Blazing Star

Blazing Star (ブレイジングスター, Bureijingu Sutã) is a 1998 scrolling shooter video game for the Neo Geo home game system. It is the spiritual sequel to the acclaimed Neo Geo shooter Pulstar, which was itself a close cousin to the R-Type franchise. A typically hefty Neo Geo ROM at 346 Mb, the game makes extensive use of pseudo-3D prerendered sprites, brief anime and CGI cutscenes (mostly during the intro sequence), and frequent English voice samples and captions. While Blazing Star is certainly a cut above a number of other shooters, some fans compare it unfavorably with Pulstar on the basis that Blazing Star was "dumbed down" in terms of difficulty and there are those that prefer the simpler 2D sprite look over the pre-rendered sprites that came to dominate many of the more recent shoot-em-ups.

Story
Sometime in their past, the planets Remuria and Mutras started an interplanetary war that showed no sign of ending. The endless fight between the human-like inhabitants of the two planets had gone so long that weapon development moved into dangerous territory: Organic Weapon Production combined with alien technology. Soon, a sentient weapon - Brawshella - was born. Brawshella gathered all animal life on both planets and forced them to do its bidding and attack the humans. In a week, the humans were assimilated by Brawshella.

Yet, once they were assimilated, they found no other purpose in life but to continue fighting each other. After a while, four Remulians regained their consciousness and remembered their pasts. Upon discovering their humanity, the pilots were conflicted with following Brawshella's orders or fighting it to fully regain their independence. Meanwhile, two pilots from planet Earth get involved in the conflict. The "Awoken" pilots finally turn against the machine in a battle to rediscover themselves and reclaim their planets.

Gameplay
The joystick and two buttons are used to play Blazing Star. The joystick moves the ship around, while button A fires the normal shot. If A is tapped rapidly, then a variation on the normal shot is used. If A is held down, then the ship stores energy for a charged shot, which is fired when A is released. The charged-shot attacks have a duration based on how long the A button is held for, and pressing B during the attack will split the projectile in some way, greatly increasing the range.

Power-ups can increase the strength of the player's guns, while also increasing the maximum power of the charged shot. The types of shots, charge-up attacks, and split shots used are dependent on the ship the player selects. For instance, the Hellhound has small energy waves as its normal shot. The charged shot, releases a continuous stream of large fireballs. By pressing B, every fireball onscreen splits into numerous smaller shots, spreading to cover a much wider range.

Ships and Pilots
In Blazing Star, the player can choose one of the 6 ships available to play, each one has unique weapons and special attacks designed to fit the players needs.

Note: The list will feature the ship name followed by it's "Type", Normal Shot, Rapid Shot, Charge and Break Attacks. The Peplos ship is the only ship in the game which cannot be powered up with any items, because of that, it starts with the full 4-level Shot gauge.
 * Hellhound (Standard) - 4 Way Shot - 6 Way Shot - Deathflame - Hell Burst
 * Pilot: Caster Mild (Self-proclaimed "Bloodwood")
 * Windina (Simple) - Wave - Tidal Wave - 3 Way Spread - Homing
 * Pilot: Leefa Chao
 * Aryustailm (Technical) - Laser - Lightning Bolt - Sword - Swordfield
 * Pilot: JB (Jan Bismarck)
 * Peplos (Difficult) - 3 Way Shot - 3 Way Rapid - Holy Flare - Divine Breath
 * Pilot: Asayuki Kizuyomina
 * Dino-135 - Shot - Rapid Shot - Spread Shot - Special Scatter
 * Pilot: Naomi Yamazaki
 * Dino-246 (Defensive) - Shot - Rapid Shot - Charge Shot - Bomber
 * Pilot: Kaoru Yamazaki

Unlike in Pulstar, the Io's located above and below the Dino ships cannot be locked to aim in a specific direction, also the Voyager of the Dino-246 cannot be self detonated, also, that feature was replaced with the "Bomber" Break Attack.

Curiosities

 * The game's original name was "Pulstar Blast" (パルスターブラスト, Parusutã Burasuto) but it was later changed to Blazing Star.
 * Aicom and Yumekobo were actually the same company. Aicom was a former Sammy﻿ subsidiary until they broke away and with funding from SNK, they were renamed as Yumekobo.
 * The Peplos pilot, Asayuki Kizuyomina, has a younger sister called Amayuki, although she doesn't appear in the game, she does appear in the game's artworks.
 * Although most sites said there were six pilots assimilated, they're actually four, since Naomi and Kaoru were involved in this conflict in different circumstances: Naomi arrived on Remulia as she confused it with the Earth, while Kaoru is searching for her sister.
 * Blazing Star is famous for various catchphrases: "Hey poor player!", "You fail it! Your skill is not enough, see you next time, bye-bye!", etc. Some even believe that Blazing Star was responsible for the modern 'meme' use of the word "fail".