Review #648: Psikyo Collection vol.1

 That's a lot of bullets.

 While Psikyo are long gone, their legacy is not. They made arcade shoot'em ups their bread and butter and it shows. In this volume there are 4 different games, a nice of styles, even if all of them are shoot'em ups, covering the company's origins. As far as the whole package goes, Psikyo Collection Vol.1 is fairly lacking. Every vertical shooter must be played while closeted between two sidebars, in order to keep the correct aspect ratio, but every game gets a measly two backdrops. There's a fair amount of high quality art per game, but I wish there was more. Lastly, the translation is horrible. The easiest difficulty setting is called 'Monkey'(alright, that one's brilliant) and settings for upping your lives vary between 'own machine' and 'number of my character'. Thankfully, you can customize your maximum amount of continues and lives fairly easy.

 All four games are basically the same: You play as a ship/flying human and must try to avoid enemy fire while attacking with your own, all the while trying to collect power ups and points. You can play with infinite continues, but you'll want to avoid dying since it'll reset your shot's power as well as your score multiplier. Simple, fun.

Strikers 1945

 Pretty much your standard vertical shooter, you pick an airplane and go to town. Except that you'll be battling crazy vehicles that turn into mechas. You've got your basic shot, a charge shot and a limited Bomb attack. Defeating enemies makes them drop points or power ups that increase your basic shots' power and utility. Each ship gets different bonuses, such as missiles or homing mini-bullets. Each Bomb and Charge attack is different too. Dying resets your power.

 Strikers 1945 is fine, but nothing special I think. That said, there's a reason this game became a classic and got so many sequels.
6.0 out of 10

 Sol Divide

 Now this, this is my jam. This is a very weird RPG-beat'em up-shooter hybrid and I loved it. You play as any of three characters as they fly through horizontally-scrolling levels. You also get to collect life-increasing power ups and even collect an assortment of different spells you can then use by spending mana. For a first in these games, you also get melee attacks. They had me at melee attacks.

 It looks weird, to say the least, and the mix-mash of elements isn't perfect, but dangit, I get to hack-and-slash my way through. Needless to say, I really, really enjoyed this one.
7.5 out of 10

 Samurai Aces

 I was about to call this game a Strikes 1945 reskin, but then I found out that this game came out first! Basically, it's Strikers 1945 but with a Samurai/Ninja/Mecha-hybrid skin. It literally plays exactly the same. And the power-ups looks the same. It's also a bit tougher.

 I liked this game a bit more than Strikers since the theme was so ridiculous/
6.0 out of 10

 GunBird

 I thought I was gonna hate this game since its cutesy generic anime-vibe wasn't quite doing it for me. But it's pretty good. It's another Samurai Aces reskin, but it's very, very silly. One of the protagonists is a pedophile, for instance, and every character gets two different comedic endings. Even the characters are silly, instead of ships you can play as a jetpack-guy, a witch on a broom or even a silly old-man on a makeshift helicopter.

  It's one of the easiest games on the collection, and one of the most colorful and ridiculous... which also made it one of the games I enjoyed the most.
 7.0 out of 10


 All in all, I fancy this is a pretty decent collection of games if you enjoy the genre. They might not have converted me, but there's a reason these games are so beloved, and I'm sure that people out there will be able to appreciate these games as much as I was able to appreciate Capcom's Belt Action collection. That said, the game could've used some more extras....
6.5 out of 10