This is not a Famicom game. It exists divorced of hardware, programmed in some unfathomable distant dimension.
—Dai Kohama, Play Magazine
Recca is a twitch Shoot 'Em Up developed for the Famicom in 1992 by KiD and published by Naxat Soft. It is an exceedingly rare game since it was made specifically for a tournament called Summer Carnival '92, and had a limited print run in stores as a result.
The Excuse Plot is as follows: In the year 2302, just after man has made peace with the inhabitants of the galaxy Andromeda, a group of vicious aliens takes down the galaxy and sets its sights on man. Our only hope is the special starship Recca.
Recca pushes the Famicom hardware to its absolute limits, with action that goes even faster than later-generation arcade shoot-em-ups like Raiden Fighters, DonPachi and Giga Wing. It also has an interesting techno-rave soundtrack, taking the system's sound chip in an entirely different direction than most Famicom games ever did.
Was re-released on Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console in December 2012 in Japan. It was also released on the 3DS Virtual Console in Europe in August 2013 and in North America in September 2013, marking the first time the game was released in those regions, as well as to the consumer market.
Not to be confused with the manga/anime Flame of Recca.
Examples:
- Arrange Mode: The Zanki Attack mode gives all the enemies suicide bullets and you 50 lives. Given how
Nintendo Hard the base game is, you'll need those lives. - Attack Its Weak Point: Most of the bosses can only be damaged in a small red core on their body while they protect themselves with arms, laser barriers or sheer firepower. Naturally, you'd want to use a wide area, shot-erasing, high-damage weapon on them...
- Attack Drone: Getting a red power-up will give you one. Getting another of the same letter gives you a second. The attack drone will function differently depending on what letter of powerup you got.
- They also block regular shots too. Can be crucial to survival, especially when you have two.
- Beam Spam: Lots of Mooks and bosses do this to your character.
- Boss Rush: Level 4 in the Normal Mode, as well as Level 6 of the Hard Mode.
- Bullet Hell: The entire game (especially Zanki Attack) consists of this. It may very well be the Ur-Example, predating the likes of DonPachi and Batsugun. As such, it probably won't be a surprise to hear that the game's programmer, Shinobu Yagawa, went on to work for 8ing/Raizing and CAVE.
- Cap: The maximum score is 9,999,999, which can be reached in a full playthrough of Hard mode in Area 6.
- Charged Attack: The Smart Bomb is charged by not firing your main weapon. It also blocks standard blue spherical bullets, a technique that is essential to surviving Zanki Attack.
- Cheat Code: Hold Select as the game boots up. This will bring you to a menu where you can change the score limit. Then hold A + B + Up + Select, and press Start. You now have infinite lives. You'll need them.
- Cognizant Limbs: This boss◊.
- Death In All Directions: The enemies in the game attack your character from all sides of the screen. And they either move very quickly to collide with your ship or fire a load of shots, lasers or missiles...
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Partly. Your character does lose all powerups on death, but since the amount of enemies (and hence the frequency of powerups) appearing is staggeringly high, this is not much of a problem...
- Dramatic Disappearing Display: During boss battles, the heads-up display disappears entirely, meaning the only things on the screen are you, the boss, and the inevitable hailstorm of projectiles that's bound to start. This, coupled with the adrenaline-pumping music that starts up, serves to make the boss fights all the more intense. This is actually a technical limitation induced by the hardware, as most of the bosses run on the same background layer as the HUD.
- Easy-Mode Mockery: The Normal Game is only four levels, while Hard Mode has seven.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The end credits state that the game is a "Super Hard Shooting Game"
- Explosions in Space: Perhaps, everything that may be asploded (be it enemies or starship Recca)... may be asploded!
- Game Mod: Recca: Pure. With Zanki Attack and Hard Mode available unlocked at the very beginning
- Gravity Sucks: One of the bosses (a Giant Spider Tank) tries this on you by shooting gravity wells that either attract or repel your character (the blue and white balls are the gravity wells◊).
- Harder Than Hard: Zanki Attack (lit. "Life Attack"). In this mode, you start with 50 lives, but every single enemy you destroy fires suicide bullets in random directions. If you can reach the end, you're ranked on how many lives you have left. That said, through some rigorous bombspamming, Zanki Attack can become easier than Normal Game for rehearsed players due to a few properties involving the bomb, like making most of the bullets in range disappear. Some players have seen all of Normal and Hard difficulties on Zanki attack, but can't even get halfway across either difficulty on standard mode.
