Ikaruga in flash?

One of the few games to hold my attention over the last four years or so, along with Gradius V, was Ikaruga.

For those of you that have never played it, it’s a vertically (or horizontally, if you set it that way) scrolling shoot em up, with a difference.

The difference is that unlike your R-Types or your Gradius (Gradiui?) there are no power-ups, so you can’t be left stranded by a stray bullet on level five with no speed ups and no drones (Salamander (side point but I was playing this on mame the other day – how hard is that game? Hair-sus H Christ on a bike), R-Type and Gradius fans will know what I am on about). Instead Ikaruga gives you the black vs white equation.

Your ship changes colour, between black and white. When it’s black it can absorb black bullets, when it’s white it can absorb white bullets to power a smart bomb type weapon. Moreover, using black bullets against white enemies kills them in half the time and vice versa.

It sounds a bit complex, but in reality it works like a dream, leading to a lot of bullet munching strategic play.

Anyway, all this rambling, leads me to the original point of this post – Kai sent me a link to a flash ‘version’ of Ikaruga.

Now it runs like a dog on a Mac at the full quality setting, but if you flick the screen quality to the last two settings to the right, you’ll get something approaching what it was like in it’s original console form (possibly with the far right one a bit too fast).

It is only the first boss (as I believe the whole thing is just a beta anyway), but it reminded me why I fell in love with the game. It’s just so pure and a beautiful contrast to the over-wraught, over-reliance on visuals that most console games seem to be obsessed with.

Hopefully there will be more to come – though I think this flash version is quite old now – and with PSP running flash these days it would be smart to have it available for that…

As for the original, when I get chance I’ll be rummaging around boxes to find my Gamecube, Universal boot disk and my japanese copy of Ikaruga. I never completed it – have you tried Level 4??? – but I enjoyed trying non the less.