Description of Sengoku Blade: Sengoku Ace Episode II / Tengai - MAME

This game Sengoku Blade: Sengoku Ace Episode II / Tengai - MAME working perfectly with emulator version mame64ui, you can download on this web site.

If playing video games ever taught me anything, then it's the fact that Japanese people are different. And by different I mean weirder than most other people; way weirder than me, anyway, and that's quite an achievement, for anyone who knows me would tell ya that weird I am.

But perhaps it is exactly this weirdness that makes Sengoku Ace such a fun and addictive game. Because let's be frank, you don't see flying, steampunkish samurai knight with laser weapons every day.

Yes, you've heard right. Set in an alternate reality feudal Japan, Sengoku Ace Part II is a side-scrolling manic shooter and—as the title suggests—a sequel to a previous game made by the same developers, called simply Sengoku Ace.

Now, I won't even bother trying to pretend I have an actual clue about what's actually going on in Sengoku Ace, because I don't. Let's just say that there is a bunch of bad guys, and you have to stop them. Simple as that.

Well, it ain't simple at all, but it ain't all that hard either. Really, Sengoku Ace is like a gateway drug to the genre of manic shooters. For although the game is challenging enough for you to keep playing and want to get better at it, the barrage patterns are still rather easily manageable even for an inexperienced newcomer.

As to the actual game-play as such, Sengoku Ace is pretty much your very prototypical manic shooter; but that—for once—isn't really bad, in this case. And once you try it yourself, you'll certainly agree with me, that by no means does it make Sengoku Ace less of a great game.

You got to chose from five playable characters, plus two more unlockable ones. The major difference from the previous installment is, that this time you don't control the characters' aircraft anymore, but rather the pilots themselves—each with a slightly different play-style, or more specifically, with a different special attack and a different firepower at hand. And, well, suffice to say, some are just worse than others.

Depending on the DIP switch settings, you get three+ lives per inserted coin, and you lose a live whenever you get hit by enemy fire or get into contact with an enemy unit sprite.

Like in most other manic shooters, aside from the standard attack (MAME button 1), each character can perform also their character unique, special attack mentioned above (button 2), which kills all the enemies present on the screen at the moment it's triggered. This attack can be performed only a limited number of times though, with each use costing you one 'bomb-token', which spawn randomly throughout the game along with the firepower upgrades, that enhance your main weapon fire-rate and effectiveness.

Now, the game is split into several levels; with a super-boss waiting for you at the end of each stage. And I say super-bosses, because there are also smaller and significantly weaker sub-bosses too, so I have to differentiate between these two. — If you have 'enable continue' option enabled in your virtual DIP switch-box, then in the first three levels you'll be able to continue exactly where you ended when you lost your last remaining live. But from stage four to the end of the game, even with 'continue' enabled you'll have to start from the beginning of the level each time you lose anyway.

All and all, Sengoku Ace is one of the best manic shooters I've ever played, and I can only recommend it to anyone interested in this kind of games. The visuals are exquisite and the sounds aren't too bad either. The gameplay is fun and addictive, and the uncommon settings makes it only so much more of a memorable experience, one simply shouldn't miss.