Vasara

2000, Visco

Reviewed by O. Hakubi.

You'd be surprised as to how much world history you can learn just from video games. For example, did you know that the battle of Midway - and indeed, the entire conflict in the Pacific theater in World War II - was won single-handedly by a lone P-38? Or that Germany had a wide variety of war machines that transformed into giant robots after taking enough damage? Most shocking of all, however, is the knowledge that the Warring States period in Japan was not fought by armies armed with swords, spears, bows and muskets but walking tanks, flying ships and enormous, beam sword-wielding mecha.

...okay, maybe not. But as Vasara shows, it makes for good gaming.

STORYLINE

Vasara takes place in the year 1600. Hideyoshi Hashiba, the ruler of Japan, is dead and Ieyasu Tokugawa is looking to take his place by force. All that stands in his way are three warriors with Shogunate-era flying bikes, and in turn all that stand in *their* way are various warlords in the employ of Ieyasu with Shogunate-era tanks, jets and robots. It's an interesting change of pace from the old "stop these aliens" or "stop that army" plots that populate the other 99% of the shmups in existence. Not that people play shooters for the plot, mind you, it's just nice to see some variety.

CONTROLS

Like all proper shmups, Vasara uses two buttons. The first has two functions: Tapping it causes your flying samurai-cycle to fire off a steady stream of shots. Yeah, like in every other shmup ever made. To power up this weapon, grab flying ovals emblazoned with a yellow "P". Pretty typical stuff thus far, huh?

The second function comes into play when you hold down the button for a second. Your character readies his or her weapon and once the button is released he/she swings, spins or thrusts it in front of him/her, dealing a healthy chunk of damage to any enemy in range as well as negating any bullets that they hit. This attack is powered up by grabbing the red gems that appear when you defeat enemies or damage them with said attacks, though not in the same manner as the main guns. You see, below your score is a red meter. Grabbing these gems fills up the meter and when it's filled it flashes with the word "VASARA" written across it as a crackle of energy emanates from your character. Once this happens, the next melee attack you perform will turn into an enormous screen-clearing boss-dicing orgy of death and destruction. In this game you will literally live and die by the sword: Mastering the use of this projectile-negating attack is the key to both high scores and survival, as there will be times when you will be faced with shots spreads that are nearly impossible to dodge as well as groups of enemies that don't fall fast enough to conventional weaponry.

The second button fires off one of your bombs, a large swirling hemisphere of energy that damages all enemies onscreen and eliminates their shots. You start out with three by default and can gain more by grabbing the grey ovals with red "B"s on them. There aren't a lot of them, though - about one per stage - which is compensated for somewhat by the characters' innate ability to stop shots on their own.

CRAFTS

In Vasara you have a choice of three warriors/pilots, all of whom are based off of actual people or groups who opposed Ieyasu Tokugawa, which makes for an interesting experience if you know the history behind any of them.

In the red is Yukimura Sanada. He would be the Cody of this game: Average speed, average firepower. His secondary weapon is auto-aiming throwing daggers and for a melee attack he swings a mean katana.

The token female in yellow is one of the Saika mercenaries. Weak but quick is the name of the game for her, with slow-moving homing fans and a 360-degree fiery fan swing.

In the blue would be the Toyotomi clan's Keiji Maeda: Slow and strong. His hobbies include launching spears that behave like missiles, poking the hell out of you with his own personal polearm and haiku.

It's not the cast of thousands you see in games like Batrider or Garrega, but they get the job done... and as far as I'm concerned you only need three ships. Heck, you're lucky to even get one! Why, in my day we didn't have all these fancy ships! We were catapulted into space with a fishbowl on our heads and a slingshot in our hands, and then we had to run fifteen light years through space in order to get to the nearest alien invasion! And dag gum it, we liked it!

GAMEPLAY

Two words: Manic shooter. You'll be flying through six stages of enemies that like to fire a lot of bullets at you, occasionally running into a mini-boss who fires a lot of bullets at you on your way to the boss which... yep, fires a lot of bullets at you. Slamming into baddies doesn't kill you (only cause you to bounce off with a metallic clink), so your only real issue is avoiding getting shot.

