Better late than never – it’s time to finallly show some support to Blue Revolver, an extremely promising shmup that features an OST from Qygen and sound design from Wyrm.
The developers reference CAVE and Raizing in their opening comments, and there’s definitely a strong influence of mid-era CAVE in the bullet patterns and weapon choices. Thank the heavens that character design and overall atmosphere don’t stray into the cringeworthy territory of later CAVE efforts, while the demo shows some pleasing depth to the scoring system and a quality first boss.
The choice of Qygen on music duty is inspired, and there are already some fabulous tracks on show in the game and on Qygen’s SoundCloud. Very freeform-esque, this will surely be the best use of harder music in a shmup since Raizing’sĀ Battle Garegga. Big congratulations to both Qygen and Wyrm for some amazing work so far.
I’ve only had a little time to play around with the one-level demo (available here), but apparently the game has already been Greenlit on Steam, and I’ll be spending plenty of time with it on release.
Funnily enough I was intending to write a little VGM-related digression post soon, but for now I’ll just mention Recca (Famicom) – one of my favourite shmups and released in 1992, the soundtrack is way, way ahead of its time.
I’ve had the pleasure of mastering the OST for Blue Revolver – believe me when I say, the soundtrack is inspired.
Keep your ears peeled for my personal favourites ‘Exit 133’ and ‘Qygenomics’
BR artist here, been watching this blog since highschool lol (2008)
if it weren’t for you I wouldn’t know about Qygen (or freeform in general for that matter!), so seeing this writeup is crazy awesome. thanks a lot for introducing me to such great music, we’ll do our best to wrap everything up by summer.
Since around the same time as me, Woofy. Jon introduced me to Japanese Freeform via this blog š
Much respect!
Chip
Yup, I heard that you’re on mastering duties for this one – congrats š
woof
Sorry about the delayed response, but thanks for the comment! It’s always so nice to hear from people who found their way into the scene via TYFTH, and to follow where they take things after that. Massive respect to you for taking the chance to use Qygen’s sound, and I love your work on the art so far.
I even made a little trip back to the shmups forum after checking out BR, and was glad to see it making such a good impression on the grizzled veterans over there š
Never thought I’d find out info on good games here, lol.
Shmups have never been my genre of choice, but lately I’ve been trying to change that and am currently getting hooked on Fantastic Parodius and Strikers 1945. I’m experiencing with these games an adrenaline boost I hadn’t felt with videogames for god knows what time. It’s just too awesome lol.
So, yes, I’m DEFINITELY looking forward to playing Blue Revolver. I mean, this game will have the best soundtrack of the entire genre, and it apparently also plays good (I wouldn’t know, because I’m new to the genre lol), so that makes it a must-play for me!
Bern
I’ve got plenty to say about games, but try to hold back as much as possible on TYFTH. Great to hear you’re getting more into shumps, even if 1945 is a pretty brutal introduction!