Cannon Spike review

Game: Cannon Spike
Platform: Dreamcast
Genre: Scrolling Shooter
Developer: Psikyo
AKA: Gunspike (JP)

Reader review by pestes

Date unavailable

Flashy and fun, Cannon Spike from Capcom is hardcore 16-bit action down to the bone. The wild game mocks other games and features other Capcom stars like Cammy Lee, Charlie, Arthur, Simone (I don't know where she's from), the disturbing little girl from DarkStalkers B.B. Hood, Shiba, and the legendary Mega Man. Its a relatively cheap ($30) follow-up to more cerebral DC efforts like Shenmue and Skies of Arcadia.

Gameplay is fairly straight-forward. Levels are limited and control is a mix of old school shooter and old school Contra style. Enemies attack in waves, and you sort of glide along. Control is with the analog, and when you hold down one of three attack buttons your postion stays and fire in the direction you're facing. You have three attacks- Y is close range. X is sort of a delayed fire- a steady beam of sorts- A is rapid fire that fails to do a lot of damage. Each character has a special attack which is performed by pressing the triggers together.

Levels are limited in that each is an arena along the lines of Powerstone. Once you knock off a bunch of enemies, you enter a mini-boss battle, then a big boss battle. Bosses range from vehicles to Snowboarding robots to Gundam look-a-likes (a Trio in one level look like the mechs from the Duchy of Zeon in Gundam Side Story and the final boss has shades of Epion in him) to zombies to a fat guy named Kabuki to Vega (known as Balrog, his original name in the Japanese version of Street Fighter 2).

Levels ''mock'' other games in terms of look. One looks like a Hong Kong street from Shenmue. One looks like it's from Metal Gear Solid. One looks like, and even has music in the vein of, House of the Dead 2. Others look like they've come out of action games long gone by.

There are only 9 levels and they can be easy to breeze through if on lower settings, so there is very little replay value. There's a much needed 2-player mode however, and early levels even randomly generate (the first 4 anyway).

Graphics are sharp and in high-res. They is no slowdown even when the screen gets a bit chaotic.

Cannon Spike goes recommended. It's a slick, high-quality title that takes older gamers back to the glory days of SNES and Genesis, if only for a little while. In a christmas season filled with more complex, vast, titles (Shenmue, Skies of Arcadia, Grandia 2) Cannon Spike delivers a much-needed shot in the arm: a fast and furious and short title that's all style and no substance (thank God).

Rating: 7/10

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