Genre: Shoot ’em Up
Year: 2001
Developed by: Treasure
Published by: Treasure
Platforms: GameCube, Arcade, Dreamcast, XBOX 360, PC, Switch, PS4
#21
Feeling Like: What IGN.com said
Ikaruga kicks an incomprehensible amount of ass. It’s the only arcade style game I replayed a hundred times over, and that may be underestimating it. Ikaruga occupies a very special place in my heart, and on the 500. There’s no other game like it. There’s no story, despite the artwork I see online suggesting otherwise. There are only five levels. It’s a twitch style Shoot ’em Up, with only a few buttons and moves at my disposal. It’s simple. It can be beaten in about 25 minutes if you know what you’re doing.
And it’s better than almost every single other game I’ve ever played.
I think Ikaruga’s gameplay spoke to me more than any other vertical shooter I’d played. It felt fair, since one of the main abilities was to absorb enemy fire. The crux of Ikaruga lies in polarities, or rather colors. Your ship is always either white or black (it sort of looks like blue or red in some screenshots, but it’s white & black). The enemies are, also, white or black. Every projectile in the game is either, you guessed it, white or black. You cannot die by a white projectile if you’re white, black projectile if you’re black, etc. Enemies will take double damage if you’re the reverse polarity while firing at them. When you absorb enough projectiles you’ll hear a very satisfying little mechanical voice telling you “ENERGYMAX”. You can press R, unleashing an unholy blast of fire that homes in on all enemies on the screen.
It’s important to get the fundamentals out of the way so now I can gush like a rabid meercat on red bull. Ikaruga felt like one of the few times I dedicated myself to getting good at something really hard, and seeing tangible results. I did a few runs a day, usually rightwhen I woke up (as long as I wasn’t late for class). I was fascinated by the chaotic opera of it all. Enemies came in predetermined patterns, so it wasn’t like the game was throwing me any surprises. The challenge lied in memorization and keeping my score up.
The chains! Not the ones that shackle or bind me, but the order in which you kill enemies is vital to keep track of. By hitting 3 enemies of the same color in a row, you hit a “chain”. One chain, two chain, etc. Once you got past 8, it’s MAXCHAIN MAXCHAIN, resulting in a huge score boost. You get a free life once you hit a certain number of points. The tricky part is that trying to aim your blaster so it ONLY hits three of the same enemies of the same color without a pesky white or black enemy interrupting your chain. While doing this, you’re trying not to die. Ikaruga’s mantra seems to be “fill the screen with as much zany bullshit as possible.” There will almost never be a moment to rest beyond the first level. It quickly became an exam of concentration. I know that enemy beam is coming. I know there are three black jets on the right. Do I scoot over and get greedy? Or do I switch right now and….fuck. Too late. Dead. Indecision is just as deadly as the wrong decision.
Switching to and fro in regards to polarity while zipping across the screen like an agile ballerina while soaking in bullets that would decimate you in any other Shoot ’em Up is fascinating, it really is. It feels meditative at times, if the spa you were doing it at was under attack by colorful, nuclear bombs. The screen auto scrolls, so you can’t just hide behind something. You can’t hide behind anything, aside from your shield. There’s no preference allowed, either; if you lean towards one color over the other, you’ll be punished for your stubborn ways.
I was pulled in, like a moth to the flame. For a game that looks this rudimentary, there’s true beauty here. When a cascade of opposing lasers are heading your way, it becomes a matter of digging deep, trusting the mechanics and diving right in. White, black, white, black, stay black, white, black, white. Move, move, move. FOURCHAINFIVECHAINSIXCHAINSEVENCHAINEIGHTCHAIN. MAXCHAIN.MAXCHAIN.MAXCHAIN. It’s just as effective as the bells and whistles on a Vegas slot machine, and I’m hooked. Completely.
The soundtrack is magnificent and is the first arcade style game where I actually remembered the music. There are only a few tracks due to the game’s short playtime, but a few stand out, namely Chapter 4’s “Reality” and “Epilogue“. The various pieces of art in the instruction booklet and the songs make Ikaruga feel far more epic than its length warrants. It feels important, like you’re the last hope for humanity. There are a few spoken lines of dialogue here and there, but it’s impossible to make them out. What’s easy to understand is the sacrifice you make ending the final boss and the birds soaring across a green landscape to the credits rolling. Whatever you did, it felt heroic.
I’m sure they’ve made other Shoot ’em Ups since Ikaruga, but none that I’ve been overly interested in playing. This might be another genre buster, a game developed so well that I’ll inevitably compare all contemporary attempts to it. And I’ll be disappointed; why can’t other schmups have defensive capabilities? Why can’t I switch polarities? Is there a score multiplier I can go for? Why doesn’t the soundtrack feel like some sort of ancient Japanese samurai battle track? Why doesn’t it look as beautiful?
I used to have different kinds of music playing on my laptop in the background to see if that could influence my high score. I never properly quantified my results, so it was a lost cause, but that was the kind of experiment I was wanting and willing to indulge in to further my Ikaruga prowess. I never came close to psychos like this player, but I was respectable in my own right. Bigelonians would walk by and watch me fail to blink and stare at the screen from less than a foot away to ensure I didn’t miss anything while dodging the final boss’ onslaught. To my knowledge, nobody else even tried it. This wasn’t the kind of game you pass the controller for, it was watching me try to overcome any insecurities or challenges for no reason at all, other than to affirm this was one of my favorite games of all-time.
The 500 