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MithosKuu
May 2, 2013

Captain Anthony La Forge



Brady, Mith, and Rik are back with another SNES classic!

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Axelay (アクスレイ, Akusurei) is a 1992 scrolling shooter video game developed and published by Konami of Japan for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The game was released on September 11, 1992 in Japan, later in that month in North America, and the following year in Europe. The game was re-released on the Nintendo Wii's Virtual Console service in Australia and North America in 2007 and in Japan in 2008.

Axelay is a sci-fi scrolling-shooter in the same vein as other Konami titles such as Life Force (Salamander) and Gradius. The game features both horizontal and vertically scrolling levels, and allows the player to choose three different weapon-types, which increase in number as he or she progresses through the game.

The game was programmed by Hideo Ueda. Kazuhiko Ishida, credited with "support program" on Axelay, later left Konami to help found Treasure Co. Ltd. Taro Kudo primarily composed the game's soundtrack.

Axelay takes place in the fictional planetary system known as Illis. Once a peaceful system, it was invaded by an alien empire known as the Armada of Annihilation, taking over the planets of the Illis system, including the Earth-like Corliss (known in the Japanese version as "Mother"). As a last resort against the alien forces, the D117B Axelay fighter is sent out to recover its lost weaponry and put a stop to the invasion.

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As usual for us, videos will go up at 6pm Pacific every weekday.

Episode 1 - Meanwhile, in the Illis System

Erik, joined by Mith and Brady, sets off to save the Illis System in the classic Konami shoot-em-up Axelay. Dunno if the first level takes place on Corliss or the much more cleverly named Cumuluses, but basically all of it gets shot to bits.

Episode 2 - Robot spelled backwards

Aliens use the facilities of the Space Colony Traleib, with minimal slowdown. Rap battles may be involved.

Episode 3 - Crisis among Crisees

Planet Urbanite's F-Zero track was in the way. It had to be corrected.

Episode 4 - Wait for it...

Obligatory Cavern / bio-level time. No body horror though, but that's ok. Also, in reference to really good shoot-em-up players, go check this guy out (it's batshit insane)

Episode 5 - All the tropes

Not-a-sun fire planet? Check. Intruders? Many. Solar flares? Got em. Massive lava monster? Why not. Sector 3 Lava Planet is pretty predictable. But drat if the music isn't great.

Episode FINAL - Talk amongst yourselves

In the rockiest of all finales, the Armada of Annihilation kills Axelay a lot, but we come out on top like we always do!

Note for all you superfans; the Wind Laser should have 4 prongs, but because of our capture framerate two of them seem to be consistently missing. Sorry for making it look way less impressive.

The music used for the annotations section is Colony_A from the Axelay OST.


And as always, you can also find the videos on our website

MithosKuu fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Apr 7, 2015

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TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe
Ahh, Axelay. An unexpectedly good game. I still listen to the soundtrack from time to time.

One of the bay weapons is a carpet-bomb attack, and it comes in handy in the water level, if I recall correctly. Lots of attacks from below you on that level. I can't remember what happens if you take it into one of the vertically-scrolling levels though.

And yeah, the Round Vulcan is crazy good. Ranger-X (a Genesis platforming game) has a vaguely-similar weapon: it shoots in a circle around you until it hits an enemy, and then it locks onto that enemy and fires directly at it until it dies. Being a platformer, there are fewer enemies on-screen at a time, so it's not really needed for crowd-control.

MithosKuu
May 2, 2013

Captain Anthony La Forge
Episode 2 is up!

Episode 2 - Robot spelled backwards

Choco1980
Feb 22, 2013

I fell in love with a Video Nasty
I'm not any good whatsoever at shmups, but it's always cool to see someone else who is. I think I can see how this came from a mind that would later be part of Treasure, as it has that sort of highly-chaotic-yet-completely-fair flavor of action they prefer, plus the beautiful attention to detail. I love the second stage's "Wheel" style satellite hub background rotating around you.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
This is a good LP so far but I'd like to hear more about these Connecticut rap battles.

fixelbrumpf
May 26, 2001

Awesome, I love Axelay and still think it stands on its own if you take away all the flashy effects. Fun fact: Axelay's overhead levels actually aren't using Mode 7. They seem to be using Mode 1, which provides two background layers, a third, low-color depth layer used for the HUD and a sprite layer.

