Comiket 71: Magical Amber

First things first - the GOOD NEWS: I've finally jumped on the Youtube bandwagon, and fiddled around with all the screen capture and video editing nonsense you need to publish movies, so that boils down to tons of replay vids and preview movies in upcoming reviews. Screenshots are nice, but nothing does a game justice like a real time playthrough.

I've still been working on tons of projects (along with playing games), so the Comiket 71 material is not quite finished yet. Today we'll take a look at Magical Amber by 01 Step (First Step), which is an extension of Tobi Tsukihime. Notice I say extension rather than sequel, because MA is so identical to TT, it feels like you are just playing five more addon levels rather than a whole new game.

Gameplay is what I refer to as a "textbook" shmup: Basic controls are shot and bomb. Tapping the shot button gives you a spread pattern, and holding it down gives you the more powerful beam. Killing a certain group of enemies will both destroy their bullets, and trigger a shield that lasts a precious few seconds, as this game gets crazy manic. In fact, even though MA doesn't offer anything groundbreaking, the sheer amount of bullets and dodging required in this game is what makes it stand out. Obviously you can set your difficulty level, but if you're tired of Ikaruga smacking you around, try this on "hell" mode.

Enemies are cute enough to call this a cute em up, and are rendered in a colorful, fun fashion. Level bosses are actual people, until you reach the final end boss, which seems really out of place (as the video shows). The game flys by quickly with only 5 levels, and short levels at that. MA does make a great self-improvement score challenge game though - the combo system easily allows 1000+ hits which translates to mucho points. So players can keep coming back trying to add a million here or there.

Anyway, enjoy the first of hopefully many more vids, and grab the demo from 01 Step.