Toaplan Arcade 3 Review

There's a disclaimer I regularly issue that you may have read on the about page. It applies to every single thing that I write, but I feel like I need to mention it for Toaplan reviews especially:

I don't know anything about video games. Don't expect discussion of the historical importance of a game, how it plays relative to original release or prior re-releases, who was involved in making it...anything like that. I do some research while writing, but I have not steeped in 15 years of YouTube videos while configuring mame and playing through a full romset.

This goes for any review that I write, but it goes double for Toaplan collections so I wanted to mention it specifically here. And if we ever get any high-profile fighting game collections it would go double for them as well. Or even triple, as I still haven’t unlocked a love of fighting games.

Anyway, onwards to the review.

I didn't play a ton of shoot em ups growing up. I played a few. Some Gradii, Types R, Galaga for sure and probably a few others. But it was never my genre.

Evercade, and previous Toaplan collections specifically, has awakened an interest in the genre that I've been enjoying exploring recently. I can't say that I'm good at these games yet, nor particularly knowledgeable about them. But I do enjoy them about 1000x more than I used to - to the point of branching out even beyond Evercade and into Raidens and such - and I understand what differentiates one game from another and how those factors contribute to my enjoyment.

With my fledgling appreciation for the genre, I was excited to see them announce another Toaplan cart.

Batsugun

When this cart was announced, there was a lot of chatter on Discord about Batsugun. Well, and Special Version, but we'll get to that in a minute.

Batsugun, we were reliably informed, was Toaplan's magnum opus. A stone-cold classic made from everything Toaplan had learned making all of their prior stone-cold classics in the genre. As well as being a foundational work in the then-emerging subgenre of bullet hell.

In other words: The creme de la creme de la creme. And, it turns out, that reputation is entirely deserved.

You choose one of three characters/ships with different weapons and firing patterns (though identical handling and hitboxes). And...you do shoot em up things. You can expect typical Toaplan-quality sprites, sounds, and musics, as well as thoughtful encounter design. There are a few things that distinguish it from your typical Toaplan fare that are worth discussing.

First, as mentioned above, it feels a little different than most of their other shoot em ups as it's starting to edge into bullet hell territory. The game starts out fairly unassuming, but pretty quickly ramps up to more elaborate encounters with larger and more choreographed bullet patterns. If you aren't especially comfortable with this subgenre, the game does a pretty good job easing you into the sorts of maneuvers you need to execute. Or at least as well as you can reasonably expect.

Next, let's talk powering up your weapons. As previously mentioned, you've got your choice of 3 different ships all with their own surprisingly-different weapons. And each of those weapons can be upgraded in a couple of different ways.

First, as you destroy enemies, you gain experience. And as you gain experience, you fill up an experience bar. And when your experience bar reaches the top, your weapon levels up. First to level 2 then to level 3. After level 3, you are granted an additional bomb and some points when you level up but your weapon stays the same. Your experience level persists across deaths.

Within each stage, you can collect actual power-ups like a traditional shoot em up. You can power-up your weapon 5 times per experience level. Further power-ups grant only points. Your power-ups are lost upon death and must be collected again.

The interplay of these two systems offers a solid compromise to the perennial death recovery problem in shoot em ups. You are not completely powerless when you respawn and neither do you need to worry about replaying large sections to power back up. And as you power-up your weapon, you end up with fairly screen-filling attacks so you can focus on your dodges.

Another point in its favor is the scoring system. You, of course, get points for destroying destroyables. Certain destoyables will also drop a small or large "V" pick-up. At the end of a level you receive bonus points for the number of Vs you've collected. Note that Vs are lost upon death.

One other, weirder scoring mechanism is the pigs. At a couple points in the game, when you destroy certain destroyables in certain ways, a little cartoon piggie pops up in its spot. Hovering over the pig for as long as you can will help you rack up points.

There are also a couple of regular score bonuses related to bombing areas or destroying enemies at certain times.

Batsugun is a great experience, but is relatively short and doesn't loop. You may find yourself returning to it to try different ships, work your way down to a 1CC, or to maximize your score within the bounds of the game. But otherwise, once it's over it's over. Which, well it doesn't outstay its welcome, but after enough practice you'll really be itching to push the envelope in ways you just can't in the time allotted.

