Moon Cresta and Terra Cresta - QG @ The Arcade

help sick and injured children by donating to my extra life campaign link in the description and pinned comment all proceeds go to children's wisconsin if we reach a thousand dollars i'll make my discord server public the only nfts you'll see featured on my channel are my next feature topics [Music] [Music] so [Music] one of the things i like about making these videos about arcade games are the times when the situation calls for expanding the knowledge of my dear viewers i have a good feeling that at least a few of you looked at the title of this and asked yourself what the hell is a mooncresta who created it can i eat it first off no you can't eat it it's a game second before i get into the what let me tell you about the why it actually starts with of all things an april fool's joke you see april 1st is a time that is particularly dangerous for hype because companies tend to make gag posts sometimes the gags are obvious and they're to give us laughs and nothing else those tend to be harmless unless the gags are racist sexist homophobic transphobic or otherwise bigoted those gags can right off other times you get what platinum games did in 2020 it started with a trailer advertising a game called soulcresta that was a sequel to a lesser known game called mooncresta and its sequel terracresta and it ended up being a joke that is until a year later when platinumgames and hamster the publishers of the arcade archive series decided you know our little joke actually got a few people interested let's actually do this so yeah soulcresta is real now and is probably already out as you're watching this very video but why would platinum be interested in a revival of this series what makes it unique from any other arcade space shooter well strap in folks we're about to dive into some obscure gaming history with the mooncresta series but before we dive into the what i should probably give you some background on the who that is not what i meant anyways let me tell you about a company called nichibutsu nikibutsu was the main video game arm of nihon busan company limited a company established in 1970 which started out selling arcade machines rather than making games themselves the other half of nihon busan was known as sphynx who made games which i dare not show here because i'd end up getting flagged for violating community guidelines nikibutsu started making their own games around 1978 and by making their own games i mean that their earliest works were blatant copies of other games table attacker was a copy of breakouts moonbase was a space invaders clone and moon alien was a rip-off of galaxian they actually had to pay namco excess royalty fees because they sold more copies than they initially agreed upon mooncresta was actually one of their first holy original games released in 1980 on the galaxian hardware the game was self-published in japan and europe and published in the us by sega gremlin as well as by century under the name of eagle the game was one of nichibutu's most successful games because it brought a unique twist to space shooters at the time so let's pop a quarter on the slot and start this baby up before that though let's start by taking a look at the title screen trip to the space war what they're trying to make this sound like a vacation or something try it now you can get a lot of fun and thrill ah that's about as subtle as a rocket engine but this right here this already shows what separates mooncresta from the likes of galaxian this ship has three segments to it and each of those segments is one of your lives lose all three and it's game over there are 10 levels to each loop two waves each of five different types of enemies you start off with your stage 1 rocket and its tiny single shot peashooter blasting at these weird alien eyes they fly in figure 8 patterns and then split apart to charge you that's the thing with enemies in this game they don't fire shots at you they prefer the kamikaze tactic so after two waves of this you get a new enemy alien bugs they swoop around with no distinct patterns so you need to be very careful with this and enemies in general so after wave two of the bugs we get to what makes this game unique among space shooters in this stage you're tasked with docking your ship with the next stage of the rocket your ship has crazy inertia in this stage in particular so you need to be subtle to get this to work you can also use the button to slow your descent make the connection and your true bonus goes beyond points you get more firepower for the next four waves this could be seen as a precursor to the double ship in galaga of course if you blow it well you literally blow it the next two waves of enemies are a weird set of bugs that seem to face in and out of reality which can throw off your aim if you're not careful this gets more challenging for more reasons than just the enemies but that firepower bonus really helps after all three lasers are more effective than one after that we have to deal with a bunch of meteors unlike the bugs however you just need to dodge the meteors to get past them good thing too because you don't have that much of a window to blast the meteor since they move so fast having to blast them all while dealing with respawns would be a downright pain at this point assuming you didn't lose one of your ships before the first docking sequence another docking stage happens this time with the bottom stage of the ship if you successfully dock all three stages of the ship together you've got a real powerhouse on your hands with five lasers total for the final stages of the loop these aliens are the most aggressive of the loop by far dropping down at your