprites are on a line at once. IIRC, the NES can only handle 4 sprite on 1 line before the sprites starts getting divided to alternating frames

[@psychicfire8232]

SHMUP Junkie is really speaking the truth here, many Japanese developers of the past few decades (specially prior to 2010s) worked for unhumanly periods of time, 10 hours a day sounds like a very optimistic view of how much they worked (lmao). It's not a understatement to say the modern Japanese people are "workaholic", this is one of the reasons suicides is so common in Japan, there's even a specific Japanese term that is given to people who kill themselves because of the stress from working so much.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yeah sounds absolutely hellish to me

[@minusworldfamous6842]

So excited to see this video drop! Recca is one of my all time favorite games. On NES flickering, the NES can only draw 64 sprites per frame and 8 sprites per scanline. When a game attempts to draw above this limit, you get the flickering. Not sure how the hardware prioritizes the sprites per frame (which ones are drawn and which are dropped).

[@magic-window]

The flickering is done programmatically by the game devs to be able to display more sprites on the scanlines. Without flickering any sprite after 8 would not be drawn at all.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yeah the hardware seems badly suited for tons of bullets on screen sadly

[@Godsgood111]

Hell yeah, this is gonna be awesome!

[@TheElectricUnderground]

yes! It was a really fun time!

[@karolis.burzinskas]

Recca was the very first shmup game that I tried as a kid. It was a magical experience that lasts till this day. In today's world Gunvein is unbeatable. It set a standard so high, that I'm absolutely sure, that 30 years from now people still be playing it, like hardcore gamers playing Recca today.

[@julianseph842gamez5]

I played this game once on the 3DS!

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yes it s an interesting port!

[@strzxgvnuvwvfld3597]

I expect someone has explained this by now, but there are a lot of comments to read through, so just in case, flicker is because the NES can only display max 8 sprites per horizontal line. If there were 16 sprites on a line, half of them would be completely invisible. Instead the code is written to display 8 one frame and 8 the next, so it flickers, but you can still see what's going on. The reason you see less of this moving into the 16 bit era is that the limit increases from PC Engine > Megadrive > SNES > Neo Geo etc. Limits on CPU power cause slowdown rather than flicker. You can only do so many things each frame (scroll the screen, update sprite positions, execute some game logic etc) . If you try to do too much, you run out of time and have to update the screen every two frames instead, hence everything moves at half the speed.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

shame that sprite limit is so small! Imagine trying to program this game, yagawa must have needed to carefully map out all of the enemy spawns and attacks to keep the pressure up, but not breaking the nes. Crazy stuff

[@strzxgvnuvwvfld3597]

​@@TheElectricUnderground Bear in mind each sprite is only 8x8 pixels as well, so what we see as one sprite is often several! This is also why many 8 bit games use a plain background for boss fights, as the bosses themselves are made up of background tiles rather than sprites and the illusion of their movement is done by scrolling the screen. Although I've spent quite a lot of time working on older hardware and the NES actually seems quite advanced to me! It can display 64 sprites overall which is pretty good for shmups.

[@snesfan8935]

My childhood game. Still remember that big yellow bootleg Famicom cartridge with TV Game Cartridge logo on a plastic shell.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

I know I'd be tempted to pick up a bootleg for this badboy if I still collected physical games. The more obvious the bootleg, like the yellow case, the better! :-D

[@robertrada4783]

Ilya’s smile is contagious.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

:-)

[@BigJuffer]

This game is soooooo good and gets a lot of playtime in my house. Honestly never get tired of it.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yeah since there is no fluff it s very easy to enjoy over and over

[@ClockworkBard]

I have mad respect for Recca and what it is. But if like Limit Run Games called me, said they had a free pass to reprint any one Famicom shooter they wanted and it was up to me to decide, I would shout "Crisis Force" without pause or stutter. It may not have quite the same mechanical artistry, but it is a damn fun, gorgeous and amazing sounding game. It's Konami in their prime and I love it. Recca is the kind of game I tip academic glasses towards, pick up as a brief experience, then move on to the things that came after it.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

I ll have to give crisis force a try!

[@ClockworkBard]

@@TheElectricUnderground Highly recommended! I don't want to oversell it, since it's still very much in the mold typical of its time and platform, and I don't think that's a style you enjoy as much as I do. But it's undoubtedly among the best in its sphere and a great demonstration of what the NES/FC were capable of if pushed to their absolute limit by an experienced team. Definitely still an experience worth trying out.

[@gpm8365]

as a man grown up with zanac on NES bootleg (and zanac is the one, like your first love), i consider this looks insane for NES. and im seeing elements of zeroranger in this (viceversa ofcoz). and i much more like junkie this way in all aspects. in fact i'll try recca righ now in online emulator

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yes cannot go wrong, yagawa is a legend

[@Phantom_Zer0]

what the hell is this game this looks insanely good 😱, i had to double check to see if it wasn't a new NES game when i was scrolling the video, this is crazy.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yeah the game is a beast!