- Homing Projectile: The Homing weapon naturally, as well as your Laser weapon at maximum level. As for the enemies- too many to count.
- Last Episode Theme Reprise: In Area 7 of the game's hard mode, the final area of that campaign, the title theme plays.
- Macross Missile Massacre:
- Many of the larger enemies use this. And don't get us started on some of the bosses...
- The Final Boss ups it a notch by having ALL his missiles home in on the player!
- Mecha-Mooks: All the regular enemies.
- Mirror Boss: One of the later bosses is a small ship that can use smart bombs just like yours.
- More Dakka: Quite possibly more bullets than any other game made for the NES.
- Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups: The blue Power Ups for your main weapon, and the red powerups for your Attack Drone positioning mode.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: The starship.
- Orchestra Hit Techno Battle: The entire soundtrack, not just the bosses. Bonus awesome points for such a soundtrack being on the NES.
- Overly Generous Time Limit: There is a one-hour time limit for the main mode of the game, although a good player can beat the game in about 25 minutes. Justified, as the game was made for an event, and the timer keeps ticking even if the game is paused. However, averted with Hard mode, which is longer and most players take 50 minutes to complete it, meaning that it is possible for someone to take too long on the bosses, or run out of time because they paused to take too long of a break.
- Pintsized Powerhouse: Starship Recca. Oh yeah, and HOW!
- Puzzle Boss: One of the bosses has two long, diagonal laser "arms"◊ that absorb all your regular shots and swing about slowly, severely limiting your character's ability to Attack Its Weak Point or get near him. To defeat it, you have to get really near its core when the arms move to one side, them fire off your Smart Bomb.
- Reflecting Laser: Used by one of the bosses, who also loves to Teleport Spam.
- Rewarding Inactivity: The game slowly increments your score if you're not firing your main weapon, though Ain't No Rule that you can't use your secondary weapon.
- Segmented Serpent: Present in this game, and like most examples, are only vulnerable in the head. Two of them you fight serve as Mini Bosses.
- Sequel Hook: After defeating what looks like the final boss, you see the credits roll. After that, your ship comes face-to-face with another huge boss, but the action stops and says "TO BE CONTINUED..." Naturally, a sequel never happened. though this may have been referring to the second loop mode instead.
- Sphere of Destruction: Your Smart Bomb is definitely one.
- Smart Bomb: Instead of having a stock of smart bombs, you have to let go of the fire button to charge up energy, and when the gauge is full you can fire a smart bomb.
- Spread Shot: The V weapon, which fires a spread of 5 shots forward, as well as the F weapon, which fires a 3-way forward and a 2-way backwards. Some of the enemies will use both the regular burst as well as the spray burst on you.
- Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: Zanki Mode starts you off with 50 lives. This is because 1. this mode introduces loads of "revenge bullets" that enemies fire upon death, and 2. the game ranks you on how many lives you finish the mode with, assuming you even beat it.
- Teleport Spam: Two of the bosses use this very frequently.
- Timed Mission: That timer on the HUD is there for a reason. In the Normal Game and Hard Mode, you have 60 minutes to complete all the stages. If you take longer than that, the game's over. This is only really a problem in Hard Mode, it being three stages longer.
- Not to mention the timer still counts down even when the game is paused...
- Then there's Score Attack, in which you have 2 minutes to score as many points as possibe, and Time Attack, in which you must reach 1 million points in under 5 minutes.
- Time Keeps On Ticking: Your timer keeps counting down even when the game is paused, likely due to being made for a special tournament event.
- Title Theme Drop: In Hard Mode Area 7, the background music is the title screen theme.
- The Unfought: After the end credits, your ship returns to base, and is promptly attacked by this guy◊. You never fight him in-game, and your ship can't actually battle him during the end credits. The words "To Be Continued" appear, but Recca has no sequel...
- And no, don't stare at the Summer Carnival games made for TurboGrafx. First, they were developed by a different team (although done for the same kind of tournaments). Second, they have completely nothing to do with Recca story-wise. Third, they completely lack the insane speed Recca had.
- Wave-Motion Gun: This boss◊ has five of them, but usually tends to fire one to four at a time. In the event where it fires all five, you have to move in between two of them.
