The Mame Club - This Week's Game is Blazing Star!

[zektor]

Ok, a new game chosen at last! Old topic deleted.

This week's game was chosen by buttasuperb. The next person on the MAME Club list will get to choose their game the coming week and must PM me with the chosen title by Monday night at the very latest.



When writing your review, post it right here in the sticky topic and include any thoughts you have about the game. It would also be nice to let us know other aspects of the emulation. Here are some things that would be good to know:

Did you like/dislike the game? Why?
What type of machine are you running it on? Specs?
What version of Mame?
How long did it take you to beat it? Score?

Again, YOU are the reviewer. Let us know anything and everything you think about the game!


A download for this game will be posted shortly!



Club Members

Gamereviewgod
Wisesalesman
scooterb23
ddockery
AlanD
digitalpress
IntvGene
NE146
jonjandran
Flack
IGotTheDot
zektor (me!)
*buttasuperb
chadtower
Sotenga
Stark
ECWSandmanECW
christianscott27
TripppsK
vespertillio
ghsqb
TheSmirk
anotherfluke
BHvrd
ManekiNeko
MarioAllStar2600
Ze_ro
slip81
Qbert
k8track
Hamsnibit

* this week's entry was chosen by this member, the next to choose is the one below!

[buttasuperb]

I'd also like to add a little something to this. Lets have a little competition for fun, see who can get the highest one credit score on normal difficulty.

We can take screenshots for proof right? That's an option in mame?

[ManekiNeko]

Yes, it is. Just hit F12, baby!
A competition is an interesting idea, but to be perfectly frank I don't remember how good I was at this game. Maybe I'll need to get in a few practice rounds later on tonight.

JR

[Sotenga]

Even if this game sucked, (which it does NOT, mind you) it would still get points in my book for some of THE most f**ked-up SNKgrish on the planet! But at the core is a solid shmup, one filled with much enemies and firepower, not to mention some nicely-animated bosses. Haven't played it in a while though... I might tell you more if I get motivated to play it.

I also might take you all up on that one-credit score challenge...

[Hamsnibit]

I want to join the club!!! I have mame and complete including yesterday's .79

[buttasuperb]

Blazing Star, my absolute favorite shooter on the Neo Geo, and maybe my favorite shooter ever. Fantastic quick gameplay, not too tough, not too easy, and fantastic music. Some people aren't fans of the rendered graphics, but I like em just fine.

Here's some scoring tips.

You do not want to miss any blue jewels. Each bunch you get, they are worth the next point level up (not sure how many you have to get in between each point level) but each one you miss, you go down a point level for the jewels. So it's really important to get all of them so the highest score. Also, you wanna wait for certain enemies to fire their weapon before you attack as you can get more jewels this way sometimes.

You do not want to get the floating thing with the wings. At least not right away. Getting those give you a multiplyer on everything for a short time. But if you keep letting them go, each time they are different color and a bigger multiplyer. So waiting as long as possible to grab that, will give you a very large multiplyer and lots of points.

A tip on the 3rd level boss. Once you get to his 2nd form, at some point it will spit out these little chunks that all turn into blue jewels. If you've been collecting them the whole time and not missed one, these will be worth a lot of points. Also, you do not want to kill the boss while this is happening, if there are any jewels on the screen when you kill him, you can't move, and they will fly right past you resulting in the value of them going down.

Does anyone know where the Y in Lucky is in the third level? I have no idea where the hell it's at.

So far my high score is around 1.7mil on one credit. I know I can do much better, my high score on the MVS is 3.6mil.

[Ze_ro]

I only gave this game a short run (just the first level), but it seems really good. Just a couple of points to make so far:

• Is there any way to get the engrish "hints" to stop appearing? I find them distracting, and they're not really helpful (Keep getting powerups? Wow, maybe I should try that )
• The game seems fairly easy... I'm sure it gets harder later on, but I made it all the way through the first level without dying, and really without any trouble at all. Actually, it's kind of nice to play a shooter that doesn't kill you every 5 seconds...
• I'm not sure I care for the graphics... somehow, it doesn't seem like the color depth is high enough for the rendered look to work. How many colors is the NeoGeo capable of displaying?

Anyways, I'll have to put some serious time into this game and see if I can get a decent score...

--Zero

[Gamereviewgod]

I still can't believe this is a Geo game.....that intro is just stunning. I'm still surpsrised more Geo games didn't use video. Looks great on the console. Anyway, a local game shop has the same challenge as Butta put out. If you can beat his top score without continuing, he'll give you any game in the store under $40 for free. No one has ever done it. It's a ridiculous score (I'll have to check it next time I'm in there).

