Her bomb is a symbol made of lightning that stays in place for a few seconds and works great against more stationary bosses.įor the most part, Sengoku Ace plays and is structured almost exactly like Sonic Wings. Fires cylindrical bolts of energy, while her secondary is a pair of ofuda that fly forward in hawk wind motion. CharactersĪ young, tomboyish priestess flying an A-10. Almost all of Psikyo’s shooters from here on out would use similar visual styles to Samurai Aces. similar explosions, bomb icons, etc), which makes sense considering that it was developed by the same team of programmers. It’s eerily reminiscent of Nakamura’s previous title Aero Fighters, in both design and visual style (i.e. Aside from the setting, however, Samurai Aces is a pretty standard tate shooter. While this isn’t exactly original (Compile had already done this with a few of the Aleste games), it’s definitely a refreshing departure from the norm. Samurai Aces is Psikyo’s first shooter, and what a debut! Rather than enter the fray with a typical space shooter, Psikyo went off the beaten path with a feudal-esque yet postmodern Japanese setting. Along with the earlier Sonic Wings, Sengoku Ace and Gunbird helped add a bit of personality to the shooter scene, not only by sticking in identifiable characters, but also creating brief story scenes between stages. The second and third games, Sengoku Blade and Sengoku Cannon, feature artwork by the (at that time) underground artist Jun Tsukasa. Psikyo found a way, though, and God bless them for that. Yes, the Sengoku Ace series ups the boobage quotient much higher than practically any shooter out there, mostly because it’s not a genre where you’d figure that breast size would enter into the equation. This is Koyori, not technically the main character in any of the games, and yet is ostensibly the most popular. This led to some more personality than most space shooters, and also to this: You can select from 6 different characters with their own planes that have unique primary, secondary and bomb attacks. Psikyo’s first game was Sengoku Ace, which borrows from Sonic Wings (and in turn passes it on to almost all other Psikyo shooters) the option to play as different characters.

Psikyo would go on to become one of the chief proprietors of commercial tate-shooters the world over, whereas Video System would enjoy only a sparse few minutes of success with its Sonic Wings brand until it would eventually fizzle out sometime in the late ’90s. Thus, unable to make the kind of games he wanted, Nakamura made the decision to jump ship, take his small team of programmers, and start his own company, which he christened Psikyo (pronouced “Sai-kyo”, which sounds like “strongest” in Japanese). However, for some unknown reason, Video System thought it’d be a good idea to begin developing exclusively for the Neo Geo, a system which, due to the multi-selection and various other factors, didn’t support shoot-em-ups with vertically oriented monitors. Video System itself became quite popular in the early ’90s after the release of their most prized property, Sonic Wings (known as Aero Fighters in the US), also helmed by Nakamura. One of Video System’s chief programmers was Shin Nakamura, who’d garnered cult fame after creating Rabio Lepus in 1987, an extremely odd shooter starring flying rabbits. One such little company was Video System.

From this era arose many of the most prominent developers and publishers of today’s gaming industry, but for every modest upstart company that made it, there were about a dozen that didn’t. Publishers sought fresh, new talent and gamers sought fresh, new experiences, and the arcades were a veritable paradise for an entirely new set of genres. The era just after the chaos the industry barely survived in the mid-80s was a spawning ground for upstart companies who’d have never had a chance in a world controlled by Atari.

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