New Century Galaxy Legend is a game that is rife with competition from all corners of the Earth. All who are willing to throw their hat in the ring are given equal opportunity, owing to the game's lack of a price tag. With it, the player is given a game attempting to emulate an old-school arcade machine, with 8-Bit renditions of classical music to accompany you. The game is so bare bones in fact, that there is not even an option to play with your full screen. You can change the volume of the music and toggle the language between English and simplified Chinese. Other than that, the game is intended to be played in the way it comes installed. It looks like, and plays like, a mobile game from 2014.
Ordinarily, I'd open a game like this, play it for about 10 minutes or so, then close it, uninstall, and never think about it again. However, in this game there exists a World Ranking system that encourages the player to keep playing. This is by no means a new concept. However, what makes New Century Galaxy Legend special is the notably small player base that makes some interesting trends in the leaderboards. The game does not even bother to rank you if your survival time falls outside the global top 100, and the people in the top 5 display an almost oligarchical class of bullet-hell experts (or maybe people who just got lucky) who have a demanding lead over the number 6 spot, with a 42 second separation between them.
Who are these people? Better yet, are these people at all? What is the story behind their ascent up the mountain of ever increasing scores, or were they there from the very beginning. They are only people behind a screen, at the end of the day, and only they, and few others, will know their rise to fame.
We see speedrunners time and time again perform monumental tasks and reaching the goal of "World Record", under the watchful eyes of thousands. We also see time and time again that there are people willing to cheat their way to the top of the leaderboards through flaunting feats which they did not perform, becoming receptors of scrutiny from their peers and are seen as traitors in the eyes of the masses, or, in some cases, dividers of the masses between their cult-like followings and their critics.
But New Century Galaxy Legend does not have these problems, for a variety of reasons.
[b]1.[/b] The game keeps track of rankings through its own systems, ones which cannot easily be cheated by the typical player.
[b]2.[/b] The statistic which this game tracks does not pertain to how fast you can complete something, rather the opposite; How long can you last? Who will stand victorious as the person to die the slowest?
[b]3.[/b] Nobody plays this game. The stakes are so low for those who stand to climb the ranks, and the oligarchical nature of the leaderboards as they stand may further discourage those who may feel that becoming the best in the world at anything at all will be a cakewalk in this game. Furthermore, the people on top really have no incentive to cheat, for who will care that they are the best in the world at a game which currently has a player base of a few dozen, at most? Who will there be to riot when it turns out that the best player turned out to be manipulating bullet patterns or using invincibility cheats? Nobody, that's who.
For the sake of this review we will acknowledge the accomplishments of these individuals, for surviving over 100 seconds in New Century Galaxy Legend, which may be even longer than some players even had the game open entirely. In particular, I have yet to mention the undisputed king, and protagonist, of this game, which is Sunlight.
Sunlight is a name which currently holds high prestige in the New Century Galaxy Legend leaderboards, surviving for a whopping 228.83 seconds as of the time of me writing this. He holds a demanding lead of 59.97 seconds over the second place lsu921102. Almost a full minute difference defines the dominance of this mysterious individual. Questions arise as a result: Is Sunlight a player of other bullet hell titles such as the infamous Touhou franchise, or is this his only bullet hell game? How long did it take him to do this? Was this the result of a long and arduous quest to become the very best, like no one ever was, or did this come as naturally to him as breathing and blinking? Why bother with such a demanding lead in the first place? Is this to cement himself as the undisputed champion and set an example for the trembling masses below him? Did he just happen to catch a lucky break, a merciful bullet pattern? Is he challenging everyone else to perform better than him? Did he simply set up a finish line to be crossed by those who dare to undertake the road to reach it?
The game, however, is still in its infancy, and there may be a hidden specter who has yet to discover this game, one who can make Sunlight look like a child among gods, one to usurp his throne and cast him into obscurity. It may have very well been the case at one point that lsu921102 was the former reigning monarch of this game, and Sunlight was this specter I speak of. The possibilities for a game of this nature are endless, and this specter I speak of could be anyone, as anyone with a computer can pick up this game for free.
Will it be you?