ship like icicles before respawning up top for another shot and you may notice that all of your extra firepower is a double-edged sword a good look at your ship should show you why that is having all three stages docked together may give you a bigger spread of fire but all that weight goes straight to your ship's hips and makes it a bigger target in other words you're going to need to be more careful to preserve your firepower at least you won't have long to worry about it because once the final two waves are completed you fly off towards the next loop starting again from stage one as the process repeats itself and seeing that this is an early 80s arcade game there's no end until stage three goes boom it's kind of depressing if you think about it considering the bad guys will eventually win no matter what so there you have it mooncresta you've seen why this makes an interesting twist on space shooters at the time the whole docking mechanic added a unique twist to the gameplay as well as a clever risk war ward mechanic it established nikibutsu as a developer and was one of their most successful titles alongside a game called crazyclimber but that's a story i might not get into unless platinum decides to make a sequel to that as well however before we move on to the next title there were a couple of variations to mooncrest that added a little something extra the first of these variants was super moon cresta released by gremlin this modification kit shanks the enemy so that they fire back at you yeah recall in the original game all the enemies attacked only by ramming you and didn't have projectiles of their own this simple addition makes the game that much more tense although to be fair the worst enemy in the game might be the constant background noise nikibutsu themselves later released moon quasar this variant powered up the second ship's firepower and added an additional segment in this segment you need to attach to your flagship and refuel your craft it has the same inertia as the docking segments except you're moving in the opposite direction it also has one of the dumbest title screens i've ever seen it displays the name of the game twice and space patrol aboard i'm sorry but that makes no sense can you survive the last invasion is it ever the last invasion the true sequel to moon cresto would be released to japanese arcades in 1985 under the name of terracresta unlike mooncresta which was licensed to outside companies for international release terra cresta was self-published in all territories with the game releasing in north america in 1986. despite being a sequel to moon cresta terra cresta was quite different as opposed to a single screen shooter tara cresta is a vertically scrolling shmup as you pilot the wing gallibur against the invading forces of the mandler army the oncoming enemies are not unlike the kind you'd find in xevius the power-up system again relies on docking but in a different way from mooncresta as you progress you'll eventually come across hatches secured with numbered locks when you destroy the locks you'll open the hatches to release smaller ships and they're gonna combine there are four additional ships in all and attaching to each one gives you a different form of power up stage two increases your forward firepower stage three gives you a tail gun to take down enemies behind you stage four gives you a cannon that pierces right through an entire line of enemies in front of you and the fifth and final stage of the ship gives you a shield to protect the general area of your six that's pilot speak for your ass in case you were wondering now even with all these power ups things can get hairy which is why you have a defensive option by pressing the second button your ships can separate temporarily to expand your field of fire and protect your main ship which is the only one that's vulnerable and you'll want to protect that ship even when it's powered up because aside from the obvious wanting to survive and all that taking a hit will cause you to lose some of your power so yeah you gotta always be on top of things to make sure you don't get hit and there's a very special reason for that as well sure having all that offensive and defensive power is awesome in itself but if you're skilled enough to gather all five ships together they become a my team ultras this superpower is actually shown on the title screen itself it's like you see this yeah you can be this powerful too see the bird be the bird this power only lasts for a limited time but the bird is completely invincible disintegrates enemies by touch and is very much the word of course even when it wears off you still have a crazy powerful ship only now it's vulnerable so keep that formation button ready as for the stage itself it's an endless loop punctuated by three different bosses the first is tubo a shuriken shaped ship that fires regular shots and spike balls second up is tycoon an insect-like ship which launches many ships in addition to its standard shots mandler itself is a multi-armed torso on a spaceship which fires fists which become homing projectiles as well as energy boomerangs once you defeat mandler the core flies away making one last attempt to kill you before the loop continues and eventually you lose all your lives and get a game over wasn't this around the time that games started having concrete endings now a couple of interesting things here in terracresta are sound related first of all the jingle when you start a new life when you first start the game the jingle gives you that time to get to the mission vibe pretty exhilarating right now listen to the jingle for starting a new life after that [Music] basically it's an abbreviated version of