Arcade Shmups #29

Ashura Blaster (1990)
By: Visco Corp / Taito Genre: Shooting Players: 1-2 Difficulty: Medium-Hard
Featured Version: Arcade First Day Score: 126,000 (one credit)
Also Available For: Nothing

There can't be a huge number of arcade shooters that never left Japan (they were one of the most popular genres in the West, after all), and even fewer that never received any home conversions, but I managed to find one in the fairly splendidly-named Ashura Blaster, developed by Visco Corp and released by the mighty Taito just as that most wonderful of decades had drawn to a close. Due to this somewhat restrictive release I can't tell you too much about its backstory, but I can tell you it's apparently set in the far-flung future of 2020 (chortle). As you may have noticed, it's a vertical scroller, and a very familiar type too. It doesn't take a genius to work out the probable vague outline though - some dictator or heinous regime has threatened national/global peace and only you (and a friend) can save the day for some reason. Better dig out that chopper license!

For yes, this is a helicopter-based shooter, and it's one that's very much in the same vein as Toaplan classic, Twin Cobra, as many other shmups were at the time. That means there are forested areas, desert areas, airstrips and military bases, usually towns or cities, and always watery areas. Flying over all of them are many groups/formations of enemy aircraft, less frequent medium-sized aircraft, and occasional large aircraft as well as millions of small tanks, usually trundling onto the screen, appearing from buildings, or appearing from underneath stuff like trees, and a few larger tanks or ground vehicles. Naturally, these tanks/vehicles are replaced by boats of various sizes on the watery areas. This format was used by so many games around this time that I genuinely once thought they were their own sub-genre at one point, but apparently not.

As you may have managed to work out, Ashura Blaster adheres to this format without deviation. It consists of six stages which are all nearly two screens wide and full of choppers and tanks, primarily. The aircraft you pilot through them are Apache-style gunships (red for player one or blue for player two, rather than the expected military green example shown on the title screen) which are armed with a basic twin cannon and three bombs, though you can choose between four different types of bomb attacks before you start. Power-ups are offered by certain enemies upon destruction (chinooks, most often) and include a 'P' for powering-up whichever weapon you have, extra bombs, occasionally an extra life, and of course the weapons. These come in the form of an icon which cycles through five colours - red, orange, yellow, green and blue.

The Vulcan Cannon (red) is your default weapon which is a decent medium-range option when powered-up; Twin Laser (orange) is ultra-powerful but has a very narrow range; Back Shot (yellow) has a twin forward but four-way rear shot; Wave Blaster (green) shoots pretty powerful green balls all over the place and is the weapon I use the most; Last is the Missile Spread (blue) which has the widest range but isn't especially powerful. Each of them has their uses and the weapon capsule appears quite often so if you make a bad choice, you probably won't have to survive with it for long. Although, if you're anything like me, you'll probably keep losing lives following the capsule as it drifts back and forth, waiting for it to change to your preferred colour, and of course, you won't be shocked to hear that you lose all power-ups when you lose a life.

I wouldn't go as far as calling it a 'one life game' since, as mentioned, the power-ups are frequent, but it's not far off. There are a lot of bullets whizzing around and many enemy helicopters that you miss will swing around for another pass, for example. The gun emplacements will sometimes fire when you're right on top of them too, which isn't ideal, and some guns later on are invisible until they pop out of the ground when you get close. As well as stuff like this, the enemies also get faster the further into the game you get so it can get a little tough going. The stage bosses are, predictably, just much larger versions of standard enemies (giant tanks, aircraft, etc) and most of them aren't too bad in terms of difficulty. The bombs are helpful but highscore-chasers might want to hold off as you get bonus points for any unused bombs at the end of a stage.

There are a few nice little details like that but are they enough to help Ashura Blaster stand out? I don't really think so, I'm afraid. The graphics aren't bad for their time, generally speaking, with the enemies and their bullets whizzing around without much in the way of slowdown, and the weapon effects are pretty nice (although the green weapon seems a bit out of place), but it's all very repetitive too. There is very little variety in the enemies or scenery between stages, with few new examples introduced later on, and the mostly dull colours mean not many enemies really stand out, especially the choppers which might sometimes be hard to spot if they weren't moving around. The audio is a little better, with some decent music (I particularly like the first stage's tune) and solid-sounding spot effects. Overall, though, there's just something missing for me. It's an enjoyable enough game to play, the weapons are pretty cool, it's challenging without being stupidly difficult, and it loops after the sixth stage so it's good for score-chasers too, but I had such a sense of 'seen it all before' while playing (seen earlier in the game itself, in some cases!). As mentioned earlier, the style is similar to many other vertical-scrollers of the era, and it's a style I like a lot, but there are some much better examples than this. If you've played most of them, however, and just want to test your skills on something new (assuming it is new to you), Ashura Blaster is a competent if repetitive effort.

RKS Score: 6/10

Gameplay Video: here's a video of the whole game being played by one of the talented fellows at World of Longplays (check out their great channel here). Oh, and don't watch if you want to avoid spoilers!