Vimana

 

Vimana - Arcade (1991)

Developed by Toaplan 

Published by Tecmo 

Vimana is probably one of Toaplan's lesser known titles, mostly because to this day it has yet to receive a console port since release (hopefully M2 will fix that soon though!). The game takes place on the planet Vimana which has been completely destroyed in a war against machines. The enemy machines continue to take fragments of the planet and fortify them as their bases while the planet's original inhabitants struggle to take back what's left of their planet. The player is tasked with assaulting these bases and take back the remnants of their planet from the enemy forces. The player takes control one of a pair of ancient space craft and heads into battle as one of the Vimana Warriors.

While there are several points in the game where the music changes, maybe signifying a stage change, the game plays as one continuous scrolling battle with very little downtime for the player. The player ship is equipped with a relatively narrow standard shot achieved by tapping the button (or autofire) as well as a charge shot that covers a wide area when holding the fire button down. By picking up power-ups throughout the game, the player weapons increase in width and power. Instead of your standard screen clearing bomb, pressing the second button surrounds the player's ship with a protective layer made up of several circles which then automatically home in on surrounding enemies making it a great way to get out of a jam when completely surrounded. 

Extends are rewarded to players every 70,000 points and seem relatively generous throughout the game, especially if the player is effective with their alternate "bomb" weapon when getting crowded. The best tip I can give for someone wanting to achieve the 1-ALL is to conserve most of these items for the late game but don't be afraid to use a few early on. They can be picked up throughout the game and it's much better to use one of those up in a hairy situation rather than lose a life and a large stock of them at once. There are certain times in this game where there are many bullets on the screen simultaneously and one could possibly consider it a small stepping stone in the direction that eventually lead to the "bullet hell" style of shooter that Cave pioneered. That being said I would still say that the game has much more in common with older Toaplan shooters than games like DoDonPachi. 

My final score where I cleared the first loop and made it 37% through the second loop.

Overall I thought this game was a solid release from Toaplan. It's difficulty is toned down compared to some of their more popular releases (on the first loop anyway) and it's a pretty manageable 1-ALL after some practice. Here's hoping we will see a console release of this title from M2 in the near future!