[@PiesliceProductions]

they actually sort of programmed or the flicker by drawing sprites in different order from frame to frame; if you would draw all your sprites in fixed order some of the sprites would not be visible when the hardware limitatins are hit. also by drawing bullets with even index every other frame and bullets with odd index in the next frame you effectively double the sprite limit (as 30hz flicker is hard to notice)

[@TheElectricUnderground]

It would be really interesting to see how yagawa programmed the game and worked with technical limitations :-)

[@PiesliceProductions]

@@TheElectricUnderground also the bullet color issue is pure nes limitation, there`s no way going over it. you can have only 4x3=12 active sprite colors per frame. to me the sprite colors are distributed as well as they could have been

[@ShmupsBR]

Recca is made of 50% coding + 50% black magic. Yagawa conjured some 666th level demons to made it run on the Famicom hardware. That's why every Recca cart has a pentagram printed on the PCB, to keep the demons inside the chips.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Ha that s awesome!! It is crazy he decided to go with the Famicom for the game, it is really impressive how well it runs

[@PedroFerreira-sx2gd]

Yes. The game is a technicaly Marvel and for me the best shoot em up for nes.completely frenétic and with a great soundtrack. All these things combined make a great game. Would love to see how the game runs on real hardware.would love to see you cover more games from different eras.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yeah I do plan on covering some older shmups this year :-)

[@garrz32]

Recca, happy to own an original copy that i purchased for the tidy sum of £5 ( around $6-$7 for all you guys who use that toy money) still to this date an swine to complete. Enjoyed this video a lot

[@gianyrivera1082]

Played it first time on the 3DS! Great game but kinda hard Also it'd be interesting to cover more shmups from this era

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yes I plan to :-)

[@gianyrivera1082]

@@TheElectricUnderground hope you can cover Power Strike II for the Master system since it's on the Aleste Collection, it was a big surprise for me, since I finally got the collection lol

[@starshkr46]

Great vid. Also love the Bomberman 64 soundtrack.

[@VJFranzK]

flicker is using too many sprites on a horizontal row, they had to get creative to reduce it as much as possible

[@GustlikRGZ]

Another great video! As a fanatic of both shmups and NES/Famicom, I really enjoyed this game. I'd also recommend you guys to play Over Horizon from Hot-B (yep, the company known by most for making numerous fishing simulators, but I'm sure this shmup will keep you hooked to it for quite a while), Uchuu Keibitai SDF from HAL (of Kirby fame) and Crisis Force from Konami. Those three are some of the most impressive shmups on NES, along with Recca and Gradius II. Sadly, none of those games made it into US.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Oh cool recommends!

[@MrSkinnyBuh]

In regards to flicker, i always thought it had to do with the max amount of sprites allowed onscreen with NES hardware. Not sure though as I’m not a programmer but it made sense to me.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

It sounds like that is the case :-)

[@KikenEnryu]

Recca uses a unique audio mixing chip to help produce its music. A stock FC/NES has 5 channels of audio (2 Pulse channels, 1 Triangle Wave channel, 1 Noise generator and an ADPCM channel for sample playback). Recca generates real-time audio using the first 4 channels of the hardware just like any other game on the console but then internally generates an additional 4 audio channels on the cart that are mixed together and then streamed directly through the ADPCM channel in real time. Thus, they essentially cram 8 channels of audio into 5.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yes it s really fascinating how nes programmers got around the hardware this way :-)

[@superandroidtron]

Recca has no extra audio hardware on the cart. It only uses the stock 5 channels of the 2A03.

[@fatz420]

I have been playing this game for a while on the 3ds and I still get hung up on the stage that scrolls backwards, this game runs so fast I am impressed that the famicom could run it

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yeah the game is no joke difficulty wise

[@ezequielgomez7083]

I really love Recca my number 1 favorite famicom game of all time that I really love playing caravan shooters to get high scores in 2 and 5 mins

[@zuffin1864]

I am gonna have to try this sometime! This looks so fun Unrelated but I am getting into nioh and saw your old video on it, but noticed you didn't have one on nioh 2. so maybe you could do that some time? Up to u and the patrons though :p

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yes I might do a vid on nioh 2! Working on a big ninja gaiden 2 master ninja vid right now :-)

[@riggel8804]

Regarding sprite flicker on the NES. I believe the hardware is limited to three sprites per draw line. If any more than 3 sprites appear are lined up horizontally the sprites will flicker because the NES can only draw three at a time. This makes bullet hell really hard on the NES. You are going to get sprite flicker with all the bullets/sprites on the screen.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yeah that s a recipe for disaster hardware wise

[@atomicskull6405]

it's eight sprites per scanline and if you used 16x8 sprites then that would be halved.

