How do I spend a nice sunday afternoon trying to destress from some life issues? I play a game, a shmup or shoot em up vertical spaceship scroller. One renown for its difficulty and complexity. There are no fancy weapons that let you shoot sideways or sidekicks who save the day, no shields to save your but and the “bombs” to drop are earned.

That’s right, you earn bonuses by eating bullets the same color as you, and dodging bullets the opposite color as you. Sounds easy to keep straight right? No, cause you keep switching colors to enflict more damage. Also, in order to get any points at all really, you have to kill a batch of all the same color at once. That means while there is a black guy flying at you, you can’t kill him yet, because it would mess up your streak of whites to kill. So he flies on by, shooting at you, narrowly missing. It’s a cop who is on duty to catch sex offenders letting a drug dealer go by, but alas, he will switch to drug busting duty in a mere few seconds! Just this second that drug dealer is lucky, the next drug dealer is going to get a face full of bullets. and the cop will eat the drug dealers bullets for its bomb bonus, ya thats right, Eating bullets only to use it against you. That’s what ikaruga taught me.

Plus I started off getting C+ every single time on the first level, but then i rocked this colored batches thing and got a B! I passed the second level, but I didn’t beat the boss? It was weird, i just flew by. There is just so much crazy switching back and forth, too many bullets on the screen, you have to decide which ones to dodge, and then when you have to switch you have to remember to dodge the other! The duality I love, and I’m sure I can make more life parallels too. When I am white, i dodge evil black bullets and accept white goodness, but when I am black, maybe I can’t handle the goodness and righteousness of white land and prefer the comforts of the seedy dark bullets, maybe they are laced with heroin.

The opening quote is cool too
“I will not die until I achieve something. Even though the ideal is high, I never give in. Therefore, I never die with regrets.”