The late years of the NES were amazing for those who stayed attached to their good ol' toasters. Most major developers began to focus in the SNES, Genesis and (in Japan) the TurboGrafx-16, letting the smaller dev teams, with their creative ideas, take over the spotlight. Not only that, most companies mastered the hardware limitations of Nintendo's 8-bit system, creating some truly impressive games around 1990 to 1994. The combination of these two factors led to the birth of the best shoot 'em up (if not one of the best games) in the system: Summer Carnival '92 - Recca.
Recca (as I'll call it from now on) is developed by Kindle Imagine Develop (or simply KID), a small japanese company whose titles were published by publishing house Naxat Soft. While most of their previous titles (such as Low-G Man and G.I. Joe) were released internationally by Taxan Soft (Naxat's American division) and later Taito, this game is an exception. It was comissioned by the staff of the Summer Carnival otaku convention in 1992 (hence the full title) to be used exclusively at the event's videogame competitions and as a prize for the winners. Accepting SC's request, KID developed an extremely (and when I say extremely, I mean extremely) intense score-driven shmup that pushes Nintendo's hardware to the limit.
GAMEPLAY: 9/10
First things first. Being a tournament-driven game from the early 90's, Recca has really simple but enjoyable gameplay with only one objective - get the highest score possible. The A and B buttons shoot, Start pauses and Select changes your ship's speed for better bullet-dodging, as enemies and bosses will gleefully throw curtain fire at you. You can get different weapons (blue pods) and assistance satellites that erase bullets (red pods) as you progress through the stages, with weapons being able to power-up by getting the same letter in the pod several times in a row. As you play, you'll quickly discover that every weapon and defensive sattelite is useful at different parts of the game - some weapons can be bad in lesser power levels, but they will prove themselves useful when powered-up.
The gimmick in Recca's gameplay comes from the charged shot you can release after letting your trigger-finger stopped for a few seconds. If released, it lets off a massive explosion that cancels most on-screen enemy bullets and mutes a few sound channels, but if you decide to be a pacifist and don't shoot at all, you'll get rewarded with a big shield and a quickly-rising score. In fact, you can beat the whole game holding your shots still... if you have the skill to dodge all the enemies the game throws at you.
Oh, and Recca throws tons of enemies at you really, really fast. The game is, as mentioned before, insanely fast-paced, with enemies popping in, shooting bullets/lasers/missiles and then going out, only for more enemies to appear and keep the cycle running. They assault from behind you, over you, your sides and even the background! And boy, do they shoot a lot of bullets! Later enemies and bosses cover the whole screen with all kinds of shots, making for a truly hard (and impressive, for NES standards) lightshow.
The difficulty of such segments (and the whole game overall) would probably be lessened down if they set the speed-up/slow-down controls to a more accessible button, such as A (since B is the usual "shoot" button in this kind of game). Better yet, they could use Select and A to slow down and speed up, respectively.
GRAPHICS: 10/10
Recca's graphics are, simply put, amazing. The sprites themselves are very impressive, with a lot of detail and multi-segmented bodies, but the graphical effects are from out of this world. Warping, flickering, scaling, distortion... It has everything the NES was capable of producing, sometimes simultaneously! This is where the bright enemy bullets and enemy design come in handy, too.
SOUND: 8/10
Recca's soundtrack pushes the NES' native soundchip to it's limits with fast-paced, PCM percussion-heavy electro-rave tracks. While it is truly impressive that KID did this using only the relatively weak 2A03, such great achievment comes burdened by the fact that the game's soundfont puts more priority over sound effects, and since everything in this game makes different sounds when exploding, the in-game music feels incomplete and empty - only if you take the pacifist route or access the hidden sound test (more on that later) you'll be able to listen to the songs in their full form. The only thing that could be improved on the game's sound department is the number of songs - most are re-used one or two times, especially in the secret "second loop" (more on this later too).
Addictiveness/Depth: 10/10
If you're a fan of games focused on score and survival like me, Recca is massively addicting. It's cool but easy-to-learn scoring system and multitude of game modes (secret or otherwise) makes it pretty expansive for a shmup, and the inclusion of a second set of stages unlocked by playing the game again after beating it once (with new stages for Score Attack, Zanki Attack and Time Attack to boot) just adds more to it. Listening to the songs in the Sound Test (accessible by pressing Select while starting a new game) also is addicting if you love chiptune music like me.
Difficulty: 9/10
With it's extrenely fast and thick enemy/bullet formations with no signs of slowdown, Recca is an extremely hard game. But since the controls are pleasant and the game depends completely on your skill, Recca falls into the category I call "enjoyably hard". It's not for the faint of heart, but for those who are hardcore retrogamers, the game is the best shmup you can get in the NES.
OVERALL: 10/10
Recca, simply put, is massively impressive. The excellent gameplay, lots of modes and impressive soundtrack and graphics makes it the grey toaster's best shmup and one of it's best games, and is a definite must-buy for shmup/NES lovers... that is, if you get through it's huge price tag on the internet due to the low number of units produced AND you have a Famicom or a Famicom-to-NES adaptor at hand. But hey, you can play it for free here in Vizzed!
EDIT/UPDATE: Holy nugget, how could I've missed this? Recca is now available to purchase on the 3DS eShop's Virtual Console FOR CHEAP! This is the only official way to fix your Recca cravings on the go, and the game is perfect to play on short bursts! Not only that, if you get it you'll support Kaga Software, the company that brought it to the VC, and who knows what they will do next after bringing such a cult-classic to the West? (pleasegiveusgimmickpleasegiveusgimmick) |
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| ID: 898793 | 30 Words
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