Copper Storm Kickstarter Breaks Into Stretch Goals For Funding
The scrolling shooter genre is one that you either love or hate. While my skills have deteriorated over the years, I still love giving games in this genre a go here and there. Sure, without the help of YouTube, I will never see the ending for 99.99% of them (I cannot do bullet hell games at all) but I still find many of them fun. Copper Storm is one of the latest to hit my radar and good news for side scrolling shooter fans, it is funded and busting through stretch goals now. So, warm up your Super Nintendo, Sega Mega Drive, or Neo Geo now and get your pledge in ASAP.
A Genre Once the Black Sheep
Scrolling shooters in general have never been the leading genre for a console. Sure, there was that time that R-Type was almost the pack-in for the TurboGrafx-16 in North America but that is about as close as this genre got to that coveted position. Overhead scrolling shooters are almost an afterthought no matter the platform but I am not here to discuss that, it is time to talk about Copper Storm.
Copper Storm is a 2D side scrolling shooter that has severe verticality to the levels. It seems that if you find the lower part of the level too hard, simply ascend to the skies and fight up there, completely bypassing the ground enemies.
It is almost like having the feather in Super Mario World, or the Tanooki Suit in Super Mario Bros 3, permanently turned on and available.
Don’t get too cocky though, two hits and you are done. That is twice as many hits as many of the classics gave us!
Graphics and Do Things Explode Good
I know that sentence is not correct, it is just a throwback to the good old days when we were all learning grammar and sentence structure. You know, when we were discussing games in the late 80s (at least for me) on the playgrounds.
The Copper Stone Kickstarter mentions Thunder Force 4 as an inspiration for the level layouts (vertical scrolling) and also Metal Slug inspirations. I can certainly see the TF4 trimmings but the Metal Slug stuff is a little harder to notice. Sure, the main ship shown has nice touches in the animation, I just don’t get the feeling of Metal Slug here all that much.
The enemies do have personality and that may be the reference they are going for here. They don’t just poof out of existence, they have various animations to them as you attack and weaken them eventually defeating them.
Explosions have several frames to them and change depending on what you are hitting the enemy with. It seems that different enemies have slightly different explosion effects too. Nice touch. I like that attention to detail.
Head over to the Copper Stone Kickstarter and see what you think for yourself.