Baby clears: Prehistoric Isle 2

Well that didn't take long. Still, it's nice to get a quick clear here and there, especially after weeks toiling away on arduously boring Raiden V or vengefully punishing Psikyo "games". Nicer still to land at #4 on the Switch leaderboards, though that's a meager accomplishment if ever there was one (only about 15 players appear to have hit the 1CC so far. Judging from their score, the 100th ranked player hasn't even cleared Stage 2!). Prehistoric Isle 2 was never going to amount to much anyway, being a plainly stripped down, late-period aesthetic showcase. The reward on offer is clear: fluidly animated prerendered prehistoric creatures inhabiting dreamy ruins, jungles, and volcanoes. After struggling under the bitter tyranny of hellrank stoking the fires of Strikers 1945, the opportunity to memorize a couple patterns, learn a handful of scoring techniques, take a couple risks and finish the ride is just nice, like a blowjob for fifty bucks. Notes:

• I've said it a thousand times before, I'll say it a thousand more times before I die, I don't like rank (PI2 has none). If I want to increase the difficulty of the game, I'll go into the settings and increase the difficulty. I did exactly that with Preshistoric Isle 2 after my first attempt was a startling 3CC, then realized that I'd rather play at the default difficulty and strive to increase score, interacting with more of the game's systems without having to worry about an ever-fluctuating survival threat. Build dynamism into your design (chains, score items, whatever) and you can allow the player interesting choices, rather than railroading them onto the hardest path.
• The difficulty curve is just right - Stage 1 is pretty easy, leaving most of the challenge first to learning mechanics and later to maximizing score; Stage 2 gets the enemies more active, making sure there are always bullets onscreen; Stage 3 is almost like a bonus level, a really simple straight shot that also has the prettiest backdrop - the calm before the storm; Stage 4 is where the difficulty peaks, introducing lots of new enemies and constant pressure; Stage 5 is the gauntlet, revisiting all the previous challenges and providing very few opportunities for recovery; and Stage 6 is the denouement, a protracted boss battle of the R-Type battleship form.
• The Japanese version has a 5-HP health bar versus Worldwide's 3-life stock; this doesn't change the effect of getting hit (main weapon and subweapon single-level power-down, one rescue lost), but it does change the appearance of restoratives. In the Japanese version, delivering a certain number of rescues (more than three?) to a pre-boss evac chopper generates a +1HP item. At the beginning of Stage 4, defending a certain number of evacuees (all 30?) grants another. (That's at least +5HP total over the course of the game, and I may have missed some). There is a 1UP that appears somewhere in Worldwide, but I haven't been able to find it. This was a clear of the Japanese version, which is obviously somewhat easier, although I also chose that route because....
• The health bar makes the game more interesting. Delivering rescues to the evacuation chopper can be used to get back health, but it means sacrificing the pretty hefty stage-end bonus you get for carrying them through the boss fight (500k per rescue + another 500k for all five). This is a neat twist on the traditional score-extend - you have to pull off the rescue to get either benefit, but at stage-end you get to decide whether it'll be a score bonus or recovery - and whether you want to risk losing the bonus entirely if you make a mistake on the boss. The North American version of the game trades this for... nothing. Delivering rescues still grants some power-ups, but that isn't nearly as meaningful as health/1UPs. The game is simply boringer without that element of risk/reward.
• The design of bosses is a clear highlight. They last for minutes, moving around the screen, attacking from different directions, almost never repeating attack patterns. Having a fully powered up weapon or using bombs to shave off a few seconds can make a huge difference if it means skipping the last phase or two. Particularly vicious is the Hornetpede who snakes unpredictably across the screen while firing two-phase bullets.
• The bomb doesn't seem to offer any invulnerability, or if it does, it's so short as not to matter. No panic-bombing. This is a pretty fair trade-off in a game that offers at least one health restorative per stage. 
• I played with the green chopper (spread shot) using the red (chain gun) weapon. Subweapons I swapped a lot, it's hard to hang onto them for long, but super missile seemed to be the best. Napalm was invaluable in the final boss confrontation. 

Anyway, that's a solid recommend for $8. Now I guess it's Blazing Star, unless I want to scream some more at Strikers.