Gaming Target - GameCube: Ikaruga

Written by Tim McGrew on February 26, 2003

First Impressions: Hardcore shooter fans rejoice! Treasure has come to save the day!

For plenty of gamers, the last great shooter to ever grace a console was in the 32-bit era with a little title known as Radiant Silvergun. However, most people missed the game as they were tired of being burned by the short life span of Sega consoles and passed on the Dreamcast. Those same people missed out on at least two of the best shooters ever created. One of those two games was Bangai-O; a 2.5D shooter with simple graphics and creative character design. Although Bangai-O was a bit slower and simpler design wise in comparison to the hectic battles of Einhander by Squaresoft, it was anything but easy. The second title, released on January 16th in Japan, harkens back to the creative unblinking state that shooter fans have been craving ever since the Dreamcast went belly-up in the states and this little shooter is referred to as, Ikaruga.

Code named RS:2 (Radiant Silvergun 2?) during its development cycle, Ikaruga is one of the most creative shooters developed by Treasure. It shares the same style and perspective as the great Radiant Silvergun for the Sega Saturn, utilizing a top down scheme that is 3D in graphical style, but 2D in presentation. That's where the similarities end and where the two games start to branch off into two equally unique and very entertaining paths that can only be compared to one another since they are both among the best shooting games in the industry.

In Ikaruga, a new element is added in taking advantage of color and craft. By pressing the B-button on the Gamecube pad, your ship virtually flips its colors and changes from light to dark and vice versa. Your enemies carry weapons that shoot one of these variants at any given time. When your color is that of the weapon being fired, your ship absorbs the shots and builds up an energy meter on the left side of the screen. When it reaches peak capacity, a large shot can be fired to destroy all enemies on screen. As you can imagine, this feature makes for some interesting battles as the backgrounds themselves will begin to impede your progress and create barriers for your ship to crash into. These barriers will create some of the best twitch gaming I have ever experienced. I guarantee you that after all is said and done; you'll set the controller down, blink your eyes, and begin to rub them to wipe off all the tears from not being able to blink for such an extended period.

Although the game sounds incredibly simple, utilizing a mere 3 buttons on the GCN pad, the game itself proves to be rather complicated. The bosses and enemies themselves begin to require you to switch forms very frequently just to stay alive. This, coupled with frantic movement and a plethora of shots surrounding your ship, makes the game one of the most exciting shooters I have played in quite some time. Bosses will surround you with themselves and require you to just plain hold down the fire button and pray that no white on top of dark shots are fired at you. Frequently you will be required to dodge them entirely and absorb 20 other shots at your rear.

The weapons themselves never upgrade, but if you plan your shots correctly, destroying an enemy with a similar color attack will result in a reward of shots in that same color. Play it right and you will be able to absorb those shots. In fact, there will be areas in the spectacular level design that will require you to use your shields just to cross certain spots and then quickly switch colors to pass another. On top of that, the game can be played with two players for twice the excitement.

Although the graphics aren't all that breathtaking, it definitely gets the job done as it displays multiple enemies and multiple styles of weapons fire on screen at once. The backgrounds are constantly in motion and often times become larger enemies and attack forces. Speaking of enemies, the bosses themselves are wonderfully animated with creative quirks, weaknesses, and weapons that will constantly keep you on your toes.

One turn off to some gamers may be the rather large black boarders on the side of your screen while you play. When the game was originally released in the arcades in Japan, a large vertical screen would display the game. Keeping the same aspect ratio would stretch the picture to a great degree and would destroy the overall look to the game. Instead, Treasure opted to retain the same vertical stretched style, but limit your viewing space by about 25%. It's not a big loss since players who prefer the utilization of the entire screen can switch views to make the game fit the screen in a horizontal fashion as opposed to the vertical default.

The game itself will host three separate difficulties that will change your style of play as you progress. Although the game has an easy difficulty, nothing about this game is overly easy. It will never be a breeze your first few times playing, but it does get much harder in later levels as different obstacles are thrown in. The balance in the difficulty is great being that the first level doesn't require heavy amounts of shield switching meaning that you can go through the level with only one color if you so choose. The second level trains you to get used to the shielding while the third treats you to a nice highlight of solid roadblocks that impede your progress. I particularly enjoy the fact that the game itself eases you into each new challenge, but УeaseФ is a relative term as each level is difficult for its own reasons. By the end of the 5th level, if you haven't continued once, you're most likely ready for the Normal difficulty.