[@Chronosv2]

@@atomicskull6405 Something like that. 8 sprites pet scanline. But the developers actually *did* have to program the flicker routine. Otherwise the NES just simply doesn't draw the excess. So the developers had to write routines to make sure on any given frame more than 8 sprites weren't drawn in any given scanline.

[@riggel8804]

@@atomicskull6405 cool thanks

[@then1533]

Awesome stuff!

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Thanks my dude!!

[@andyauthor2007]

Because of the price of a physical copy of this game I emulated it on my NES Everdrive... and this game is f-ing HARD!

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yeah basically gotta emulate this bad boy

[@TheProgressiveStyle]

its time to dig a bit tin the Nes shmps library, there are a lot of nice titles!!!

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yeah I need to give crisis force a try

[@soganatari7411]

didnt know it has an NES release, have it on Famicom cartridge though :) it's amazing, totaly in my top 25 8bit Nintendo (licensed) titles.. i don't know about why the flickering this game. but it wassnt unusual to program it into the game, it is one of many 'tricks' they learned along the NES life span years, now it is a lot easier to find out about this stuff then those days ofcourse, compagnies diddnt share to much about the way they devellop games for a system, but some modern homebrews put several of those tricks together and deliver a game that would'v have stand out in the original NES time

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Oh yeah I don t think it has a western release, Japan only I believe

[@soganatari7411]

@@TheElectricUnderground yeah no suprise so late in the NES life span, more good titles diddnt hit the US market, Little Samson for example. well, that makes it an Famicom game, not an NES title, great to see it here, its such an excellent 8bit Shmup, ive been trying to find good footage of the contests held around this game wich i heared were held in Japan, but no luck yet

[@soratheorangejuicemascot5809]

I often die alot in this game. Despite the obnoxiously distracting flickers that this game had, I actually like how this game plays. Its also a very tough one.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yeah and on emulator you can reduce the flicker which is awesome

[@pkkingcrimsonrequiem1332]

Surprised there was no mention of Zanki Attack mode, which is a full on bullet hell mode, and how I mostly play the game.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

So much to cover! It is a cool mode :-)

[@double-helix-22x22y]

I prefer Gun Nac. I have em both and GN has superior music and is overall more fun.

[@zanychelly]

Junkie was using a Dreamcast Camera (Dreameye)

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yes! :-D

[@revvvedrez546]

My two fav shmup pros!!

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Here and ready to party

[@bonesjackson81]

It might be too fast for me! Ha. Its awesome but I think I like Gun Nac most for NES. Also have a soft spot for Abadox.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yeah recca takes no prisoners, blast processing in the nes ha

[@GustavoValdiviesso]

There's an information here that is not accurate. Flicker IS programmed. It is the result of cycling through objects (sprites) to compensate for 2 limitations: 8 sprites per scanline and 64 sprites on screen. The programmer places all the objects in a queue and copy the first 64 to VRAM for a frame, moving these to the back of the queue so the next 64 can be shown in the next frame, and so on. Without the cycling algorithm (which produces flicker) the objects are not drawn when one of these two hard limits are reached.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Interesting!! Nes devving sounds crazy!

[@GustavoValdiviesso]

@@TheElectricUnderground That's one way of putting it 🤭

[@okuu_utsuho]

Well I want to try Recca now

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Go for it!!! :-)

[@amine456-k8s]

is the shot at 5:35 from game sack ?

[@TheElectricUnderground]

I ve never seen game sack ha. Any shot s that I don't name specifically are incidental. Though I am sure my critiques could be applied many places

[@mightybackflip1104]

iam still suprised that this game ended up on the 3ds .. the virtual console missed out on so many great games but recca made it in there somehowXD

[@TheElectricUnderground]

3ds is def an odd choice ha

[@Oribaa90]

Such a great game! I still can't believe that this is working on a Famicom. I like to play Recca but I am really bad at it. Actually I even don't know why because I am not that bad at shmups but this game is killing me after only a couple of minutes. All in all Crisis Force is the better experience for me.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

It s a ruthless beast, no doubt about it

[@Vanalfaust]

Another Steve Yagawa banger

[@TheElectricUnderground]

My man Steve pulling through!

[@michaelhoule2134]

such a fun little game. is it worth the scalper ebay price? I don't think so, so many better things I could spend 2000$ on. It is a fun great little shooter though. nice seeing the shumpjunkie, im filling up the glass pipe with brilo and waiting for my shump hit. :) Edit, BTW mark, Ketsui Dethiny is pronounced Destiny. Gotta love Japanese spelling and pronunciations.

