Shoot 'em ups, shmups, spaceship shooters, STGs - call them whatever you want; my opinions on them will never change. And my opinions on the genre can be resumed in a single word: AWESOME. The joy of crushing enemies with screen-filling weapons, the excitement of an intense boss battle, the relief when you survive a bullet hell... These are emotions only a good shmup can provide. I love shoot 'em ups, and I will always do.

So, to celebrate my love for shmups AND my fifth review here on Vizzed, I'll start a MEGA RAIZING SHMUP REVIEW MARATHON! Raizing is definitely my favorite developer of arcade shmups, so consider my next five (six if Sokyuguurentai/Terra Diver gets added to Vizzed *wink wink*) reviews a tribute of sorts to this long-dead and obscure yet legendary developer. So, to start off, let's review Mahou Daisakusen/Sorcer Striker!

STORY: 5/10

WAR! The Gobligan empire has invaded our peaceful kingdom, stealing our high-tech magic-powered weapons along the way! Only four brave bounty-hunters hired by the King and Queen themselves can defeat them!

Gain The Warrior: A reckless assassin-for-hire who is always accompanied by his shoulder-size pet monkey! He's always in only for the money!

Bornnam The Necromancer: A truly wicked and vile necromancer who rides a skeletal dragon for battle and attacks using dark magicks! But due to his old age, he's seeking the bane of his profession: the formula for eternal life! And guess what? The King and Queen have it!

Miyamoto The Dragon: A fierce, skillful samurai who was cursed a long time ago by a Gobligan witch! The curse? Live eternally in the body of a dragon! He reluctantly contributes to the Gobligan War with his magic sword in order to exact revenge on the empire and find a cure for his mystical ailment!

Chitta The Witch: A pretty yet extremely powerful young witch who decides to fight in the war to show the bad guys (and the good guys too!) that appearances can be deceiving!

Will these ragtag bunch of misfits win the war against the overwhelmingly powerful Gobligan Empire? It's up to you! The destiny of the kingdom is in you hands!

...Yeah, it's a pretty standard shmup story, that surprisingly gets explained a bit in-game. The most interesting thing about it (and the whole game in general) is its scenario: a colorful-yet-gritty tecnho-medieval world, with goblins flying helicopters, massive turtle-fortresses armed to the teeth and FRIGGIN' JETPACK DRAGONS. Yes, you read that right. JETPACK DRAGONS. It can't get better than this, right? (Actually it can, as the next two games in the Mahou Daisakusen trilogy show. But I'll talk about them later!)

GAMEPLAY: 8/10 AND DEPTH: 6/10

While Raizing was founded by ex-Compile employees, Sorcer Striker's gameplay is mostly influenced by Toaplan's games (this certainly isn't a coincidence, as the board the game runs on is licensed Toaplan hardware and the company was the leader in the arcade-shmup market before it's eventual closing in late 1993). Each one of the four playable characters has its own set of straight-firing-yet-powerful (F), wide-yet-weak (W) and homing-yet-puny (H) secondary weapons powered up by red, blue and green magical books, respectively, and a main weapon that you make stronger with P Coins that rain out of P Bags (an element taken directly from Compile's legendary Genesis shmup M.U.S.H.A/MUSHA Aleste, in which many of Raizing's founders previously worked on).

As in any game with multiple playable characters, each one of the four heroic bounty-hunters have their own strenghts and weaknesses: Gain is the all-rounder, Chitta's weapons are weak but can cover the entire screen with bullets when fully powered-up, Bornnam's strong weapons are limited by their short range and Miyamoto is interesting: he's much faster than the other characters and his weapons are extremely powerful yet "difficult" to use properly, making him the preffered choice among expert players.

The gameplay itself is pretty standard for a mid-90's shmup. Shoot and dodge bad stuff (enemies and bullets), collect good stuff (magical books and coins). No scoring systems, no secret bonuses, no alternate paths, no "True Last Boss"-es. It's extremely simple compared to Raizing's later games (known for their maddening complexity and depth) or even Toaplan's, but it's very well executed, so I give it a 8 out of 10.

