Arcade Archives: Nebulasray

This week's Arcade Archives release is... Nebulasray (Namco, 1994)

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Just the one ROM exists for this game so no other revisions. Preference Settings allow solo players to use the player two side ship. Additionally, Nebulasray costs twice as much as the usual ACA releases, similar to Mazinger-Z and Super Dimension Fortress Macross- in the Super Xevious stream they briefly mention that this took a lot of work to get this one on ACA due to the beefy hardware it's on (Namco NB-1, which is otherwise full of baseball games, one football game and an all-time classic, Point Blank) before calling attention to the price, so I assume that's the reason. Other than that, I don't know, so don't make me tap the sign.

Gaming Hell's natural weakness, the shmup, returns again! I'll do my best. Nebulasray is an interesting vertical shmup with a pre-rendered look, receiving its first home port over 30 years after its arcade release. Here, you have the standard 'weak but wider shot range' vs. 'strong but narrow shot' choice for your standard weapon (and just like Raiden, the game cycles through the two different types when a power-up appears) but the sub-weapons, ranging from homing lasers to a close-range blast and even a shield, are time-limited, so keep an eye on their timer and don't get too attached to them! You've also got a bomb that won't completely clear the screen for you but does a lot of damage to the bosses. I think this pulls off the pre-rendered look pretty well with strong colour use and lots of scaling and rotating (like the space backgrounds, hopefully they won't make you motion-sick) although I did find myself struggling a little to determine what was safe to touch and what wasn't in Mission 3's asteroid field because of this style. Stomping soundtrack though! As usual, I have to disclose shmups are not my area of expertise, not by a long shot, so I've kept it brief, but hopefully this gives you a rough idea of what this one's like.

... By the way, they announced the next Namco Month game is Super World Court, the tennis game where you can play as a cat. That gives me a score of 1/3 on my predictions. Whoops!