[@StudioMudprints]

It's only 2K+ complete, cart-only is much more affordable, but only relatively speaking. I felt that Recca was worth the hype, though not necessarily the price. Still, for once I don't regret spending what I did on it, which is huge given its price at the time. one more thing: 3DS didn't feel or sound as good as Famicom. Also: flash carts are your friend.

[@michaelhoule2134]

@@StudioMudprints oh I'm not saying it's a bad game. I know the loose cart is much less then 2k, I think it goes for around 500cad or so. But if I wanted to drop 2k on some gaming stuff I'd be getting a nice astro or blast city cab or some old cave PCBs, garegga PCB, batrider PCB. I think there are way better choices in shumping unless you are going for the complete Famicom collection. Meh on the nes, there are some fun games on it like metal storm, goonies 2, Metroid etc but it's not a system I would 'collect' for. Love the show and can't wait to see more shumps from you two.. ps go Canada (I'm in BC).

[@nolancampbell4451]

When I get frustrated playing ddp dfk and ccwe this game is my go to.

[@tonybarnes2920]

The first 5 years of my career were all solo. The average staff for the 16-bit Strikes was 9 people and I put in an average of 16 hour days on those. Just saying, us dirty Americans worked hard back then, too! Just saying...

[@SicketMog]

I don't get/like Recca for some reason. Can't quite put my finger on why; it's very impressive technically at least. While I normally don't like the horis... Life Force and Gradius both>Recca (imho). The background graphics might have something to do with it (impressive as said but too distracting with all the flickering). Then again was never a huge fan of Yagawa games and actually didn't know this was one of his. Huh!

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Yeah I give this 6 out of 10 on the yagawa scale ha. So it's not as wild as pink sweets, but still has his signature style.

[@2kBofFun]

Interesting that they managed this on the NES, but I'm looking for a shmup for the NES and this is no solution to that quest. It costs more than a PC Engine with RGB out and the whole Soldier Series combined (300+ bucks). A single copie of Final Soldier in the EU, the best PC Engine shmup IMO, is only like 30€ loose. I like the story on this, but it does not serve our shmup needs today.

[@iraplikeyoubreathe]

You can use bombs only in all of stage one which probaly has no purpose other than its fun.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Ha that s fun 😊 bomb only clear

[@horroRomantic444]

To me, the greatest NES/Famicom shooter is Zanac or Gun Nac.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

I ll have to try them :-)

[@MarcoAGJ]

Good video.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Thanks my dude!

[@EdgardR.]

This looks interesting

[@Mingodough]

Why does shmup junkie sound like he’s recording separately from you? Like you sent him your audio and he reacted to it lol

[@TheElectricUnderground]

ha it's because the video is not actually junkie, it's an animation loop of him I made from one of his vids XD He was audio only during the recording.

[@Choops6969]

i used to own this game. i still think gradius 2 is better tho.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Gradius 2 is awesome!! I have a gradius series vid coming soon actually :-)

[@PhantomPlayNx]

Amigo gostaria de saber o nome desse jogo de nave ?

[@PhantomPlayNx]

8:26..Name it´s game please !!!

[@TheElectricUnderground]

The music is from bomberman 64 :-)

[@davraa1]

Mabuhay the Schmups.

[@Robertkopp84]

Oh god it's Recca, more like Wrecker. I am so unworthy of owning this game. Senpai please tech me how to survive this onslaught.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

It s brutal as hell, use savestates to practice!!

[@LoverBoy-im7xv]

Would someone leave me the timecode for Abodox? I beat that game once.

[@soratheorangejuicemascot5809]

Is Shmup Junkie recording on nes? He is lagging.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

Ha I made an animation loop of him talking from one of his vids, rpg style

[@vudusid8717]

Lol, ten hours a day? I wish. Try 16 hours a day... minimum!

[@Phantom_Zer0]

Do you guys know what the kids are playing in that caravan footage, I'll tell you, it the 16 circles of hell, you though hell only had 9 circles, no it has 16 and they are in the Star Soldier game. I hate that game so much, the way your ship stops shooting and goes under the map makes me really angry, and i am an extremely calm guy 😡🤬, forget ninja gaiden, forget hagane, this game is Satan itself.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

That's really interesting ha. I haven't played star solider before!

[@DataDashy]

First of all that slow laggy camrecorder video is out of line secondly stop talking trsh like sega saturn game pcengine game blah blah we come here for NES games this talks as much as a bad 90yo women I had to fast forward to 7 minute to the video and even then by looking at the title I found super carnival which imo a very bad shmup with crappy music

[@nobodytonobodysbusiness]

Boo on the collaboration. Sorry, I don't like this guy's content and think it dilutes your own.

[@TheElectricUnderground]

A little crossover never hurts :-)

[@nobodytonobodysbusiness]

@@TheElectricUnderground Guess you are right. I will try and be more open minded as I play all the same games from 20+ years ago. :)