Sometime in their past, the planets Remuria and Mutras started an interplanetary war that showed no sign of ending. The endless fight between the human-like inhabitants of the two planets had gone so long that weapon development moved into dangerous territory: Organic Weapon Production combined with alien technology. Soon, a sentient weapon - Brawshella - was born. Brawshella gathered all animal life on both planets and forced them to do its bidding and attack the humans. In a week, the humans were assimilated by Brawshella.
Yet, once they were assimilated, they found no other purpose in life but to continue fighting each other. After a while, four of the assimilated fighter pilots regained their consciousness and remembered their pasts. Upon discovering their humanity, the pilots were conflicted with following Brawshella's orders or fighting it to fully regain their independence. The pilots finally turn against the machine in a battle to rediscover themselves and reclaim their planets.
More info on the story and characters can be found on this Japanese website
(archive link).
In addition to the AES version that comes standard with Neo Geo titles, the game received multiple home ports. A mobile port for iOS and Android was released in 2012 which has Bluetooth controller support, as well as a Wii Virtual Console release exclusive to Japan. HAMSTER Corporation would then port the game to Nintendo Switch in 2017 as part of the ACA NEO GEO series (itself a subset of the Arcade Archives line), and to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2018.
Tropes used for this game
- Actionized Sequel: This game is considerably more intense than Pulstar, featuring faster enemies, faster scrolling, denser bullet patterns, and swapping out the checkpoint system in lieu of respawning the player where they died so that lower-skill players can push on with the game and its hectic pace instead of having to retry the same section over and over. In addition, many of the player ships pack more firepower than the Dino 246 from Pulstar (which itself appears in this game as a playable ship).
- Animesque: The character designs.
- A Winner Is You: The ending just shows a wall of text and then the credits, sadly.
- Battleship Raid: The sixth boss, a red battleship with destructible parts. Unfortunately for you, it's accompanied by annoying indestructible orange ships that spew out lots of bullets.
- "Blind Idiot" Translation: Pretty much all the text.
- Boss-Only Level: Stage 7 consists of the final battle with Brawshella.
- Bullet Hell: Especially in the last two levels. Good luck surviving, especially when your hitbox is larger than that of a Bullet Hell...
- Button Mashing: Your primary rapid-fire attack gets stronger if you mash the attack button.
- Cave Behind the Falls: The fifth boss is fought in a cave behind a large waterfall.
- Charged Attack: By holding down the A button, you charge up an attack. When released, you will do your charge move, then when the charged move is still active, pressing B will allow you to do your Break attack (a secondary version of Charged Attack). Every time you get a Power-Up, you'll get an additional segment to your charge meter, up to four, unless you're using the Peplos, which always has four charge meter segments.
- Consolation Prize: You get a very large bonus of points if you collect all five LUCKY panels, with 50,000 points for doing it on stage 1 and the bonus getting higher for later stages. Fail to collect all the letters, and you only get 1,000-4,000 points depending on how many letters you got.
- Cyborg: JB, the pilot of Aryustailm.
- Enfant Terrible: The Big Bad Brawshella is... a giant baby. Who then grows two BFGs, and then a One-Winged Angel form. And it will
kick your ass in more ways than one. - Frictionless Reentry: Averted with the third boss- both you and it have a flame on re-entry to Earth.
- Guide Dang It!:
- The last of the LUCKY panels in Stage 3. You need to draw out the Mini-Boss battle long enough for the enemies carrying the 'Y' to appear.
- None of the game's more intricate mechanics, such as the nature of the winged items and how the Dynamic Difficulty is influenced, are explained anywhere in-game.
- Hard Mode Perks: Playing as Peplos, the designated "Difficult" ship with weak firepower and no powering up capability, grants you a permanent four-segment Charged Attack meter rather than requiring you to pick up powerups. Additionally, each time you clear a stage you get a big secret bonus.
- Hell Hound: The name of one of the ships, its Charged Attacks are called "Deathflame" and "Hell Burst".
- High-Altitude Battle: Stage 3's boss (in a space station), once you destroy most of it, the remaining part drops down to Earth.
- Humongous Mecha: All the bosses (except the last). Some of the regular Mooks may count as well.
- In My Language, That Sounds Like...: Leefa. In Spanish, "lefa" is slang for semen.
- Jack of All Stats: Hell Hound, a ship with average speed and decent attacking stats. (The type of ship is stated as "Standard")
- Japanese Ranguage: Remuria or Lemuria.
- Lightning Bruiser: Aryustailm, a ship with high attack power (and a painful sword Charged Attack!) and high speed. It also gets a Deflector Shield to absord bullets as its other Charged Attack.
- Macross Missile Massacre: Hell Hound shoots homing missiles as its normal attack. Some enemies also attempt this on you.
- Marathon Boss: The Stage 6 boss has a 5-minute time limit, unlike other bosses that only clock in at 1-2 minutes. It's five minutes for a very good reason.
- Mighty Glacier: Windina, a ship with strong attack power but has slow speed.
- Mook Maker: Several enemies are able to do this.
- Motion Parallax: The second stage's first half has 3D parallax scrolling that runs at 60 fps. The sixth stage has a tunnel modeled with parallax that scrolls toward the foreground. In both cases, the effects are achieved through pre-rendered videos.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: All the ships. Although the Dino 135 and Dino 246 are able to get Attack Drones that can block shots.
- One-Winged Angel: Brawshella's 1st 3 forms shouldn't be too difficult. Then it transforms into this grotesque organic thing with a baby's head, and then it uses loads of near-impossible to avoid moves.
- Our Mermaids Are Different: Leefa, the pilot of Windina.
- Science Is Bad: The creation of the Big Bad was due to combining organic weapons and alien technology, the result was a being that assimilated humans and forced them to do its bidding.
- Spelling Bonus: The L-U-C-K-Y items, all of which appear once per stage. You get a big stage-dependent bonus (50,000 points or more) if you collect all of them; otherwise you get a measly 1,000 points for every letter you collected.
- Spread Shot: Hellhound, Windina and Peplos have some form of this. And of course, the enemies.
- Stone Wall: The Dino 246 ship from Pulstar is one of the playable ships, complete with its bullet-blocking frontal pod as well as the two side pods that provide extra firepower and shielding. However, it is relatively slow and it doesn't have much in the way of damage output.
- Time-Limit Boss: Each boss is on a timer. Running out of time will cause the stage to end, but you won't get as many end-of-stage bonuses.
- Transforming Mecha: Stage 4's boss, an aircraft thing that transforms into a robot once its main weaponry has been blown off.
- Violation of Common Sense: You might be tempted to pick up the winged-orb "event items" that appear, but for scoring purposes, you actually want to hold off on collecting them. Each time you ignore one, the next one will be of a different color and will give you a stronger Score Multiplier, until you finally get a special "Yumekobo" item that activates a Super Mode that can potentially generate a large number of items.
- Underground Monkey: The Humongous Mecha regular enemies. Their colour indicates what attacks they will use or the attack pattern they will use.
- Unwilling Roboticization: Three of the main characters (Caster, Leefa, Asayuki) had this happen to them by Brawshella. They get restored to normal after the ending.
- Warm-Up Boss: The first boss, a Spider Tank thing. It doesn't attack much and its attacks are all very easy to avoid. Plus, it dies quite quickly.
- Wave-Motion Gun: A few bosses will use this on you.
YOU TROPED IT!
YOUR SKILL IS GREAT!
YOUR SKILL IS GREAT!
