Tag: Retro
Retro Review: Ikaruga
by skywardfire on Feb.01, 2009, under Reviews, games
This month, Skyward Fire is proud to have Nitesh Rohit doing a guest post. He is a scenario writer and an avid retro gamer currently working with a group of cinephiles that run Indian Auteur & Cine Darbar. In the past, he has written for publications like Rolling Stones India, Amnesty India, Cinema Without Borders, Upperstall and more. He blogs at Winds from the East. The following is a review of the famous Japanese arcade title Ikaruga that is available on XBLA.
If Paul Klee, Nicolas De Stael or Jackson Pollock were alive today, and were told to design a game, then their work would play and feel something similar to Ikaruga, which to the best of my knowledge feels like an interactive work of tableaux. On surface, it’s plain and simple, giving the feeling that most people can make such games- a common similarity with abstract works of art; since Ikaruga is a vertical scrolling shooter game and appears banal and simple on surface. But the deeper you dig in this shooter, the more deeper it goes down the rabbit hole, and the more satisfying it becomes on mastering the basic nuance of control, shifts, drifts and surface.
Ikaruga Fan Art by 5bodyblade
Ikaruga is the brain child of designer Hiroshi Iuchi who pioneered the vertical shooter genre with Radiant Silvergun, considered to be one of the greatest shooter in the history of video games. Both games combine an acute degree of minimalism technique: breaking down everything in forms of colors, codes, and rays. Ikaruga is a spiritual successor to Radiant Silvergun, and thanks to Microsoft, it’s now available for download on Xbox Live Arcade.
What makes Ikaruga so unique is the combination of its unique polarity mechanic and color theory along with the use of minimalism. The entire time in the game is spent on controlling your ship and spending calculating your energy types: white/blue light energy or black/red dark energy. It is the usage of right energy that would maximize your chances of survival and growth in the game. As you know similar poles attract, while opposites repel, similar in Ikaruga, similar polarity will be absorbed and lead to no damage while opposite polarity would cause damage. With each level and Boss fights, the color codes overlaps and attacks comes in patterns putting the player in a state of color frenzy and tactical button mashing, unlike lot of shooters in the market or button masher for example, God of War.
Ikaruga was made by a team of four people and also features a strong soundtrack a common similarity with the original Radiant Silvergun game; it has a very basic plot, which is not the driving energy of the game. Ikargua has a beautiful 2d graphics forming a pastel of colors on a 3D palette. Its one game which should be genuinely part of all modern homes, schools, art galleries, and classes, since it has the power to test your brain, analyze your deal with color combination and offer immersion more than, let’s say, the Rubik Cube.