DIFFICULTY: 9/10

The 90's are probably the most important decade in modern shmup history, with the 1990 release of Seibu Kaihatsu's seminal classic Raiden marking the genre's first steps into bullet hell and Toaplan's Batsugun (the last game the company released before going bankrupt) being the first true "manic shooter". I like to call the games released in this period of three years "proto-manic shooters", and Sorcer Striker falls perfectly in this category, with it's tendency to cover large parts of the screen with bullets and lasers of all sizes in later stages but not forcing the player to memorize hit-boxes and/or bullet patterns.

However, Sorcer Striker's difficulty deviates from the standard 90's-vertical-shmup formula by it's use of obstacles, something usually associated with horizontal shmups such as Gradius, Thunder Force and R-Type. You'll frequently fly through narrow corridors with all kinds of crazy gimmmicks trying to kill you from Stage 3 onwards ( Indiana Jones -esque traps, massive pistons and sawblades, just to name a few), all the while you dodge bullets and enemies and powerups you don't want.

It gets pretty chaotic on later stages, but since the amount of maximum bullets on-screen is pretty low, most players - shmupper or not - will feel comfortable with it after a few tries.

GRAPHICS: 8/10

Sorcer Striker's graphics don't have much going for them except for the steampunk/medieval fantasy theme and the massive, multi-jointed, very detailed boss sprites. From the three-headed mechanical dragon/flying fortress in Stage 1 to Stage 6's giant laser-spewing face, the bosses are certainly the best part of Raizing's first game.

However, Sorcer Striker is also packed with "WHOA!" moments, both in the gameplay and graphics department. The most memorable certainly is Bashinet, a ninja/knight/mecha/jetplane/scorpion/thingamajig that you'll face several times in the game both as a midboss and a stage boss, sometimes in the most unexpected places. The biggest example of this is its "final form"'s appearance in Stage 4 (a grim post-apocalyptic city in an otherwise cheery fantasy game!), where his head - the only part of its body that survived your previous two battles against it - merges with a steel wall packed to the brim with weapons. Oh, and did I mention that all of this happens IN SPAAAAAAAAAACE?! Because it does! SUPER AWESOME! 8/10!!!!111!!!

SOUND: 6/10

Sorcer Striker's sound hardware is basically that of an upgraded Genesis', but it sadly doesn't sound so (when compared to, say, Ristar ). The FM music is tinny and unmemorable (except for Bashinet's theme, the Stage 3 song and "Spiral Locus", the main boss theme) and the PCM sound effects even more so. There's not a lot of voice sampling going on here, unlike Raizing's later games, so each character feels almost the same except for the graphics (ships, portraits) and powerups. The only "memorable" sound effect in this game is the velociraptor roar that plays every time you put a credit in, and considering how hard you'll be pumping faux-quarters on MAME to survive the later stages, it gets annoying quickly. It's a terrible start for a company founded by former employes of another company known for their excellent compositions, so sadly I give it a 6/10.

ADDICTIVENESS: 7/10

As I said before, Sorcer Striker is mind-bogglingly simple. The lack of any of the aspects that make Raizing's later games interesting, like complex scoring mechanics, secret characters and easter eggs, make this game not very addicting. The only addictive aspects are self-imposed: beating the game on X credits and/or without using bombs, etc. Since most people tend to mindlessly pump cyber-quarters on MAME when playing shmups and the game doesn't punish the player for such practice, these aspects are mostly ignored, giving the game a sad 7/10 score on addictiveness.

OVERALL: 8/10 - Decent

At first sight, Sorcer Striker doesn't look, play or sound like a very interesting game, because it isn't. Besides it's magick-punk setting (which is MUCH better executed in the next two Mahou Daisakusen games), the game is only interesting in a historical standpoint, as Raizing would later become one of the best and most brilliant (if not THE best and most brilliant) shmup producers of all time with a little help from a living legend known as Shironubu Yagawa.

Who is this man, and what is his importance on the history of shmups? Well, keep up-to-date with my RAIZING REVIEW MARATHON and you'll find out soon-ish!~

This is a great review. Awesome details length and grammar. Keep up the good work.