A rhizomatous dioecious herb (Chamaelirium luteum) in the lily family, having long racemes of small flowers. Also called devil's bit.
Any of various North American plants of the genus Liatris in the composite family, having small discoid flower heads grouped in a dense raceme or panicle. Also called button snakeroot, gay feather.
A biennial plant (Mentzelia laevicaulis) of western North America, having large, star-shaped, pale-yellow flowers.
blazing star or button snakeroot, any plant of the genus Liatris, showy North American perennials of the family Asteraceae (aster family). The blossoms, rosy purple or white, are in somewhat feathery heads along a usually wandlike stalk. Medicinal use has been made of a few species by both Native Americans and settlers. Some are called gayfeather. Blazing star is classified in the division Magnoliophyta, class Magnoliopsida, order Asterales, family Asteraceae.
Similar Games: Gradius (Arcade), R-Type (Arcade), Pulstar (Neo Geo Advanced Entertainment System)
Game Description
Blazing Star, developed by Yumekobo, and unofficial sequel to the Neo Geo shooter Pulstar, is a horizontal scrolling shooter with sprite based 2D graphics. Up to two players can simultaneously fly their way through seven levels blasting a path through hordes of enemy units. At the end of each level a large boss awaits, whom players must overcome before they can continue to the next level.
Players have four shooting options. Pressing the A button results in a standard shot, while tapping the A button results in a rapid-fire shot. Holding the A button results in a charged attack, while pressing the B button during the charged attack produces a break attack. With one exception, all of the selectable ships start at level one. Increase the ship's level to a certain point by collecting power-up icons. Standard and rapid-shot fire and volume increase with each level up; ships also gain the ability to charge more with each level up resulting in a more devastating charged attack.
Players select from six ships, and in a departure from normal shooter design, the ships aren't just clones of each other, or even similar designs. The Peplos ship starts off at the maximum level and can't be powered up, and the Dino 246 ship has a shield when leveled up. The six fighters all handle differently and have different shooting abilities. The ships were designed with different types of shooter players in mind, so that most shooter fans can find a ship that complements their style of play.
~ Kyle Knight, All Game Guide
Review: Overall
The first thing you'll notice about Blazing Star is its incredible graphics. Like the Donkey Kong Country series on the Super Nintendo, Blazing Star uses pre-rendered graphics. Instead of drawing the various sprites by hand, the sprites are taken from pre-rendered views of 3D models, which is most evident in the game's intro where you'll be treated to a circling camera view of a 3D model of one of the game's ships. The backgrounds are also great, with clouds in one level and multiple layers of parallax scrolling throughout. In a few places, hordes of things moving at once though the game experiences a bit of slowdown.
The game has well written music that adds to the overall mood. Except for an oddly toned jarring note in the beginning level one, they all sound excellent. Sometimes the music may even be good enough to hum. Sound effects and voice clips are plenty, and an excited female voice will say "BONUS!" or "POWER UP!" every time you collect one. However, because there are so many bonuses in the game to collect, hearing "BONUS" every time may start to get on your nerves.
Having six distinctly different ships is a great boost to gameplay and replay value, especially since the six ships aren't balanced in terms of ability. Selecting ships can be a way of tuning your game's difficulty as well as a way of finding a compatible ship for playing shooters. Moreover, having four shot options keeps the game from turning into a monotonous button-pounding affair.
Blazing Star's gameplay model is very well tuned. The game starts easy enough for novices to get a good handle on the control system, and gradually builds up to a difficulty level that even veteran shooters can appreciate. The tempo also builds up to a frenetic pace that never really lets up. And while Blazing Star may throw hordes of enemies and bullets on screen at once, or fill up most of the screen with large laser beams from bosses, generally it never feels like the game is cheating to get you killed or trapping you into a death. Variety in the types of enemy units and how they attack keeps the game from getting boring or repetitive. Even well designed bosses are, in some cases, quite cool. Most have multiple forms of attack to keep even jaded veterans interested.
Blazing Star is a well-assembled shooter package that has evidently learned from the classics of the genre. Its finely tuned gameplay model and variety of ships will please almost all shooter fans. The only possible gripe is that players only have one type of upgrading available. If you can get over that, you will find a fast paced and enjoyable experience.
~ Kyle Knight, All Game Guide
Review: Enjoyment
Almost a perfect paradigm of shooter gameplay.
~ Kyle Knight, All Game Guide
Review: Graphics
Incredible pre-rendered graphics only suffer occasional slowdown.
~ Kyle Knight, All Game Guide
Review: Sound
Great and fitting music, but the voice clips may get on your nerves after awhile.
Blazing Star is a scrolling shooter video game for the Neo Geo home game system. It is the semi-official sequel to the acclaimed Neo Geo shooter Pulstar, which was itself a close cousin to the R-Type franchise. A typically hefty Neo Geo ROM at 346 Mb, the game makes extensive use of pseudo-3D prerendered sprites, brief anime and CGIcutscenes (mostly during the intro sequence), and frequent Engrish voice samples and captions. While Blazing Star was superior in many respects to previous shooter games, some fans compare it unfavorably with Pulstar on the basis that Blazing Star was overly easy and there are those that prefer the simpler 2D sprite look over the prerendered sprites that came to dominate many of the more recent shoot-em-ups.
Sometime in their past, the planets Remuria and Mutras started an interplanetary war that has shown no sign of ending. The endless fighting between the human-like inhabitants of the two planets had gone so long that weapon development moved into far dangerous territory: Organic Weapon Production combined with alien technology. Soon, a single sentient weapon, Brawshella, was born. Brawshella gathered all animal life on both planets and forced them to do its bidding and attack the humans. In a week, the humans were assimilated by Brawshella.
Yet, once they were assimilated, they found no other purpose in life but to continue fighting each other. After awhile, four of the assimilated fighter pilots regained their consciousness and remembered their pasts. Upon discovering their humanity, the pilots were conflicted with following Brawshella's orders or fighting it to fully regain their independence. The pilots finally turn against the machine in a battle to rediscover themselves and reclaim their planets.
Gameplay
Gameplay of Blazing Star
The joystick and two buttons are used to play Blazing Star. The joystick moves the ship around, while button A fires the normal shot. If A is tapped rapidly, then a variation on the normal shot is used. If A is held down, then the ship stores energy for a charged shot, which is fired when A is released. The charged-shot attacks have a duration based on how long the A button is held for, and pressing B during the attack will split the projectile in some way, greatly increasing the range.
Power-ups can increase the strength of the player's guns, while also increasing the maximum power of the charged shot. The types of shots, charge-up attacks, and split shots used are dependent on the ship the player selects. For instance, the ship seen in the screenshot above has small energy waves as its normal shot. The charged shot, seen in action here, releases a continuous stream of large fireballs. By pressing B, every fireball onscreen splits into numerous smaller shots, spreading to cover a much wider range.
Internet Culture
One of the mangled translations in game, "You fail it! Your skill is not enough, see you next time, bye-bye!", has become a famous Internet catchphrase (see Engrish), often abbreviated to FAIL. According to an August 7, 2009 New York Times article by Ben Zimmer, the popular expression FAIL came from this game:"This punchy stand-alone fail most likely originated as a shortened form of “You fail” or, more fully, “You fail it,” the taunting “game over” message in the late-’90s Japanese video game Blazing Star, notorious for its fractured English."
1998
