Game:

Aurail (1990)

Duration: 0:00

448 views

5

Arcade 1cc #818: Aurail. Pilot a tank through 2D stages and sprite-art 3D tunnels. Played for La Calice Cup. This reminds me of playing Dogyuun! Again a high score tournament highlights an obscure, flawed, but fundamentally badass game featuring a great bombastic soundtrack. Romset [aurailj], played with WolfMAME 0.268. Score: 3,721,440. No autofire used - this game has a reasonable built-in fire rate when you hold down the fire button, so you don't need to mash buttons.

The balance of fixed enemies and spawn-when-they-feel-like-it enemies make it hard to get a totally consistent route for the 2D stages. The 3D stages spawn random waves of enemies, but each of those waves behaves in consistent ways (at least as long as you approach them consistently). So while round 14 seems ridiculous at first, once you learn a "route" for each enemy group you can reliably get through.

This game starts out easy but the difficulty ramps up quite high indeed. the round 6 and round 9 bosses are big difficulty spikes. The last section of round 15 is the hardest section of all - the "hurry up" bombs start right away, and you don't always have the option to blow them up before they detonate. And I still don't know a reliable way to kill that boss without getting hit once. The final battle is a great screen-filling boss - impossible on your first attempt but a good route makes it easier than round 15.

THE WAR OF MADNESS WILL BEGIN NOW, BEGIN NOW, BEGIN NOW...