Batsugun Special Version

Batsugun Special Version is...more or less what it sounds like. Batsugun again, but different. And, indeed, mostly better.

The core of the game is exactly the same as Batsugun, with a few important differences.

• Some changes to the order and composition of the levels, for balance purposes.
• Smaller hitbox on the player, to really get you that bullet hell feel.
• The game loops a few times, increasing difficulty each time. Really giving you a chance to stretch your legs if you've got the skills.

There are other, smaller changes, too. I'm not going to bother listing them here, but you can see a pretty in-depth write-up about the mechanics of both games for more information.

Special Version offers something new and better for novices and experts alike. A more gradual difficulty ramp paired with higher-difficulty loops to show off your new skills makes Special Version the definitive version as far as I'm concerned.

Out Zone

Well they can't all be shoot em ups. Some of them are run and guns that feel an awful lot like shoot em ups. Out Zone is, yeah, that. A vertically-scrolling run and gun. One of two on the cart. And a good one, at that.

You have two different weapons. One you can fire in any direction, and one always fires forward and in a spread. You switch between these weapons with "C"hange pick-ups and power them up with "P"ower pick-ups. There are additional "Sp"ecial pick-ups that offer shields, speed-ups, special weapons, and more.

While you're making your way through the 7 stages, you have an energy gauge that is constantly ticking down. When it empties out, you die. Pick up "E"nergy pick-ups to refill the meter.

The stages are all varied and interesting, with a plethora of really neat enemies and environments coming at you from all directions. The game is quite challenging, but not impossible. Much of the difficulty, aside from the actual mechanics of maneuvering around the stage, is in identifying whether you need the forward-facing or multi-directional weapon for any given segment.

Out Zone is a ton of fun to blast away at solo, but it takes on another dimension when you play 2-player. With an engaged partner, you'll find yourselves coordinating angles and approaches for different encounters and developing a strategy for who gets to use which weapon. This cartridge generally is full of fun co-op opportunities, but Out Zone especially shines with it.

FixEight

FixEight is the spiritual successor to Out Zone, so this is our other vertically-scrolling run and gun em up. The bones of this game are pretty similar to Out Zone, so I won't go over those again - go ahead and read the above section if you haven't already.

There are a few important changes here in FixEight, though.

First, you have eight characters to choose from (the "fix" eight, perhaps? I haven’t read the story). Each of these characters have their own unique weapons. As in Out Zone, each character has a forward-facing weapon, an all-direction weapon, and a special weapon.

Second, rather than swapping weapons via the "C" pick-up, you instead use one of the swirly "change panels" scattered around the stages. These can be used as many times as you want so you don't need to worry too much about accidentally getting locked into the wrong weapon for an upcoming section.

Third, the energy system from Out Zone is gone. It hasn't been replaced by any different function to force forward movement, as far as I can tell. It’s just gone.

FixEight is also much more bold in its use of color. Whether it looks better than Out Zone or not will be a matter of taste. It’s roughly on par quality wise, just a matter of which vibe you prefer.

And that's basically it for differences, aside some smaller changes like how respawns and stuff work.

This is a fun game. I don't like it as much as Out Zone, but that's entirely going to be a matter of taste. And I like them both enough that I don't really feel like I need to come up with some specific reason about why I like one better.

Truxton II

When Toaplan Arcade 1 was announced, Truxton was The One everyone knew and was excited for and I didn't know anything about.

Truxton was solid, and so is Truxton II.

As a sequel, Truxton II is just an upgraded Truxton. New look, same great taste.

The graphics have gotten an update, but you've still got a classic shoot em up, a little long in the level and a little high in the difficulty. Power-ups still work largely the same, with power-up capsules shifting colors to denote which weapon you're picking up.

Truxton II is a long game (comparatively for an arcade title), and a difficult one. Actually, full disclosure I haven't quite beaten it yet due to some checkpointing sending me a little bit further back than I’d prefer. I appreciate having something to bang my head against, but to be honest even halfway through it's already more annoying than challenging for me. Your mileage will vary there, of course, depending on your skill level.

I can see this is the shortest write-up in this post, so I just want to be clear. I don’t think this game is bad. On the contrary, I think it’s mostly good. I just don’t have much to say about it because there isn’t much novel about it and I don’t quite vibe with it enough that I feel like gushing about it in unnecessary detail.

