GOTD 6/7/2016: Dark Arms: Beast Busters 1999 (NGPC)

[celerystalker]

SNK's desire to make their arcade franchises portable were certainly not limited to their Neo Geo catalog. One of the more interesting revivals was a re-imagining of Beast Busters, a light gun shooter not entirely unlike Sammy's Zombie Raid (think 2D House of the Dead if that's an unfamiliar title). The concept was changed to an overhead action/adventure game in which the player, through a dark contract, has come to the dark world in search of a little girl and the ultimate weapon. It is an adventure with some nice horror overtones that really struck a chord with me back around 2000.

Starting in a hideout with a creepy cloaked figure as a mentor, you are given a capture gun with which to round up and, well, capture monsters. By collecting their essence and Oums, you are able to create new weapons. These new weapons can be fed the souls of monsters captured in order to become more powerful, leveling up and even gaining elemental affinity from some creatures. Weapons can be evolved into even more weapons through development trees, and logged monsters show up in a bestiary for your inner collector, though the focus is on action and progressing the story.

You select dungeons on a world map, and there is a day/night cycle that will cause you to encounter different monsters or NPCs that can give information or progress the story. You can carry up to three of your created weapons into battle, and firing them reduces a gauge, much like in Secret of Mana or Evermore, which gradually refills as you don't attack. Leveling up weapons can reduce energy consumed and wait time as well. Each area has bosses to clear aside from the NPC storylines and souls to capture, and there are only a handful. There aren't really Zelda-like puzzles, but there are some hidden areas to explore, which is where you'll usually find the Oums for weapon creation.

Dark Arms is fairly short story-wise, but brings with it fun, solid action with lots of unique weapons (I especially like the tentacle arm and exploding doppelganger), and cool atmosphere. There is an endgame 50 level dungeon to explore as well, and a vs 2-player mode that's pretty rudimentary, but it's fun to show off your best weapons this way if you have a friend with the game and a link cable. There's only about 6-10 hours of content here in a first play, but it's all quality stuff, and you can get a lot more out of it if you want to fill up your beastiary and weapon list.

Played this one?

[Emperor Megas]

Now this looks right my alley. You've given me a couple of great selections to start my NGPC collection.

[celerystalker]

Good thing with the NGPC is that it's really hard to miss. Aside from the gambling games, nearly every game has some merit. Dark Arms was a favorite for me, though.

[Edmond Dantes]

When my IRL friend Geo gave me his NGPC and all his games, this is one of the ones that he had.

I would have played more but I find without any sort of backlighting (or frontlighting?) some stuff is just too hard to see. Or perhaps I'm a lazy ass. But it was a really interesting ride while I was into it.