tokucowboy Ah, what a great and weirdly specific machine to have at your local shitty pizza place. One of these days I’d like to start a thread about our sort of nonlinear encounters with strange games (i.e. how we got here in weird ways – I somehow came across many at a pawn shop, of all things, as a kid). I can’t believe they threw Lou into MvC, good to see him again.
I’m all for you creating a thread like that! Although I think a lot of it will involve people remembering decades-old encounters, since arcade games are hardly just stumbled upon these days.
Thanks for posting your impressions! Many of the STGs on this collection are at the more obscure end of things than in the last one, and I’ve got to admit that I’m not quite as familiar with several of them, Exed Eyes and Last Duel in particular. I only really know 1943 Kai via MAME, although I sure did play a ton of it there! I’m planning on picking up the rest of these for the long weekend, based mostly on reading your comments about them.
Just a few things to mention: I think it’s interesting to see Cuphead mentioned as being somewhat inspired by Midnight Wanderers– in particular the moon bosses of both games being so similar that it’s hard to believe they’re completely unrelated. Someday if I ever cross paths with the Cuphead devs I for sure will ask them if Three Wonders was a direct influence.
Side Arms is also an old favourite, and I had been concerned that it wasn’t included along with its fellow ‘floating guy’ trilogy games, Section Z and Forgotten Worlds, so it’s good to finally have it available on Switch. I’ve always far preferred the arcade version, because it just feels better, but the NES version is another example of an arcade game getting a sort of 1.5 upgrade in gameplay when ported.
Speaking of Forgotten Worlds, I can’t remember if it’s ever come up here, but I can absolutely say that it was the game that originally got me obsessed with STGs in general, it’s one of the few games that I can remember exactly when and where I first played it, and it’s the game that I’d make a sequel to if I was ever given carte blanche by Capcom to choose one of their properties.
