Format: HuCard
Genre: Shooter
Developer: Natsume
Publisher: Natsume

Dead Moon starts out in marvelous fashion, with a first stage containing several layers of parallax scrolled skyscrapers and a bright blue sky, punctuated by a flying skeleton bird boss with a beating heart. The second stage is a disappointingly mundane starscape, while the third reverts to impressive form, with a parallax scrolled moonscape. The enemy designs are similarly inconsistent, with cool bosses, but generic enemy designs. Dead Moon misses out; it's a good looking PC Engine title, whereas it could have been a great looking entry.

Like most 80s platforms, PC Engine chip music uses simple white noise channel programming for percussion. Dead Moon's developers, however, somehow managed to get digital-sounding drum samples working, ala the Sega Genesis-- and the effect is amazing! Compositionally the songs are upbeat, high tempo, and very melodic. Sound effects are pretty minimal, and if there is critique to be had, it's that some digital voice samples would have gone a long way towards taking the title to the next aural level.

Dead Moon's six stages only feature left-to-right horizonal shooting, but they do make great use of wave layouts-- mixing the various enemies in interesting ways, while tempting the player to reach for upgrades during tricky sequences. Weapons can be upgraded up to four times by collecting color-coded pods, and when hit, the player is downgraded a level, only dying if hit when their weapon is at the lowest level. Novel! The player can also fire bombs, which comes in handy for the interesting boss encounters.

Especially during the more interesting levels, Dead Moon hits the schmup sweet spot of crazy projectiles flying everywhere and fully-upgraded player weapon shots covering nearly the entire screen! It does lack a little in the variety department, both aesthetically and mechanically, and the game is also rather short, especially given that it hands out infinite continues. Still, beating the game reveals a hard mode, just like titles in other genres, such as Ghouls 'n Ghosts. Despite the shortcomings, Dead Moon would be the best schmup in a lot of other video game console libraries-- and even on the PC Engine, the game stands tall as one of the many titles that make the PC Engine the "king of the shooters."