Elemental Master

[o2william]

Anybody else here enjoy this Sega Genesis game? It's a very unusual shoot'em-up by Techno Soft (published by Renovation). Plays a lot like your typical space shmup except that it's not set in space and you're not a ship; you're just a person (albeit a person who has mastered the magic of the elements) running around on the ground. It's vertical-scrolling, but you can shoot backward as well as forward, which lets you contend with enemies that come out behind you. "Shooting backward" is a really cool feature that I'd like to have seen in more shmups. (In so many of them, your spaceship can be outfitted with super-high-powered guns and energy beams and bombs capable of unleashing devastation on entire space fleets from the front, but you can't mount so much as a BB gun on the back.) That's definitely the coolest feature of Elemental Master, but it also lets you select the order in which you want to play the first four stages -- like Mega Man, you get a different weapon at the end of each stage and it helps to get the weapons in the right order. It's not a big deal, but it does throw a smidge of strategy into the mix. It's not the best shooter by any stretch, but it's a fairly tight and satisfying game.

I've been playing EM again recently and I'm stuck at Salome, the evil blonde woman who transforms into a gigantic spider-like creature for the boss battle. She kills me almost immediately, and I don't think I've even managed to damage her yet. Is there some secret to beating her? I can't remember.

[Ed Oscuro]

Ah, somebody else entranced by "character-based vert shooters!" A couple other classic era standouts (in my opinion) in the genre are Ninja Emaki and Out Zone, and Guwange (from '99) plays somewhat like them.

Undead Line is another game of the type from T&E Soft, not Techno Soft [thanks CRV], and aside from the insane difficulty it might have done well here.

Also, now that I think about it some more, there was another game like this on the Mega Drive that was Japan-only - Twinkle Tale. But, again, these two games are basically straightforward vert shooters with a character based theme instead of starship shooting.

[CRV]

Undead Line is another game of the type from Techno Soft (I'm rather surprised I haven't played this game in light of that...time to fix that).

Ahem...Undead Line is by T&E Soft.

[Ed Oscuro]

Oh, right! I was confuzzled by the fact that both companies released x68000 games (Undead Line, from T&E, and Thunder Force 2, from Techno Soft). Right, fixed.

Interesting that Undead Line was released earlier when you compare the two...it's much harder, but I don't know if it'd be fair to say it's better. That game seems to have been designed with the goal of being impossible to beat in mind :D

[NeoZeedeater]

Elemental Master was pretty cool. It didn't seem like it was going to get a domestic release so I was surprised when Renovation picked it up a while after it came out in Japan.

[Mark III]

I've been playing EM again recently and I'm stuck at Salome, the evil blonde woman who transforms into a gigantic spider-like creature for the boss battle. She kills me almost immediately, and I don't think I've even managed to damage her yet. Is there some secret to beating her? I can't remember.

At that point in the game you're able to charge up the Light shot that you start with. If I remember correctly the charged up shot to the Boss's face is the only way to hurt it.

[o2william]

At that point in the game you're able to charge up the Light shot that you start with. If I remember correctly the charged up shot to the Boss's face is the only way to hurt it.
Aha, I forgot you could charge up the Light shot at that point. That made it easy, thanks!

Now, any tips for the final boss? ;)