I enjoyed playing this great port of the Taito arcade classic. There was something about the music and the sound effects that worked especially well in this port.
2014-09-20
[4558]
Got the score 58962.
What a fun game.
2018-12-09
[9348]
Hmm, Alien Technology Group is a San Diego company, this game should probably be running in NTSC. I've been playing a slow motion version as a kid.
2019-11-28
[10229]
Now I played it in NTSC, the music almost makes too much sense in this tempo. I seem to get worse at the game, maybe I'm trying to be too fancy.
I believe the version I was playing as a kid was an NTSC game, not designed for PAL machines. NTSC games were designed to run at a frame rate of 60 Hz and PAL games at 50 HZ. The gameplay worked OK running a bit slower, but the music also ran 20% slower, which is a lot! Tim Follin's interesting sample choices coupled with this unintentional slowness gave it a weird, dreamy feeling that stuck with me for the last 30 years. It's an interesting example of accidental artistic impressions.