Border Down

Border Down is a horizontally scrolling Shoot Em Up arcade game released by G.rev in 2003, and then later ported to the Sega Dreamcast in Japan.

In the future, humans have colonized Mars for three centuries and are near completion of its terra-formation. Other than political friction with Earth, it is considered humanity's Golden Age. One day, contact with the Vesta asteroid mine was lost. The asteroid had been taken over by a hostile alien force that would be become known as "First Approach" (F.A). The F.A began causing terrible destruction and then suddenly vanish before anything can be done to stop them. In order to combat this threat the Solar system Defense Force (SDF) was established. However, irregular electromagnetic waves from The Seed, F.A's power source, will cause the SDF's unmanned fighters to malfunction. In response, the SDF adapted the Remote Artificial Intelligence Network to allow remote control of the their newly developed space fighter, Antares.

The first three levels are virtual combat simulations to let Frank Boyd, the pilot, get acclimated to using the RAIN system to pilot three Antares fighters at the same time. Frank's training is interrupted by an F.A, codenamed "Isis," hijacking the battleship Osiris inside a colony. This turns out to be a diversion to allow the F.A time to take over the Ziggurat Space Elevator, topple it, and destroy the Martian capital of Sheffield. Frank assumes control of three fighters left at the city and disables the core of the elevator. Then, things get worse.

Tropes used in Border Down:
Level 4 shows. Level 5. Level 6.
 * Beam O War: When an enemy fires a laser similar to your Break Laser, a large ball of energy is created that takes up a large portion of the screen. Small enemies and enemy shots are destroyed. Large enemies and bosses will take more damage compared to the Break Laser alone but only if the energy ball is toughing them.
 * Continuing Is Painful: The Border System. When you start the game, you are given a choice of three difficulties/paths: Border Green for easy, Border Yellow for medium, and Border Red for hard. Choosing a harder difficulty allows for a higher score, but you technically only have one life on each Border. If you're on Green and you die, you Border Down to Border Yellow. If you die on Border Yellow, you Border Down to Border Red. And if you die on Border Red, it's game over.
 * Inverted with actual continues because you keep your score, keep your progress on the Stage Norm meter, and you start at Border Green regardless of what Border you started the game with.
 * Deadly Walls: Sort of. You can rub against a wall for a little bit, but continuous rubbing will kill you.
 * Downer Ending: The only difference between the 6-D ending and the level 6 Nonstandard Game Over is.
 * Engrish: The Engrish is good enough to let English-speaking players know what the story is, more or less.
 * Every Ten Thousand Points: The Stage Norm quota. Reaching it allows you to go up one border at the start of the next level.
 * Hallucinations:The bosses for level 3 & second half of the level 5 boss. All of level 6, depending on how many Stage Norm clears you got and how much time is spent playing in the three Borders.
 * Hitbox Dissonance: Shots can pass through your ship and won't blow it up as long as it doesn't touch the hitbox in the center. However, it will blow up if the ship itself, not the hitbox, crashes into solid objects.
 * Nintendo Hard: The game itself is hard. It seems impossible at first because you can only play sections of a level in Practice Mode that you've reached in Arcade or Remix mode, continues unlock over time, and you don't start with any.
 * No Export for You: Only released in Japan. The game should work on an American Dreamcast and the menus are in English.
 * Nonstandard Game Over: Level 1, 2, & 3 show excerpts from the SDF's reports about the RAIN system.
 * No Export for You: Only released in Japan. The game should work on an American Dreamcast and the menus are in English.
 * Nonstandard Game Over: Level 1, 2, & 3 show excerpts from the SDF's reports about the RAIN system.
 * Spiritual Successor: Successor to Metal Black, a Shoot Em Up by Taito. Hiroyuki Maruyama, the president of G.rev, started the company and did subcontracting work for Treasure and Taito to generate revenue just to make this game. Why? He just really liked Metal Black.
 * Time Limit Boss: Subverted; the timer is used to calculate the bonus points you receive when you defeat the boss, with higher bonuses the closer the clock is to 0:00 remaining. If you fail to defeat the boss before the timer reaches -30 seconds, you still proceed to the next level, but take a hefty 6 million points in penalty.
 * Title Drop: When your ship is destroyed and you see whether or not you got close enough to the checkpoint to start the next border at the second half of the level or the boss fight.
 * With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: The RAIN system. The fact that piloting three space fighters with three separate missions via a remote control neural link overloading Frank's brain might have something to do with it.