[究極タイガー/Twin Cobra] 2P Ver. Stage 2-1 (Score: 1,986,570) [CC Commentary]
4The Tiger Heli series sure went overboard as new games came out back then. Tiger Heli and Flying Shark were considerably tame. Short 1 loops, lack of Wrong Weapon Syndrome, so not only these cute games are sane to clear, they are easy. Then came the horror called...
KYUKYOKU TIGER!!!
Kyukyoku Tiger (No, we're not mentioning this new update, Twin Cobra / 2P Ver just yet. Please bear with me), expanded further what Hishouzame had. Shot power ups, bombs, the well-proven Toaplan formula. And don't forget checkpoints! The dreaded C-word... CHECKPOINT!!!
Kyukyoku Tiger is a beautifully-designed game speaking of stage design, but while I understand the sentiment, they added 2 things that made the game a disaster to play: Gradius Syndrome, you have 10 power levels here and normally you need 2 stages to recover back to maximum, and Wrong Weapon Syndrome, where the amount of viable weapons compared to the available ones is so limited picking the wrong one almost guarantees DEATH! With the original Kyukyoku Tiger it's a no-miss game!!! If you die even once, you will enter recovery hell! Heck, some bosses are very impossible to fight at checkpoint due to your very limited range! The DPS isn't that much of a problem; it's your shot coverage! Popcorns from left and right, tanks sniping from behind or the edge of the screen, and you will be reverted back to the red weapon which is only the 2nd most viable weapon to use in game and it isn't even that viable, 1cc-ing the original Kyukyoku Tiger is a great feat to achieve! Not to mention a single loop is around 45 minutes! Do NOT attempt the original Kyukyoku Tiger unless you know what you're doing!!!
I guess Toaplan took note of that and released an update! This update mainly added 2nd player, but for 1P players like me, there is one very significant change:
NO CHECKPOINTS!!!
This makes this version that is far saner than its checkpoint counterpart! Even funnier, the extend count stays the same. At the time its ridiculously kind extend count for a no checkpoint game is unheard of! But in hindsight, I think it's a wise decision from them. The stage design doesn't seem to be nerfed at all. In fact, your ship is kinda nerfed as heck! I both love and hate this game!
Kyukyoku Tiger is your usual Toaplan-formula shmup. Shoot, bomb, that's it. Compared to Hishouzame, the bomb is quite NERFED. When it explodes it has great DPS and has great duration, which makes it an ideal shield for pointblanking, sure, but the activation time from deployment is very slow! More than half a second, I think? This makes the bomb a dud for reflexive defensive purposes! Remember this well: The bombs are for boss-skipping, not for protection!
This game as usual delivers the crunchy destruction Toaplan excels in. Enemies that are very durable are quite rare! But oh, right, the shots...
ONCE THE GRADIUS SYNDROME KICKS IN, YOU'RE SCREWED!
Thankfully the weapon upgrade is pretty intuitive. The S item is the only thing that will do it. Though actually recovering back to the viable wide shot is another matter. Without checkpoints, you can forget the stress of getting stuck at the same spot forever.
But the thing that makes Kyukyoku Tiger, even still true to the 2P Ver., a painful Toaplan title to play is out of its 4 weapons, ONLY 1 IS VIABLE. 25%! That's one of the worst cases of Wrong Weapon Syndrome! The main reason is aside of the blue weapon, the weapons don't provide diagonal coverage! The blue weapon is the successor to Hishouzame's shot type! Yet you're forced to start with the straight only red shot. Well, at low level I guess it's fine, but on Stage 6 onward switching to any other weapon is death sentence. Red is the default. Shoots strictly upwards though a bit wide. Yellow lets you fire at a cross shape. It gives you 90 degrees and even a back coverage, but when you can't deal with stuff at the 45 degrees, it's a dud. The worst one is the green shot. Powerful, but its shot width is very thin! That's the last thing you want on Kyukyoku Tiger! It's so bad on M2's arcade challenge the default is the max blue shot! The second is the Lv 1 red shot! Oof!
With the checkpoints removed, there is price to it. Your speed is boosted, which is great, but the bullet is limited to around 75% the original? I think it's to ensure the game still runs fine with 2P. The tactics usable on the original still works on the 2P Ver. but as you test things out you'll find that some tactics will be less viable due to the DPS difference even with pointblanking done. Keep this in mind!
Overall, a pretty great time to spend on. But be very careful with its Gradius Syndrome and Wrong Weapon Syndrome!
This is the M2STG port on the Nintendo Switch.
eShop:
https://store-jp.nintendo.com/list/software/70010000028583.html
#stg #shmup #nintendoswitch
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