Blazing Star

Blazing Star is a scrolling shooter video game for the Neo Geo home game system. It is the semi-official sequel to the acclaimed Neo Geo shooter Pulstar, which was itself a close cousin to the R-Type franchise. The game makes extensive use of pseudo-3D prerendered sprites, and the intro contains brief anime and CGI cutscenes. Frequent Engrish voice samples and captions are used (including the line "You Fail It!").

Story:

Sometime in their past, the planets Remuria and Mutras started an interplanetary war that showed no sign of ending. The endless fight between the human-like inhabitants of the two planets had gone so long that weapon development moved into dangerous territory: Organic Weapon Production combined with alien technology. Soon, a sentient weapon - Brawshella - was born. Brawshella gathered all animal life on both planets and forced them to do its bidding and attack the humans. In a week, the humans were assimilated by Brawshella.

Yet, once they were assimilated, they found no other purpose in life but to continue fighting each other. After a while, four of the assimilated fighter pilots regained their consciousness and remembered their pasts. Upon discovering their humanity, the pilots were conflicted with following Brawshella's orders or fighting it to fully regain their independence. The pilots finally turn against the machine in a battle to rediscover themselves and reclaim their planets.

More info on the story and characters can be found on this Japanese website.


 * Battleship Raid: The sixth boss, a red battleship with destructible parts. Unfortunately for you, it was accompanied by annoying indestructible orange ships that spewed out lots of bullets.
 * Bullet Hell: Especially in the last two levels. Good luck surviving, especially when your hitbox is larger than that of a Bullet Hell...
 * Button Mashing: Your primary rapid-fire attack gets stronger if you mash the attack button.
 * Charged Attack: By holding down the A button, you charge up an attack. When released, you will do your charge move, then when the charged move is still active, pressing B will allow you to do your Break attack (a secondary version of Charged Attack).
 * Difficulty Spike: The first five levels shouldn't be too hard if you can kill the enemies before they attack (and even then, they don't shoot too much). The sixth stage, however, introduces enemies that fill the screen with loads of shots, and the boss has helpers that spam bullets.
 * Enfant Terrible: The Big Bad Brawshella is... a giant baby. Who then grows two BFGs, and then a One-Winged Angel form. And it will kick your ass in more ways than one.
 * Engrish: Pretty much all the text.
 * Epic Fail: Trope Namer: the "FAIL" meme originated from an Engrish line in the game "YOU FAIL IT! YOUR SKILL IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH, SEE YOU NEXT TIME, BYE-BYE!" that occurs when you fail to beat a boss in time.
 * Frictionless Reentry: Averted with the third boss: both you and it have a flame on re-entry to Earth.
 * Hell Hound: The name of one of the ships, its Charged Attacks are called "Deathflame" and "Hell Burst".
 * High Altitude Battle: Stage 3's boss (in a space station), once you destroy most of it, the remaining part drops down to Earth.
 * Hollywood Cyborg: JB, the pilot of Aryustailm.
 * Humongous Mecha: All the bosses (except the last). Some of the regular Mooks may count as well.
 * Jack of All Stats: Hell Hound, a ship with average speed and decent attacking stats (the type of ship is stated as "Standard").
 * Lightning Bruiser: Aryustailm, a ship with high attack power (and a painful sword Charged Attack!) and high speed. It also gets a Deflector Shield to absord bullets as its other Charged Attack.
 * Macross Missile Massacre: Hell Hound shoots homing missiles as its normal attack. Some enemies also attempt this on you.
 * Mighty Glacier: Windina, a ship with strong attack power but has slow speed.
 * Mook Maker: Several enemies are able to do this.
 * One-Hit-Point Wonder: All the ships. Although the Dino 135 and Dino 246 are able to get Attack Drones that can block shots.
 * One-Winged Angel: Brawshella's first three forms shouldn't be too difficult. Then it transforms into this grotesque organic thing with a baby's head, and then it uses loads of near-impossible to avoid moves.
 * Our Mermaids Are Different: Leefa, the pilot of Windina.
 * Science Is Bad: The creation of the Big Bad was due to combining organic weapons and alien technology, the result was a being that assimilated humans and forced them to do its bidding.
 * Spread Shot: Hellhound, Windina and Peplos have some form of this. And of course, the enemies.
 * Transforming Mecha: Stage 4's boss, an aircraft thing that transforms into a robot once its main weaponry has been blown off.
 * Underground Monkey: The Humongous Mecha regular enemies. Their color indicates what attacks they will use or the attack pattern they will use.
 * Unwilling Roboticization: Four of the main characters (Caster, Leefa, JB, Asayuki) had this happen to them by Brawshella. Three of them get restored to normal after the ending.
 * Warmup Boss: The first boss, a Spider Tank thing. It doesn't attack much, and its attacks are all very easy to avoid. Plus, it dies quite quickly.
 * Wave Motion Gun: A few bosses will use this on you.
 * A Winner Is You: The ending just shows a wall of text and then the credits, sadly.