the first jingle same vibe only shorter now when you're down to your last life the jingle becomes this now you have that sense of urgency as if to say it's now or never do not screw up but if you listen closely you may notice something [Music] yup this is the same as the game start sequence from mooncresta hey you gotta have that thing called continuity somewhere don't you another interesting thing about terracresta is that it has two different versions of the soundtrack stemming from the fact that there are two versions that differ on which ship was used for the sound one version had the ym 2203 chip for audio giving off a sound that sounds somewhat more advanced than the nes later copies of the game used the more advanced ym-3526 which gave off a more defined sound and made the full version of terra cresta's main theme possible [Music] if i had to compare the sound quality to anything i'd say it sounded a bit like what we would later hear on sound cards for windows 95. as for the graphics advancements at the time allowed for more fleshed out and lush backgrounds making for some great looking scenery and well-defined sprite work terra cresta definitely reaped the benefits of how much technology he had regressed since the release of its predecessor and as a result further fleshed out what moon crest has started now there were a couple spin-offs that could be considered distant cousins the first called ufo robo-dangar was released in 1986. unlike terra cresta where you built the supership piece by piece your main ship is three spacecraft which form into a giant robot right off the bat this game was created as an homage to giant robot anime of the era like voltron another distant relative called formation armed f released in 1988 brought back the formation button but it worked a bit differently instead of the docking ships a power-up would give you escorts called armors which could change firing direction with the formation button there were also a couple of sequels for the game that should be noted here though they were japan exclusive the first is terra cresta 2 mantler strikes back which was released for the pc engine in 1992 that's the japanese name for the turbografx 16. the main gameplay was pretty much the same except that it was blocked off into stages and had a defined ending as opposed to the infinite loop of the previous game however it also had some extras like a time attack mode power-ups that can increase your formation stock and can even give you special formations and an option to customize your formation layout something which was a carryover from the nes version of terra cresta the game was decent enough despite the departure of shigeki fujiwara who was the creator of both mooncresta and taracresta his absence however would be felt more with the last game on this retrospective tara cresta 3d for the sega saturn released in 1997 in japan what the hell is this just looking at this can show you that this was a significant step back from terra cresta three ships instead of five ugly graphics even for the saturn unnecessary perspective changes it's a wonder this game even got made considering the state of nichibutsu at the time in fact it was one of the last games nikibutsu would actually make aside from those other games they ended up suspending video game development in the early 2000s becoming mainly a distributor of their old games for compilations and such ultimately with the retiring of their founder sue harutori the company went out of business in 2015 which begs the question how is the sequel to one of their classics even happening in the first place well the answer is simple when tori san retired he sold the company's entire library of ips to another company the company in question hamster that's right the very company responsible for distributing all manner of classic arcade games to modern platforms now owns the entirety of nichibutsu's library which gave them license to do whatever they want with those games and they decided to partner with platinum games to make soul cresta which is available right about now and now after having watched this video hopefully you have an idea of what to expect with this reimagining sequel and this is being labeled as neo arcade classics volume one implying that these people have plans to update even more games for modern audiences considering the fact that hamster does own nichibutsu's library it makes me wonder what else they have planned a new crazy climber perhaps as long as it isn't any of that live service crap that's being hinted at i'm interested i'm the quarter guy and until next time the arcade is closed [Music] every year hundreds of promising franchises fall victim to first game syndrome it's a dangerous condition which threatens to stymie the growth of a series before it even has a chance to flourish be aware of the signs unrefined controls rough game mechanics and a general lack of polish this condition can be treated if caught early giving your franchise the chance to develop and improve next time top 10 cases of first game syndrome it's game time hey everyone qg here if you enjoyed the video please like subscribe leave a comment and share the video around feel free to check out my twitter and my quick streams and consider supporting me through patreon and donating to my extra life campaign to support children's wisconsin thanks for watching [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The Quarter Guy

Views: 3,033

Keywords: The Quarter Guy, Quarter Guy, Quarter, Guy, Video Games, Gaming, Moon Cresta, Terra Cresta, Sol Cresta, Nichibutsu, Arcade, Platinum Games

Id: KbUN6j5Ajtw

Length: 17min 25sec (1045 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 25 2022