Grind Stormer

Grind Stormer (known as V-V in Japan with some mechanical differences) is important, interesting, and difficult to recommend. It's difficult, frustratingly difficult, and even with various assists from this port of the game (like smaller hitboxes). I struggle to proceed past the first two stages. The checkpoint respawn system rather than just continuing on from where you died is ultimately the dealbreaker for me. That core design decision makes death more punishing than many other shmups. Your progress damaging the boss gets wiped away, increasing the difficulty to a point that was no longer fun for me. The context of the game is important. Grind Stormer was released 6 months before Batsugun, and this game is important in the lineage of shmups. This was the first game one of the programmers, Tsuneki Ikeda, would go on to work on Batsugun and co-found CAVE. This game is, in many ways, his origin story. V-V also has a unique upgrade system where you get to choose when to use your upgrade, whether it's on attack strength or a different weapon or a shield. This dynamic, without bombs, makes trying different upgrade paths strategic and quite rewarding. Grind Stormer does away with this and has bombs and various drops for the different weapons and power ups. I greatly prefer the V-V system and recommend playing that version over Grind Stormer, although both are worth trying out if the difficulty isn't offputting for you. Bitwave's port here is servicable. There are a couple of rough edges, like in tate mode the menu text is cut off. The music sometimes is off. Some settings like number of lives doesn't always persist throughout play sessions. The extra easy difficult setting actually makes the game harder. Just some weird stuff that seems like the game was rushed (which makes sense since they're mass releasing the Toaplan games in batches). There's a lot to like about V-V. The enemy design is great. The levels look quite good. The ship feels good to control. But the checkpoint respawn decision makes me not recommend playing this game unless you're ultra dedicated to the genre and Toaplan's releases. Sure, you can credit feed your way through it or use the rewind mechanics and still have a good time, but the depth and satisfaction (for me) is in going for the 1CC and achieving it. I'd recommend checking out Batsugun or Cho Ren Sha 68K over this release.

Peeps complaining about difficulty. So? Go solo Battle Squadron published by Electronic Arts in 1990 and then talk to me. Grind Stormer looks great, plays great and more importantly the port looks good. There's an achievement for 100 play-throughs. Those complaining should be able to get past Stage Two by that time. I obtained the game in an $8 4 game bundle with Truxton 2. Absolute steal and awesome value.

残機設定が保存できず5機設定になるんだが。 4月アップデート後でも改善されず・・・。サポートにメールを投げたんだが放置。 ちなみに日本語対応できるスタッフがいないとsteam運営に言われたので、英語で送ったんだが・・・ デフォルトに戻せばよいだけといえばそれだけだが、実機でそうであるならばそれはハードの故障じゃね？ と思うと納得がいかない。 やっぱりサウンド関係がなぁ・・・。再現性がいまいち。 開発費足りてないならクラファンで援助しましょうか？ あと2面の子グモ？が分裂するところの処理落ちがないなど 相変わらずディレイ関連の再現には無頓着である。 一か月もすればアプデで改善されるとはいえ、細かい不具合や移植ミスは結構あるし。 こういったレトロゲーム系の移植は当時のプレイヤーがデバッグしてもらって 修正してもらうしかないんだろうけど。 本音をいえばM2に移植してもらいのだが M2も達人と達人王の移植も暗礁に乗り上げているようだし・・・

fun classic shmup; aged very well, quite approachable. good port too.

I'mma say it: Tengen never did any wrong. Bitwave, however, did. The emulation is bad at reproducing the instrumentation, and is as choppy as always. The replayers in any ports of this volume never start up right, and in this game's case produce graphical garbage for a solid few moments. The healthbars don't healthbar properly, disappearing with a fraction left on them all the time and appearing when they are not required. Try using the "Easier" assist on the easiest DIP switch settings and it will roll the rank over to its highest value. Generally speaking, the emulation and the extra features are three times as worthless as useful due to being rushed out in TWO MONTHS. AND A WEEK. If this is what Masahiro Yuge wanted, I'll eat my hat. Bitwave Games, Tatsujin Co. Ltd., Embracer Group, you should all be ashamed. I want the M2 ports instead. At least they can darn well back up their claims of attention to detail with robust, quality products developed on a remotely reasonable schedule.

Amazing game and the probably first prototype for what would became the genre bullet hell. The game is somwhere betwwen a bullet hell and a classic shmup. It has unique gameplay. The bullet patterns are amazing, quite unique and crazy hard but fair. The difficulty is high (even for a shmup) and may turn off many people. In fact i think many people will find it hard even with the rewind feature.Shmups experts will be delightfull with this game. Also when you die you go back to a checkpoint. and lose your powerups One of toaplan best. There are 2 versions. The japanese (vvvvvv) where you have a powerup system like gradius and the american (grind stormer) wich you pick up the powerups. the american version has bombs (something lacking in the japanese) but worst control in the weapons i get because sometimes i pick up by accident something i dislike. As always bitwave port is amazing. they are perfect in all things except sound emulation (that fortunaly is still goood but far from perfect)

It's a challenging shooter with a solid amount of QOL features that makes practicing a breeze.

A must play if there ever was one Also It Plays well on the Steam Deck!

This is the best release of this game. The emulator runs with no stupid envelopes so you can play full screen on your vertical 3//4 monitor. There’s rewinds, saves, difficulty selectors, accessibility selectors, multiple binds and multi-binds. You can disable instagram filtres that are turned on by default. But the game itself sucks. It's a vertical scroll-shooter that uses the same system as Slap Fight. Instead of getting bonuses and upgrades you pick up tokens and spend them on upgrades through a cancer system. You have no wallet you can't pick and choose. However many you have that much you will spend on something with exact price. And they overflow, if you have enough for the most expensive shield, you can accidentally pick up another one and be offered only a downgrade. The game needs a button for shopping, so since they didn't add another button, there are no bombs. You have no defencive options. Every time you die you lose everything. So the first death means that no matter how many lives players accumulated accumulated, they mean nothing and all will be instantly wasted. The game is bullet hell and the enemies are bullet sponges. The game just starts and you already don't have enough DPS to kill half the enemies. And each one just fills the whole screen with bullets. On top of all that crap the game is even more noisy that noisy. The screen is filled with so much bullets that it's hard to see other bullets. There are many enemy attacks that blend with background. And then you are five ships in a trenchcoat without a trenchcoat. Your mini ships have developmental impairment and they are always late. So you see several your-ship-shaped-and-coloured objects on the screen at any time. At the maximum speed it's extremely hard to tell them apart. It's a typical scam-game created for owners of heroin gambling dens to steal coins from vulnerable kids with gambling disability.

昔、ゲームセンターで好んでプレイしてましたが今回購入し、最終面までクリアすることができました。 難易度もそれほど高くないし、オススメです。