Blue Wish Resurrection!
A bullet hell shmup (meaning hundreds of bullets all at once and you having to find your way through the patterns) that I have been having tons of fun with. This is the "Plus" version, with graphical enhancements and other fun goodies.
The game is very simple: three difficulties, five levels, one True Final Boss
TM. There are a ton of custom options available, which I'll go into later. Anyway, controls:
Arrow keys: move
Z - fire weapon A
X - Use a "kills everything on the screen and grants temp invicibility" bomb
C - fire weapon B
Weapon A is usually a direct fire weapon, which is supercharged when you use a bomb, and weapon B is generally a spreadfire weapon.
You have 3 + 1hidden ships to use, and each has an alternate color scheme (accessed by hitting X rather than Z on the ship selection screen). Their weapons are pretty different: the first one, Blue Wish (pictured), has pretty standard multiple rapid-fire guns, the second, Blue Dream, is more assault-oriented, with two large beamzorz in addition to a spread weapon, the third, Blue Peace, has a homing weapon that makes you move slow, and a direct weapon that makes you move fast, and the final one, Eden's Edge, has four little satellites that follow you around a la Gradius or form up around you. It also has the most awesome bomb: rather than an explosion, the bullets fan out in a strange pattern and then a huge wave of them obliterates everything still standing. (Rather than an alternate color scheme, it also turns into a humanoid girl, similar to the Touhou series).
The True Final Boss
TM can only be fought by beating the hardest difficulty with no continues. He's a real pain, has a stage all to himself (due to length of battle), is small for a boss and thus harder to hit, and has the most irritating, aggravating bullet patterns you'll ever see. And don't think you can beat him by spamming bombs and being cheap: he'll be cheap right back and activate an invincibility shield whenever a bomb is used.
The customizations are awesome. Aside from selecting bullet colors and item colors, you can choose how fast enemies' bullets travel (Accel on/off), "wait" time (whenever too many bullets appear at once, the game slows down to make dodging easier), and "Guard" (when activated, whenever you're hit the computer with sacrifice one bomb to make you survive and be temporarily invincible... otherwise: one hit, you die).
The game is really fast-paced... "Hell" difficulty is aptly-named indeed. But with the "Wait" and "Guard" options it is more than forgiving. Easy to jump into whether you're a newcomer to bullet hell or a veteran. And best of all:
it's free. (Warning: Japanese site. Use Google translator).
You'll be glad I posted a wall 'o text on this thing... since the readme is in Japanese (game is in English).