Anyway, the console can handle 4,096 colors on screen Zero. I really don't see a problem with the graphics. Gotta love the first boss. There's that weapons based fighter that used rendered sprites and that look awful. Can't think of it's name though. More later.

[ubersaurus]

This game is HARD. If I didn't set it to free play to play the game, I'd never get past the 2nd to last level, or the final boss. Looks pretty though, and plays very well. This and Pulstar are gems of shooters. Now if only those two had actual good production runs on the AES, or at least ports to other consoles...

[buttasuperb]

This game is HARD.

Yea it is. I can get through the first 3 levels without dying sometimes, but after that, shit gets tough. I don't think I've ever made it past level 4 on one credit.

Oh, forgot to mention before, CRAZIEST LAST BOSS EVAR

[Flack]

I refuse to play Blazing Star on MAME. Why is that, you ask?

Because I OWN THE GAME!



Talk about weird coincidences. I just bought this last week and the cart arrived Friday.

You guys are definitely better than I at this game. I was able to beat the first level on one credit, but I went through a few on the second and lots on the third. I couldn't figure out a good strategy or place to be to kill the third boss.

Overall, I think this is a really fun game, one I plan on playing for years to come.

[Ze_ro]

Well, I take back what I said about this game being easy... I guess making it through the whole first level on one life on my first try was a fluke or something, because I really suck at the game now. I have yet to actually beat the second boss... he just gets bored of fighting me and leaves.

Is there no "bomb" button? I know you can do some nifty attacks after powering up your gauge R-Type style, but I've been conditioned to reach for the second button in emergencies to use a bomb.

What planes are you guys using? There are a lot more than I expected. The only two I've given much chance at all were the first one, and the one with a spreading green shot (I forget their names)... I tried a couple of the other ones, but I didn't like them.

And I still don't much care for the graphics... I really think it's the lack of color or something, because it just looks grainy to me.

So far, my one-credit high score is somewhere around 378,000... I don't want to take a screen shot of that though, since I'm not terribly proud of it.

--Zero

[ubersaurus]

I use the ship from the first Pulstar. It's probably one of the harder ships to use, but I like its little shield, and the lack of gimmicky stuff it has to work with makes the game really fun.

[Sotenga]

My fave ship is the one with the "sword" laser. It's hard to use effectively sometimes, as the sword, as its name implies, requires that you get in close to do damage. Oh, but what damage it does! When fully charged, it lasts for about six seconds, and if you charge into a huge group of minor enemies, your high score shoots up faster than most F-Zero racers!

I can usually get up to level 3 before having to continue (it's ALWAYS level 3, dammit!) My score has come close to reaching 1.7 million, and I will keep trying until it breaks that marker. That level 3 boss is a real biatch, so I'll let you know when I beat him without continuing.

An excellent shmup this one is. "Are you serious?"

[Ze_ro]

I finally beat this game today... and damn, some of those later levels get awfully hard. 90% of the time, I can't even tell what actually hit me, since there's so much chaos happening (the colorful backgrounds obscure the action somewhat). I guess it doesn't help that my computer is rather slow (400MHz), so it's skipping quite a few frames... It would probably be easier if it wasn't as choppy for me. Maybe I should try it in GnGeo instead.

The green "Windina" ship is my favorite... the heat-seeking shot that will sit there exploding for a while really helps on some of the bosses. Speaking of which, I thought the bosses were pretty cool. The sixth boss (the huge red ship) was especially cool.... what the FUCK is with that last boss though? Damn, I died so many times fighting that damn baby.

I managed to get my high score up to about 480,000, but that's about it I guess I'm just not serious enough. A poor player is me.

Oh, and shouldn't this topic be a sticky in the emulation forum? I guess it's kind of late now though, since the next MAME Club game is tomorrow and all.

--Zero

[Ze_ro]

*bump*

I didn't want to start a whole new topic... but this weeks MAME Club game seems to be overdue. Considering last weeks mishap, are things being moved to thursdays? Or are we sticking with tuesdays?

Is chadtower just slow in his choice or something?

--Zero

[zektor]

*bump*

I didn't want to start a whole new topic... but this weeks MAME Club game seems to be overdue. Considering last weeks mishap, are things being moved to thursdays? Or are we sticking with tuesdays?

Is chadtower just slow in his choice or something?

--Zero

We're going to do it from Saturday to Saturday. Sorry for the delay folks. Hopefully I'll get the PM for this coming title soon so I can have it up and running by tomorrow morning.

[Sofa King Gud]

Can I join the club?

[zektor]

Can I join the club?

Sure!