Tag: shmup

ZeroRanger Official Site

Oops it’s a game I beat (and it’s absolutely just a beat, not a complete…) and forgot to make any posts for (I beat it on the 12th of October)! Oh boy!

This is a really fun shmup, but man can it be tough! On the upside though it has a really lenient system to play it with a stage select and a fairly unique continues system. I absolutely cannot 1cc this though (though I feel like I got really close to 1cc-ing the first loop) haha… The power ups you can take do well to make the game play more how you want it to and boy did I land on a specific load-out (Type-C, Side, Charge, Drill) that honestly I struggled to play with the other options, oops!

The music in this game though is fantastic. Like ignoring that if you throw a growly synth at me I’ll go 👀, and the entire OST has that semi-FM synth feel semi-more modern instrumentalisation. It May Be Greenish is a fantastic opening stage theme, and not to compare it to another game, hits similar opening stage vibes that ZUN often does with his work (it’s probably the way the piano dances along the track) and given how shamefully long it took me to realise there’s a stage select, I heard it a lot :’D

The other tracks that really stand out to me are in sequence: Menacing, Descent At Last (two tracks separate tracks, but this vid has ’em paired and frankly that’s the best way to listen to them), and Despair. Like they’re spoilers as to what they play for but GOD DAMN they are all tied perfectly with where they play. And yes Despair absolutely has a vibe of a composition by ZUN again, which is probably deliberate 😛

If you aren’t late to the party like me and enjoy shmups, you absolutely need to at least give the demo a play!

EDIT 2024-04-21 – And now I’ve actually completed it