Genre: Shooter
Developer: Locomalito
Publisher: Abylight Studios SA

Indie schmup artwork has a tough time dodging the incoming bullets of pretentiousness, and almost always lacks the kind of explosively rich detail characterizing the genre's best examples. But behold Super Hydorah, and its almost fully convincing 90s-era backgrounds, smoothly scrolling parallax layers, and superbly animated sprites! Beyond that, the work on display looks great with the game's well above average CRT filter. The title also does a good job of connecting colors-- of upgrades, of enemies-- with mechanical behaviors. If there is a criticism it's that the art lacks that little bit of extra charm and personality.

Thank goodness: the dark dog days of Famitracker-obsessed indie compositions are well and truly over. Super Hydorah's smooth 80's-style drum beats, bass line samples, and light techno melodies have a strong DSP-like quality, perhaps reminiscent of PSX or Saturn music-- or even late-stage Neo Geo works. As good as the sampling is and despite the cool compositions, the end product lacks any kind of bombast, so the songs all wind up sounding a pinch too similar. The game could have used some more exciting, risk-taking sound effects too.

The closest mechanical parallel to this game is Red Company's PC Engine classic "Gate of Thunder": one of the sub-weapons even grants dual support ships! As the player moves through various side-scrolling stages-- some of them dusty caves, others organic wastelands, yet others in the vacuum of space-- while scooping power-ups and frantically dodging missiles and bullets, the game's finely-calibrated analog stick movement is frequently appreciated. The boss patterns are quite inventive, and the game has a nice difficulty ramp progression through its branching structure.

Super Hydorah's smooth graphics, varied upgrade system, excellent balance, and even two-player cooperative support are very nicely done. Everything about the title does comes off as a little "flat" though: the too-unobtrusive music, boring sound effects, and somewhat underwhelming thematic undertones are mildly disappointing; the game could have used more in the vein of the deliberately corny "commander" voice acting it treats the player to upon starting a new playthrough. At the same time however, it's impossible to overlook this release's pure mechanical excellence!