Previews

GDC08: Hands on with Bangai-O Spirits on DS

New added features conjured up for western release

GDC08: Hands on with Bangai-O Spirits on DS
|
DS
| Bangai-O Spirits

As cool as the touchscreen and microphone are, sometimes you just want to mash those DS buttons. Bangai-O Spirits enables you to do just that, carrying the tradition of two-dimensional shooter games forward with a unique twist. Indeed, arcade-style play and plenty of button action made a good impression during our time with Treasure's title at last week's Game Developers Conference.

The touchscreen houses all the action, which occurs within the space of a single screen � there's no side-scrolling to be done here. Dozens of enemies crowd labyrinthine stages that force you to mash on the buttons in a flurry of attacks. Missiles and lasers fire about the screen in a frenetic display that showcases the game's breed of energetic gameplay.

You play as a miniature mechanised warrior equipped to the teeth with futuristic firearms in order to battle space pirates. The objective is to capture pieces of space fruit held by these roving rogues. Exactly why you're charged with collecting galactic grapes and apples is a mystery, but you get to literally reap the fruits of your combat labours.

Although everything occurs on the touchscreen, the game doesn't support use of the stylus. Rather, you use the D-pad to manoeuvre and the face buttons to issue attacks. The B button fires your primary weapon into life, whereas the X and Y buttons trigger blows with a secondary firearm.

Weapons range from rebounding missiles that bounce off walls to napalm bombs, homing missiles, even swords. In the levels we played, a sword equipped to the secondary slot enabled us to execute close-range slashes in lieu of using our homing missiles.
Mashing on the X button to swing the sword made it possible for us to satisfyingly cut through several rows of enemies blocking the narrow path through the maze-like stage.

Defeating the laser turrets and jet-pack equipped space pirates yielded delicious space fruit and cleared the way to the exit point. Completing each level requires bursting a green bubble door, which can be pretty challenging when you considering the hordes of enemies that usually impede the way.

In fact, the game is more than just challenging, it's rather difficult. That's not an uncommon Treasure trait, but enemies here are incredibly aggressive and crowd the screen to the point of being overwhelming. Miss a beat in jamming on the buttons and you'll find yourself overrun or pinned down by enemy fire. It was part of the character of the original Bangai-O on previous home consoles but on DS it's a little worrisome, as it could end up being frustrating.

Still, if the pre-fabricated levels prove too difficult, you're always free to create your own using the level editor. User-created stages can be traded with other players locally. Instead of connecting wirelessly, however, stages are transferred via sound � it's a bizarre yet brilliant system that has you holding the two handhelds next to each other so the games can relay data through the DS microphone.

Soon to be available in Japan on March 19th, Bangai-O Spirits packs in a number of added features for its North American debut. In fact, a slew of new levels brings the total count to well over 150. Not only that but enhanced rendering enables the game to run a little more smoothly than its Japanese counterpart, too.

One of the features we didn't get to see was multiplayer for up to four � both cooperative and competitive � which in a game like this could make a massive difference. But even without it, this is already looking as though it'll deliver on our (high) expectations.

The game hasn't yet been announced for release in the UK, but anticipate more info when Bangai-O Spirits launches in the US sometime this summer.

Tracy Erickson
Tracy Erickson
Manning our editorial outpost in America, Tracy comes with years of expertise at mashing a keyboard. When he's not out painting the town red, he jets across the home of the brave, covering press events under the Pocket Gamer banner.