Batsugun mini-review

The projectile-packed pioneer returns in a reasonably priced, feature-rich arcade port.

Although Toaplan’s efforts ranged from eroge mahjong (1986’s Mahjong Sisters) to platformers (1990’s Snow Bros), the studio is best known for their pioneering shoot ‘em ups. And steadily, Gothenburg-based Bitwave Games have been bringing these cherished shooters to Steam, with nearly all the modern enhancements anyone could want. Now, Toaplan’s last shooter, 1993’s Batsugun gets the treatment, which is poised to please fans of the genre.

Sure, Batsugun has been available before, with City Connection’s publishing of the Saturn version recently made available for consoles and PC. But emulating SEGA’s dual CPU setup is tricky, and one consequence was a bit of disheartening lag. Pleasingly, Bitwave decided to port the arcade original, allowing for an experience that mimics sitting down in a twentieth-century arcade.

Flying Shark’s Schneider Returns

Batsugun begins with either one or two players selecting from three different types of ships, each extending its own offensive weapon that ranges from a spread shot, lightning, to wave projectiles. Powering up your ship is accomplished two different ways. You’ll gain experience from gunning down enemies, which feed into an RPG-style system where your weapon gradually grows in strength.

Remarkably, this changes your offensive output with button presses and holds offering different types of fire. Secondly, there are the sporadic “P” icons emitted from some defeated enemies. These increase the penetrating power of your weaponry. Rounding out your arsenal are ship-specific bombs, that provide a powerful punch or a defensive screen that can negate projectiles.

Pre-Cave Influences

Undoubtedly, you’ll need every available advantage, as Batsugun was one of the first shooters that would routinely fill the screen with projectiles. Unsurprisingly, co-designer Junya Inoue and co-programmer Tsuneki Ikeda would continue to work of bullet-hell title at Cave. Batsugun’s five stage soon grows demanding with survival requiring players to misdirect the aiming of bosses.

When it comes to extras, Bitwave Games doesn’t skimp. Beyond the ability to play the slightly easier Special Version shown at the 1994 Japan Amusement Expo, there’s access to the simulated DIP switches, so you can tweak difficulty, starting number of ships, and extra life thresholds. Visual options are plentiful, with screen rotating and the ability to switch between different aspect ratios.

Customize The Look and Sound

Options to emulate the look of different monitors are granular, with access to everything from virtual scanlines, vignetting, ghosting, and saturation. It’s so intricate that presets would have assistive. Similarly, you can also fine-tune the game’s FM synthesis audio, adding everything from echo, reverb, as well as low- and high-pass filtering. If you opt to not play in tate mode, Batsugun even lets you customize the borders with different borders and overlays that can display everything from basic instructions, scoring data, to statistics. Given the game’s eight-dollar price, and the lack of noticeable lag, that’s truly impressive. Save for a front-end that unifies all of Bitwave’s Toaplan ports, a retro fan couldn’t ask for more.

Batsugun was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher.