Shmups are truly amazing, and so many great arcade shmups have been seeing ports to modern platforms recently. Toaplan was one of the best companies to release shmup titles and thanks to Bitwave, a collection has now been released on Steam….sort of. These are being called a collection, but the games are actually all being sold separately. Still, though, these are four of Toaplan’s most beloved games, so how did Bitwave do?
Each of the games is perfectly emulated but Bitwave did include options to help players who may not be the best at shmups. These options include adjusting the difficulty and the number of lives and switching between western and Japanese versions of the games. There are other accessibility features as well, such as a practice mode, auto-fire and auto-dodge, which all work to make the games play better than ever.
Twin Cobra is one of the older shmups Toaplan put out but that is not a knock on the game as it still feels as great as ever. This is a military-themed shooter that sees you take control of a helicopter which you can equip with four different types of weapons that are upgradable while also having a powerful secondary bomb. This is not a fast-paced shmup, but rather a slow and more strategic-minded one, and yet you can see the roots of the other games here.
Next is Truxton which feels like Twin Cobras enhanced in every way. Rather than a military-themed shmup, this is a sci-fi game with the plot involving an alien invasion. Even your ship looks far more fantastical in nature and the arsenal is more sci-fi oriented, with a green plasma blast to take out enemies and a strong blue laser to target multiple enemies alongside the standard machine gun weapons. Everything looks great here as well, with much better graphics than Twin Cobra and one neat touch is that in addition to the screen scrolling vertically, the more you move your ship sideways, more of the screen and enemies are shown. This s also a much faster-paced game than Twin Cobra and memorization is key here.
Zero Wing is an iconic game, but the lines that generated the memes were not from this version so do not expect to see them here. Storywise, the themes are similar to Truxton but in terms of gameplay, it is very different as it is a side-scrolling shooter like R-Type. Zero Wing is one of the most fun games in this collection due to the fact that it replaces the bombs from Twin Cobra and Truxton with a tractor beam that adds in a completely different technique to the gameplay. Now you can pull in enemies and attach them to your ship for a single-use shield, or use the beam again to use the enemy as a weapon. It is not as fast-paced as Truxton but faster than Twin Cobra and manages to be one of the most unique games in the genre.
Out Zone is seeing a release outside of Arcade for the first time here and it is amazing. This game is a top-down run’n’gun game and stands out as one of the best in the genre even with its one flaw. For the good parts, this is a neat sci-fi game that feels like it was made well after it actually was, which shows how good Toaplan was with these games. The action is intense and this stands out as the most fun in the collection.
The game also has a neat way of building dread that works well, by having your health bar gradually deplete over time and requiring you to grab energy icons to keep your life up. Combined with the fast-paced gameplay and the tight and precise controls, this makes Out Zone a true pleasure to experience. It is just the flaw it has that prevents things from being great.
But what is this flaw? Well, it is actually a flaw that is in all the games Bitwave released in this collection and that is the sound. While the games are visually accurate to the arcade versions and even come with options to customize the visuals, the sound is not arcade accurate both in terms of music and FX. This is sad since the gameplay feels so accurate to the arcades and the multiple accessibility options really help as well, but the sound was a big part of these games and the problems end up being a distraction
Ultimately, this is a good collection for these games, the problems with the music notwithstanding. The accessibility options and releases of games that never left arcades are a great thing. If you can look past the music, then this is a must-play collection for any shmup fan or those looking to get into the genre
Disclaimer: Review keys were provided