Fantastic Night Dreams: Cotton Original

 

Fantastic Night Dreams: Cotton Original - PlayStation (1999)

Developed by: Success

Published by: Success

Cotton Original is a horizontal shooter with a "cute 'em up" aesthetic which was originally released in arcades by Success and Sega in 1991 and was eventually ported to the Sony Playstation in Japan in 1999. In this title players control a witch named Cotton who along with her fairy companion Silk travels through various dark(but cartoony) fantasy themed levels fighting off hordes of monsters that are inhabiting the land. Although Silk and her fairy companions are set on saving their world, Cotton is motivated solely by the promise of a large [WILLOW] candy at the end of her journey in exchange for helping the fairies.

The game consists of seven levels that gradually increase in difficulty, however on the Normal and especially the Easy settings the game is quite manageable and a good choice for people who are relatively new to shmups. Cotton has a standard shot and droppable "bomb" like shots. These are leveled up throughout the game by picking up yellow and orange gems dropped by various enemies. She also is able to hold a stock of both blue and red magic at a limit of six which are also dropped by defeated enemies. These magic attacks can make short work of most bosses in a surprisingly little amount of time. These magic attacks also have alternate abilities accessed by holding both the shot and the bomb buttons to charge them up. blue gives the player a protective shield for a limited amount of time and red launches a fireball that homes in on enemies. In addition to these abilities Silk and her various fairy companions who you can also rescue along the way serve as options which can be maneuvered to help you defensively as well as also adding their own shots to your standard attack. You can also charge and launch these options at enemies for them to go in for an up close attack. Extends are given to the player when they reach the first 100,000 points and every 200,000 points earned after. Players are given an opportunity at the end of each level to collect tea items which fall from the sky to boost your score. However if one tries to dodge all of these instead and succeeds, the player is awarded with a secret bonus to their score of 20,000+ points.

As I mentioned earlier, the game is quite accessible for newer shmup players. While some of the environments get pretty tight, there's no penalty for hitting the walls like there is in most horizontal shooters. You just have to worry about dodging the enemy attacks and a small amount of select environmental hazards. Most of my deaths came when I carelessly tried to pick up power up items dropped by enemies without properly assessing the risk of the other enemies near by. Also, some of the bosses toward the end of the game can trip you up a little (on Normal or higher) if you allow your character to get powered down too much and also run out of magic before or during the battle. If you play on Easy all bosses in the game are complete pushovers though. I would imagine trying to play through this title without using magic would add quite a bit of challenge to the boss fights on the higher difficulties.

My Normal mode 1CC score.

This was a very fun game to clear and I'm definitely looking forward to playing other titles in this series. I initially decided to play this in anticipation for the new release of Cotton Reboot which features a remade version of the game as well as the Sharp X68000 version of the game that so few have had access to over the years. That version of the game contains several key differences to this version so I'm looking forward to spending some time with that version and learning the new changes. Look out for a blog post about it in the future!