Easier said than done. Even with tight controls, a hit box that is both very small and shown to you on the character select screen (which, if you've gotten killed repeatedly while trying to figure out where you could and couldn't scrape bullets, is extremely handy) and an absolute lack of random bullet sprays (yes, everything follows patterns here) it's still very, very difficult. You will be put into many situations where nimble use of your projectile-nullifying melee attack will be the key to your survival. Definitely not a game for the average shmup fan.

To be perfectly honest, one of the easiest ways to play this game would be to rely almost exclusively on your melee attack: Charging it up, closing the gap and then letting it loose when the enemy begins to fire. Stop the shots and kill multiple enemies in one go.

SCORING

The first and most obvious method of acquiring a high score would be killing enemies. Nothing special here, just shoot, hack and bomb your way through the tenacious little buggers.

The second would be grabbing the gold ingots that appear in the wreckage of tanks, fortresses and other assorted buildings after you shoot them. There is no Gunbird or Strikers-style medaling system at work, though that's no big deal.

Another way of increasing your score would be defeating multiple enemies with your melee attack. The more enemies you kill in one go, the larger the bonus. Naturally your character's Vasara attack results in one heck of a bonus.

A minor way of getting points would be scraping: If a bullet hits your character's vehicle but misses their hit box it produces a scraping sound and tiny sparks and you get a quick hundred points for your near-death experience. There are certain places where you can pull this off rather effectively, but for the most part the bonus is too small to be worth it.

Finally, there's prestige kills. Some of them are mini-boss-like generals that taunt you a bit before fighting or the bosses themselves, but for the most part they're slightly tougher versions of the normal tanks and ships that have their clan's insignia on a banner behind them. Defeat them and a blood-splattered name card will briefly appear onscreen to show that you just killed someone important. At the end of the stage the amount of "named" kills are tallied up and you get a bonus depending on how many of them you got. It really gives you a sense of accomplishment to see all the name tags tiled across the screen at the end of a stage, plus it fits in quite well with the game's atmosphere.

VISUAL

First off, let me say that a great majority of the graphics in this are prerendered. With that said, let me say that it looks really, really good, equaling and possibly even surpassing those of Blazing Star. I mean come on, scroll down a bit and check out the screenshots if you don't believe me. The backgrounds and enemies in this are extremely detailed and if you can manage to take your eyes away from the action for a second or two you can even see soldiers running around on the ground, birds flying out of trees and the individual soldiers flying the little popcorn ships.

The non-rendered visual details are equally impressive. Slicing through an enemy ship with your melee attack causes a small spray of blood to appear, defeating a boss causes crimson droplets to splatter across the screen and heck, even your shots look nice! How many games are there that you can say that they have nice bullets, huh?

Another cool visual feature would be the pre-fight dialogue boxes that pop up whenever you encounter a major enemy. These dialogue boxes feature a close-up of the general in question and are drawn with a unique bit of style, adding a very cinematic style to things. They've really managed to get some character into those portraits, too. All in all, an excellent showing.

AUDIO

If the people who wrote music for shmups fell into a time vortex to the year 1599, it would sound a lot like this. For the most part the songs are pretty good, like the slow and ominous boss theme with reed flute overtures that add a very stylish touch to the proceedings. But some just aren't quite up to par. The snow stage for instance sounds like it took its music from some other game... from 1995. Not good. On the plus side the sound effects are great, from the faint firing sound from your ship's guns to the sching of your sword to the sound of cold, hard steel tearing through flesh as you slice a mass of enemy ships to ribbons. There's even voiceovers. Yes, voiceovers. Generals not only taunt you, they taunt you and you can hear them. You can also hear them scream in pain as they die, which grants a bit of closure when you end up blowing five bombs and two lives trying to take one down.

Overall this an extremely challenging game with great graphics, solid controls and a unique atmosphere that I would heartily recommend to anyone who happens to be a manic shooter fan, and it is with great pride that I give it a 9 out of 10.

The final stage takes you up against Ieaysu Tokugawa himself who is, needless to say, very difficult: If you are defeated and continue your game at any point in his stage you have to fight through it again from the beginning. It is worth noting, though, that Ieyasu ended up becoming the ruler of Japan in history, so I'm not spoiling much when I say that this isn't exactly revisionist history. Still, it's the thought that counts.

Related Links

Visco Games: Can you believe that they used to make Mah Jong games?