ACA Neo Geo Blazing Star

Blazing Star is a Neo Geo arcade horizontal shooter by Yumekobo that has been ported to Nintendo Switch by Hamster. BS and it’s elder sibling, Pulstar (also on Switch), are regarded as the definitive Neo Geo shooters. I tried this game on MAME, enjoyed it, and was really happy to find a port on Switch.

I’ve played a few of the Zerodiv Psikyo ports but this was my first ACA game and coming to it driectly from MAME VCS I’m impressed with Hamster’s treatment. The game comes with both the English and Japanese arcade versions (the game is mostly in English, so the only difference is a few text sections in Japanese), a High Score mode, and a Caravan mode (High Score capped at 5 minutes). There are a myriad of display options, including screen dimension adjustments, shaders, you name it. They’ve also added modern accessibility features such as autofire (enabled through control options for arcade mode only) and an interruption save slot, which isn’t strictly needed as the Switch has a sleep mode but it’s a nice feature.

Blazing Star may be best known for how chatty it is. The game uses voiceover and text to announce incoming powerups, enemies, and bosses (“Brace yourself! It’s not time to relax yet!”); congratulates your victories (“You beat it! Your skill is great!”); and expresses incredulity when you die (“Seriously?!”). It’s not quite Dimahoo-level enthusiasm but it is infectious. It features 6 ships for a variety of playstyles and offers the standard collectibles and powerups as well as LUCKY letters for a bonus. Ships have a regular attack and a more powerful shot that can be charged, adding some versatility. There are 8 levels and all are visually interesting, with the latter few involving some tricky mazework and a lot of bullets.

My main gripe is enemy bullets are sometimes the same color as the player’s, which causes visual confusion that is compounded based on difficulty and if you’re in 2-player coop. Otherwise, it’s a fun and colorful shooter that offers forgiving early levels and brutal later levels and an incredibly weird fetal final boss that… sprouts other fetuses, IDK man it’s creepy.

This is a game primarily for fun and scoring. 1CC is evidently possible, I’ll just leave it at that; have fun. I greatly prefer vertical shooters and this is the first non-danmaku horizontal shooter I’ve enjoyed enough for multiple playthroughs.

Hamster has been steadily publishing Neo Geo MVS titles and while these games are of varying quality, it is really wonderful the current generation of players has a chance to legally purchase and play otherwise inaccessible titles at a reasonable price. Playing Blazing Star on the original hardware is prohibitive, but you can play on current gen for a paltry $8 USD. That’s the cost of a hot lunch. It really doesn’t get much better.