This game is pretty awesome, jankiness aside. Why don't many people talk about it!? I love it!

This is a port of the original Dangerous Seed from the arcades, but instead of a faithful port it decided to revise itself. Yeah, the original game... had problems... It's a game with great potential, but it's very hard to enjoy or optimize your performance in this game with its 2 major problems: fat hitbox and 0 i-frames! The fact that the destructible bullets are very thick doesn't help either. I know the game has to make money, but this is why criticism is important. To point out specifically what's wrong and ensure future iterations don't repeat the same mistake!

The MD version doesn't really address both of those problems but it at least addresses other problems to make the 2 significant problem become not-so-signficant. So let's start with the controls rundown. You can shoot, bomb (more like a special weapon. There is no defensive properties against normal bullets with this) and change formation. How things arranged are more interesting than it seems.

For starters, the moveset provided between stages are different depending on the ship availability. Stage 1 and 2, only A. Stage 3 and 4, you get A and B formation. Stage 5 onwards you're given full formation. There are 3 weapon shot types. The blue one, laser, sucks, so I don't recommend picking that up at all, the other two are competent. Wave, the red shot, is recommended. It's a fast-paced game with a very heavy focus on destruction. Many of the bosses' bullets are of the destructible kind and it cranks it up to eleven! That also mean you need to forget destroying them and get creative with how you shoot instead, which is where the formation change comes in. Certain formations have certain properties. One of the more important ones is the Y formation where you can shoot at exactly your sides. You don't get to see a multi-directional vert game often! And the bosses. Just awesome!

It's not without weaknesses, though. I've mentioned the pathetic blue shot, 0 i-frames and fat hitbox, the max speed can be considered too fast too, but you'll want to pick too much of them for score. And for each 3 hits one ship part is destroyed, weakening your firepower often to impossibility! Yikes! The good news is the ships can be recovered back, phew, bombs are plentiful and while death resets your power level, classic Gradius Syndrome stuff, the lowest power level on Stage 5 onwards is still viable, so it's not much of a problem and actually quite welcome! It makes overall experience consistently pleasant!

This port also adds 4 new stages at the end, probably to extend its length to console shmup standard. One more reason to check the game out and thankfully it is a sane game.

It certainly is one of the most underrated Mega Drive game. Not one of the best, but certainly worth your time. Play it!

#stg #shmup #dangerousseed

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