Ghox

Ghox is an outlier here, neither a shoot em up nor a run and gun. What if I told you it's a brick breaker? Would you say “yes I know I’ve been watching other reviews on YouTube?”

You control a little paddle that you can move in 8 directions. Launch 2 balls and break all the bricks to move on to the next level. In addition to the bricks themselves, you’ve got a bunch of other stuff going on in these levels; walls and other barriers, enemies, treasure chests, etc.

Those treasure chests hold coins, which grant points, and fairies and orbs, which control power-ups. The power-ups system is pretty interesting. Power-ups are color-coded, for example with purple growing your paddle or red letting your balls penetrate through bricks rather than bouncing off. You can get a temporary power-up, which you lose upon death, by picking up the appropriately-colored fairy. If you collect 5 colored orbs in a row of a single color, you will gain the corresponding power-up for the rest of your game, even across deaths and continues.

You also have a bomb, which explodes one of your balls into a bunch of additional balls to help clean up some of the more pesky bricks.

The game is separated into 5 worlds (confusingly called stages) made up of a handful of levels and capped by a boss. The boss fights are interesting for a brick breaker, if a bit gimmicky.

Brick-breaker without a paddle, of course, is a little suspect. The arcade machine seems to have had an interesting tilty-paddle since you can move up an down as well.

For me, of all of the paddly games available on Evercade, this one actually isn’t too tough to manage. You have your standard “hold button to speed up” scheme here and after a bit of practice I was able to dial in the precision pretty well such that the controls weren’t the most frustrating part of the experience.

The levels are fairly varied in structure, if not in theme or graphics. But ultimately, the levels themselves are what frustrates me most with this game. Every single element of these levels is working against you getting to the bricks. Which maybe shouldn’t be surprising, but it goes a little over the top for me. Enemies do their little dance in just the wrong spot, elaborate hedgerows force you to consistently thread needles, portcullises keep you out of a brick-filled castle. It’s neat and it’s visually interesting, but it means each new level I see just makes me feel tired rather than energized thinking about how I’ll get to those bricks.

This game is a neat novelty for the cart, and offers a bit of fun. Once you get a handle on the paddle control, you may find yourself dipping into it now and then. But, for me anyway, I don’t see myself putting in sustained effort to work towards a 1CC or anything now that I’ve credit-fed through.

Vimana

Vimana is my least favorite game on this cart. It's not bad, by any means, but it is my least favorite.

It is a pretty standard shoot em up with a couple of twists. You have two weapons: a standard double-barrel shot, and a charged "V" shot. With the latter, a series of small shots appear around the edge of your ship and, when released, they fire off and do a pretty good job of cleaning up a wave of smaller enemies.

The bomb is also pretty interesting. Your ship is surrounded by a series of orbs that will seek a nearby enemy and do some pretty hefty damage. But until it finds an enemy to target, it orbits your ship and offers a bit of protection.

Other than that, you're looking at the usual. Shoot enemies, power up your weapon, grab some bonus points. It's fine.

You've got plenty more options for shoot em ups on this cart, but you can still have a good time here.

Wrap Up

This is the third Toaplan collection on Evercade. So, even if you were unfamiliar with this stuff before the earlier collections (like me), you probably know what to expect by now and how you might feel about it. If you tried Toaplans 1 or 2 and still don’t care for shoot em ups, this probably won’t be the one to change your mind.

If you haven’t tried the earlier collections yet, though, this might be the one to start with. On one hand, Batusugun Special Version is a hell of a game and could be a great introduction to the genre. On the other hand, this is the most one-note Toaplan collection. The other collections have platformers and puzzlers and such to balance them out. Here in collection 3, you have shoot em ups, run and guns em ups, and (improbably) brick breaker em ups - everything has a general shoot em up feel.

I also mentioned multiplayer a few times up above, so it may be worth summarizing that briefly: every single game on this cart supports simultaneous 2-player multiplayer (on Alpha/VS). The Toaplan carts in general are pretty good for this and you’ll find four games apiece on each of the other collections offering the same, but I just wanted to note that it’s all of the games in this case. Yes, even Ghox.

There is not a single bad game in this collection. Even if each game won’t necessarily be to everyone’s taste, most players will find something to like or appreciate here. Unless you’re dead-set against anything shaped like a shoot em up, I’d Recommend you pick this one up.