The skewing effect is supposed to be a clever linescrolling effect where different lines of the background layers move at different speeds. Using Mode 7, the parallax background wouldn't have been possible as Mode 7 only supports a single background layer at a time with no "extras". This would have taken away the cool illusion of depth. Mode 1 is what pretty much any SNES action game used most of the time. Some games also made use of the third background layer to add some extra parallax, such as Yoshi's Island, which in turn doesn't use a HUD.

Still, it's a neat effect. There's almost a carbon copy of it in a later stage of Super Turrican 2 (it looks kind of tacky here, though), probably as a proof that Factor 5 could also pull it off.

MithosKuu
May 2, 2013

Captain Anthony La Forge
Episode 3 is up!

Episode 3 - Crisis among Crisees


fixelbrumpf posted:

Fun fact: Axelay's overhead levels actually aren't using Mode 7. They seem to be using Mode 1, which provides two background layers, a third, low-color depth layer used for the HUD and a sprite layer.

The skewing effect is supposed to be a clever linescrolling effect where different lines of the background layers move at different speeds. Using Mode 7, the parallax background wouldn't have been possible as Mode 7 only supports a single background layer at a time with no "extras". This would have taken away the cool illusion of depth. Mode 1 is what pretty much any SNES action game used most of the time. Some games also made use of the third background layer to add some extra parallax, such as Yoshi's Island, which in turn doesn't use a HUD.

Still, it's a neat effect. There's almost a carbon copy of it in a later stage of Super Turrican 2 (it looks kind of tacky here, though), probably as a proof that Factor 5 could also pull it off.

That is really cool! I love learning about behind the scenes stuff like that.

fixelbrumpf
May 26, 2001

No problem, I too love reading about that kind of stuff as I'm pretty much only into 16/8 bit games these days. There are some people with a staggering amount of knowledge on the hardware of old systems if you look in the right places. It's pretty cool to finally figure out why a couple of classics look/sound/play the way they do. The way SNES graphics layers work is really interesting in some games.

MithosKuu
May 2, 2013

Captain Anthony La Forge
Episode 4 is out!

Episode 4 - Wait for it...

MithosKuu
May 2, 2013

Captain Anthony La Forge
Episode 5 is up!

Episode 5 - All the tropes

Choco1980
Feb 22, 2013

I fell in love with a Video Nasty
Uh, I think you were trying to say he looked kinda like Firebrand of Gargoyle's Quest, which is totally me shamelessly plugging my currently on-going LP of the game...

MithosKuu
May 2, 2013

Captain Anthony La Forge

Choco1980 posted:

Uh, I think you were trying to say he looked kinda like Firebrand of Gargoyle's Quest, which is totally me shamelessly plugging my currently on-going LP of the game...

That's it, yeah. It's been driving me absolutely loving nuts knowing that. I knew in the back of my head that Astaroth wasn't what Brady meant as soon as he said he had a spinoff game, and as soon as I rewatched it I realized 100% that we were wrong. It's really hard to process stuff like that while also fighting a shoot-em-up boss while very out of practice.

Also it bugs me more that he really doesn't look like Firebrand to me, and I have no idea what Brady was talking about.

- Love Erik -

Choco1980
Feb 22, 2013

I fell in love with a Video Nasty
Frankly, I'd say he looks more like Lucifer/Rushifel, the end-boss of Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts, who is shortly going to appear in my Gargoyle's Quest LP, which is to say just a dude mostly on fire.

MithosKuu
May 2, 2013

Captain Anthony La Forge
And the final episode is now up!

Episode FINAL - Talk amongst yourselves

Choco1980
Feb 22, 2013

I fell in love with a Video Nasty
Thanks for the fun little LP! I always look forward to rare gems from the 8 and 16 bit eras like this. Also yeah, that end music is pretty :krad:

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GenderSelectScreen
Mar 7, 2010

I DON'T KNOW EITHER DON'T ASK ME
College Slice
Thanks for the LP. A shame there wasn't a sequel.

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