[エイリアンソルジャー/Alien Soldier] Super Hard NO DEATH CLEAR (Score: 269,023) [CC Commentary]

I confess, when I first tried out Alien Soldier as an elementary schooler, I thought this game sucks! Compared to Sonic 3, this game felt broken! I mean, Sonic 3 is a much simpler game to get into. No wonder Sonic games are popular. Not that is a bad thing... Decades later I tried this game, again. This time after reading a guide. And it CLICKED! I progressed much further and voila, I managed to No Death on Super Hard! I LOVE IT! This game earned its reputation as one of the hardest games on the Mega Drive / Genesis. If you ask me, I can believe people calling this game HARD. The fact that this game has bad onboarding doesn't help it either. I'm not alone; if you haven't read the manual or any guide, you will struggle! That darn centipede boss and its giant hitbox and frantic movement! The fact that the old manual lied to the point SEGA sponsored a mangaka to make a manga criticizing the inaccurate manual shows how bad this game's onboarding is! After you get how the game works, to my surprise, this game is not that HARD! Among Treasure games, this is a walk in a park. Seriously, compare this to Sin and Punishment, Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga. If you're a veteran of Treasure games, you'll probably consider this some of Treasure's easiest games. By large margin compared to Wario World, of course. I'll explain later. As a run n gun, there is a lot you can do in this game. Walk, shoot, jump, hover on spot, double jump, i-frame dash, change weapons, aim your weapon, change your aiming mode, and attack with your i-frame dash. Boy, that's a lot! And yes, the game is aware of this moveset, You'll require time to get used to this. Even more important is the weapons and ammo management. There are 6 weapons that you can use: Buster, good ammo and range, Range, sucks, Flame, useless for mechs, devastating against organics, Homing, scam, Sword, good range and DPS but the ammo takes too long to recharge, and Lancer, must-have bazooka shot. Yeah, this is one of the worst weapon balancing from a Treasure game... Good thing this game's Wrong Weapon Syndrome is mild once you know which is what and how to not get the wrong weapons. I recommend Buster Flame Lancer Lancer as the loadout, Please note that some weapon combinations will make your run become a checkmate. One thing that I think most guides don't explain, as described in the manual, the shooting modes (Fixed Position and Mobile) actually affect your ammo consumption! On Mobile mode your ammo gets consumed faster than when on Fixed Position. On some situations the bigger ammo consumption is worth it. But for other situations like using the Lancer, conserving ammo with Fixed Position is worth it. What makes the game sound like a horror is simple: 1 life and if it's gone, that's it. GAME OVER! Hard stuff! But there is more to that. The major contributor to the game's easiness is recovering your life is surprisingly very easy provided you know where to do so! In Sin and Punishment 1 recovery items are limited and can't be farmed out. Here? YOU TOTALLY CAN! Generally enemies can kill you in 4 - 5 hits. You're that fragile. However, you can milk out some parts from 1 HP back to full HP. It's that easy! Take note of this knowledge to successfully survive the game! Awesome graphics, close to no slowdowns, speedy, all the while the sprites are chunky. It's a game that is so great to look and play! Look, Epsilon Eagle is as big as fighting game characters! The bosses are even bigger and can take large area of the playfield! While generally as expected the pattern variety and craziness is both fair and with healthy variety, this game is not without bad aspects. I've mentioned the unreliable manual and its surprisingly limited viable weapons, so let's elaborate about these weapons. The worst part of the manual inaccuracy is the weapon properties. The US online manual doesn't even explain the weapons, so let's skip that. The JAPANESE MANUAL, IS ALSO INACCURATE! Mostly accurate, to be fair. Wanna know what the manual says about the Flame weapon? It's weak against mechs. While in actuality IT'S USELESS AGAINST MECHS! Heck, Lancer is doing just fine AGAINST ORGANICS, despite the manual saying IT'S BAD AGAINST ORGANICS! This is why I recommend Buster Flame Lancer Lancer. Lancers will be your main source of DPS. Flame is for organics, and Buster is when you're waiting for your other weapons to reload. What was the manual writer thinking!? And on a good read at the Japanese online manual PDF, even the manual says "Please read this manual first before playing. Then you'll have awesome fun." The US manual doesn't have that. So... if you're planning to play Alien Soldier, scratch it, you can kinda ignore the manual, find a guide somewhere and read it! Or, read my description here! Then, you'll get visual shock! Speed shock! Sound shock! Burn the 68000 heart on fire! Enjoy the heat! This was played on Nintendo Switch 2. #stg #shmup #nintendoswitch2