It’s an aesthetic

Regardless of its technical shortcomings, the Famicom (and, by extension, the NES) was an important platform for the vertical shooter sub-genre. It’d even be my favourite as a result of, though there was by no means a port of Raiden for the 8-bit console, builders needed to be a bit inventive. Famicom shooters are extra measured since bullet hell is technically not doable inside the strict sprite limitations. Not that I dislike bullet hell, I simply want a saner strategy.

Whereas my private favourite to level to is Gun*Nac, Konami’s Japan-exclusive Disaster Pressure is an in depth second. In truth, Disaster Pressure even has a number of benefits over my beloved Gun*Nac. I don’t suppose the decision-makers at Konami are even conscious that Disaster Pressure exists, which is felony. No top-shelf Famicom sport deserves to be forgotten like this, however I suppose the highest shelf is the most effective place to gather mud.

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Launched fairly late into the Famicom’s lifespan, Disaster Pressure could be the most technically spectacular shooter within the system’s library. Possibly. Summer time Carnival ‘92 – Recca was fairly superior, as nicely. The purpose is it was very troublesome to create a shooter like this with none slowdown whereas nonetheless throwing in some flashy results and many on-screen sprites, and Disaster Pressure makes it look simple. It doesn’t have the choice to cut back flicker – one thing that video games like Gun*Nac did – nevertheless it works nicely sufficient out of the field.

The story is somewhat predictable. Aliens assault Earth (Tokyo, to be particular), and also you’re the final competent pilot on the earth who is supplied with a very good ship. The aliens are dangerous, so you need to shoot all of them.

The aliens even have, like, Pharaoh heads on their battlecruisers, which jogs my memory of historic aliens conspiracy. You already know these ones the place star folks got here down to show us the way to construct actually large rock piles as a result of we couldn’t do it ourselves? And the rock piles are for communication or starship refueling or one thing. I don’t know; my mother and father typically have the Historical past Channel on.

Your ship transforms into three totally different configurations, which impacts which route your bullets go. There are additionally the considerably conventional red-and-blue improve paths, with blue being “regular” and crimson being “particular.” Regular basically simply enables you to put ordinance out in directed paths, whereas particular is a bit fancier. The transformation is actually not essentially the most well-utilized function. Not all that a lot creeps up from behind you, so spraying loss of life in essentially the most direct method is a practical technique for a lot of the sport.

It belongs in a museum

The perfect and worst a part of Disaster Pressure is that it’s the absolute picture of an NES or Famicom shooter. I believe if an AI needed to take an entire bunch of knowledge on the system and cobble collectively the picture of what an ordinary shooter seems to be like on the console, it could appear like this. If a developer wished to emulate the visible fashion of NES shooters for his or her game-within-a-game, it could appear like Disaster Pressure. That takes away from the technical impressiveness of the title, nonetheless.

The gameplay, as talked about, is somewhat conventional. If there’s one factor that it does in a different way, it lets you energy up into a much bigger kind. In 2-player mode, the 2 ships mix into one. This not solely makes you invincible, it additionally sends loss of life in all instructions for the period of time it lasts.

There’s additionally the standard area-clearing bomb. Couple of issues to notice about them: first, they modify relying on what kind your fighter is in, and second is that they’re refilled each time you misplaced a life. There isn’t a lot purpose to carry onto them, particularly in a boss battle.

Gone and doubtless forgotten

There isn’t way more to actually say about Disaster Pressure. Your little fighter travels from the underside of the extent to the highest after which there’s a boss. Apart from that, it’s your typical stable late-release Konami effort. Whereas the design group didn’t go onto greater and higher issues, the programmers had a hand in some nice efforts together with Shadow of the Colossus and the Ganbare Goemon collection.

As I discussed earlier, if Konami is aware of that Disaster Pressure exists, they haven’t actually given any indication. It doesn’t appear to ever have been ported to a different platform or landed in a group. The value of a cartridge on the collector’s market is comparatively excessive for a Famicom sport. It was by no means localized to North America, although there isn’t a Japanese textual content within the sport. It used Konami’s customized VRC4 chip, which could be the explanation it by no means made it over right here.

It’s disgrace, because it’s one of many console’s finest shooters, and now it languishes in obscurity.

Take a look at earlier Famicom Fridays proper right here.