Forget Call of Duty, Real Men Need the Retro Love: Ikaruga

If you're well-versed in the gamertastic, you'll know one thing: Treasure are the masters of effing incredible shooters. Whether it's cult classic Gunstar Heroes or the balls out, look-at-me-I'm-a-freakish-bird-dude-in-a-spacesuit-with-a-laser madness of Alien Soldier, you can't argue with this stuff.

These guys have essentially made the genre their bitch. You need a delicate balance of pulsing soundtrack, compelling gameplay, unique hook and/or scoring system, bullets-amundo and a shitstorm of lighting effects to get this right, and these bastards have nailed it.

But never have all these elements combined into as cohesive a slice of sexiness as Ikaruga. Hold on to your balls, we're going to take a look.

The title was originally released in Japanese arcades in 2001, before hitting the Dreamcast the following year. In 2003, it finally deigned to join us game-starved hobos in the rest of the world (on Gamecube). And so we were treated to a seminally stylish shoot ‘em up with a pretty fancy-ass polarity mechanic.

But first, the plot. As is usually the case with the genre, this isn't complex stuff. We aren't talking Da vinci Code levels of cliffhangers and other BS here. Nuts to all that. Instead, we have a megalomaniacal leader who has found the ‘power of the Gods,' and is using it to wage intergalactic war. Which is, y'know, not cool and such. Resistance was shattered, and there was only one survivor. Now cruising about in his ship the Ikaruga, this dude pledges to destroy the threat singlehandedly.

Which, naturally, paves the way for several stages of bullet-flaily funtimes. For the most part, Ikaruga plays out like any conventional vertical-scrolling shmup. A shitstorm of flaming death with be unleashed on your poor little guy at the bottom of the screen there. You'll try your best to not get your asshole barbecued, while returning fire at the hordes above. This is all Video Games 101, right here.

But it's all a little more complicated than that. The game's polarity dealie is a huge factor, and a unique element setting it apart. You're able to reverse your ship's polarity on the fly at will, from black to white and back. Your many (effing many) enemies are of one polarity or the other, and only shots of the opposing alignment will kill you. 'Matching' ones will be absorbed as energy for your power-up, Ultra Badass Super Gonad-Blaster Homing Weapon (which isn't, I should clarify, actually called that).

Meanwhile, your own attacks cause double damage to foes of the opposite polarity. In short, if you thought that bullet hell shooters weren't enough of a brain-melty seizure-athon already, Ikaruga is for you. In a notoriously unforgiving genre, it's an even bigger bitch than usual.

But that's part of its charm. The old school challenge is strong in this one. Very, very strong. It offers something a little different even for grizzled veterans of such games, and that kind of thing is always welcome.


Ikaruga is regarded as among the best 2D shooters ever made, and rightly so. It's a deft blend of that classic addictive gameplay and rather sextastically space-y presentation, a kind of natural evolution of the genre. If this sort of thing is your bag, you owe it to yourself to... put this one in your bag. Or something to that effect. Eff the bag, just play it.