Undead line

I downloaded the Gundemonium Collection last week, and all I got was three lousy shooting games. I remember hearing the name for years, but never got the chance to check out the games previously. The problem being that Gundemonium was what the cool kids call "doujin" PC software, which is basically Japanese for "hands off foreigner." Only very recently, mostly coinciding with the rise in popularity of PayPal, and the widespread adoption of high speed internets, have Japanese indy devs come around to the idea of selling their games to people who would like to buy them. It's pretty ass backwards when the easiest way for me to play a guy's game was picking up the Wonderswan version of Dicing Knight. Dicing Knight was unfortunately, not as cool as I was led to believe, incidentally by the same people who told me about Gundemonium. At one point I might have been aware that the games were developed by the same guy, but I seem to have forgotten this over the years. I don't regret the $15, because it goes more to support the publisher than the developer anyway, but I should have done my homework. The collection is made up of three games, which are actually only two distinct titles, and one remake/update. Hitogata Happa is a vertical shooter, GundeadliGne is a horizontal shooter, and Gundemonium Recollection is a remixed version of GundeadliGne. I would have only picked GundeadliGne had I known then what I know now, and I wouldn't have been as gung-ho about it, maybe waiting for a sale or something.

One prevalent aspect of this "doujin" stuff is most games tend to be balls hard, and these games are no exception. Hitogata Happa seems completely unplayable, with a slow "ship," fast bullets, and enemies that take way too many hits to die. I didn't really care about that one, so it's no big deal. GundeadliGne was the game I really wanted, and it looks to be pretty decent. It has a ton of attack and defensive options to play with, sensible attack patterns, and a hitbox small enough to fit through them. I like it. Gundemonium Recollection is a remixed version of GundeadliGne, with some of the weapon systems streamlined, and gameplay tweaked. I lasted longer in 'liGne, so I'll be sticking to that. These games are straight PC ports, with no widescreen support, but an option to adjust the display any which way. The music is straight MIDI, which sounds pretty poor, but seems well composed and is catchy, but for some reason skips every few seconds, which gets on my nerves since I use a decent pair of headphones. Also, Hitogata Happa has no "TATE," or horizontal orientation option, which for shooting game fans is a big minus for a vertical shooter. I haven't actually hooked up my HRAP to any of these, but I suspect it would work just dandy, and with the option to remap buttons, they can be played in comfort. All in all these are very much indy games, a mixed bag of good and bad ideas with no quality control. One thing the Japanese indy scene always had right was the pricing, at $6 a pop I don't mind never finishing any of these.