News

Space Deadbeef shooter free for iPhone

Treat your iPhone to some R-Type-esque doujin action

Space Deadbeef shooter free for iPhone
|
| Space Deadbeef

Here's what we love at Pocket Gamer:

And that's why we've lost a whole morning's work to a brand new free game on the App Store called (rather bizarrely) Space Deadbeef.

Normally we're not inclined to report on free apps, but we felt compelled as gamers to make mention of Yuki Yasuhara's brilliant shmup.

Featuring a very similar ship to the R-9 Fighter (with shades of the incredible DS shooter, Bangai-O Spirits), Space Deadbeef's real strength is the intuitive and imaginative control system.

There's not much direct control over the ship itself, as the touchscreen primarily serves to target enemy vessels. Running your finger over the enemies targets them, and once you let go your ship launches a volley of missiles to take them out.

That said, the ship does (slowly) follow your finger around the screen, so you need to be careful not to inadvertently draw yourself into the line of fire while targeting.

Holding the ship itself builds up a supercharged shot (just like in R-Type), which also fires once you let go of the screen. It's only a micro game - taking just a few minutes to get to the end (then repeating on a harder difficulty setting) - but it shows such massive promise we can only hope Yasuhara-san puts his obvious talents to a full, commercial version of Space Deadbeef very soon.

After a bit of cursory research (seeing as the support and webpage links on the App Store page don't work), we suspect this game has been designed by the same Yuji Yasuhara who worked as the main programmer on such classic shooters as Panza Dragoon II and even more awesomer Omega Boost, which speaks volumes about the reason for Space Deadbeef's latent quality.

Arigato, yo!

Spanner Spencer
Spanner Spencer
Yes. Spanner's his real name, and he's already heard that joke you just thought of. Although Spanner's not very good, he's quite fast, and that seems to be enough to keep him in a regular supply of free games and away from the depressing world of real work.