Gokuraku! Chuuka Taisen for PCE

Review #8057

Gokuraku! Chuuka Taisen

Turn around, every now and then I get a little bit tired of listening to the sound of my shots

PCE 1992 Taito Shooter Shooter › Horizontal
Gokuraku! Chuuka Taisen screenshot for PCE
Screenshot used for review/reference purposes.
3 / 5

Gameplay

Auto-fire. You have only a peashooter but can purchase a secondary weapon from an in-level shop. These include a homing dragon, a shield, a spread shot, a bomb, and a host of other weapons in subsequent stages.
Movement is initially slow but gets upgrade soon. Death is punishing since powerups are rare and dying sends you back to the start of the stage. It takes about two full stages to get fully powered.
Main complaint is that most enemies absorb multiple hits. Why is it always the peashooter games that do this?
The only interesting mechanic is the ability to turn around and face the opposite direction at will.

2 / 5

Level Design

Pretty weak to be honest. The only hazards are enemies and the same couple of enemy patterns repeat endlessly.

2 / 5

Theme

Japanese folklore setting with a strange collection of enemies and areas. There's no story or presentation besides a simple title page.

2 / 5

Art Style

I was tempted to drop this down even further but at least the performance is good. No flicker, dropped frames, or slowdown. It's just butt ugly. Sprites are tiny and uninteresting, including the bosses and mini bosses. Backgrounds are flat and lack detail. The only exception is the boss area which has multiple layers of parallax to show a cloudy realm. Every boss is fought in this arena and nothing else in the game comes close to rivaling it's aesthetics.

2 / 5

Audio

Classic Japanese music plays in each stage, but is overshadowed by the constant beeps of your weapons.

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