Bonus: Retro Game Review - Battle Mania Daiginjo (Trouble Shooter 2)
There’s a lot of talk about the rising cost of mainstream video games right now, led of course by Grand Theft Auto 6 being priced at, effectively, $100. But taking inflation into account, video games used to be a lot more expensive than they are now: going by some website, the standard $50 in 1993 was the equivalent of about $115 today.
So as a kid in those days, a video game was a serious investment of your parents’ money, reserved largely for birthdays or Christmas. The major games took those spots: Sonic, Street Fighter, Super Metroid, what have you. The rest of the year, if you wanted to play a new video game, it was either rentals at Blockbuster… or maybe you, or a generous aunt/uncle, had 20 bucks for a bargain bin game. Fester’s Quest. Ninja Spirit. Trouble Shooter.
There is no shortage of 2D shooting games to play on the Genesis, but there weren’t a lot of friendly 2D shooting games, and that’s what Trouble Shooter was. Rather than a spaceship, you control a pair of anime girls flying back-to-back, wearing jetpacks and packing laser cannons. Rather than a merciless one-hit death that sends you back, powerless, to the beginning of the stage— or maybe a checkpoint, if you were lucky— Trouble Shooter has a 5-hit lifebar, and a generous supply of power-ups, extra lives and continues. And rather than a straight alien invasion sci-fi narrative, Trouble Shooter is an absolute goofathon, starring a Dirty Pair-inspired team of freelance heroines battling an increasingly weird procession of cartoon bad guys to recover a kidnapped prince.
It’s a breezy ride and a secret Genesis classic, which makes it all the more tantalizing that there’s a super-rare sequel that never left Japan. Battle Mania Daiginjo (“Daiginjo” is the top grade of sake, which is why English translations use “Vintage”) had very few copies produced and unfortunately goes for over $2,000 (yes, seriously) on the second-hand market. But rarity and quality are different matters: is the game good? Why, it’s... top shelf.
