Most everyone in the classic gaming community knows of the Japanese game developer Treasure and their impeccable track record for making some of the best action games to ever grace a video game console (and even a candy cab or two). So this being an article on Japanese import gaming, I figured it would be fitting to write about a classic Treasure game that has never reached western soil. No, I am not going to talk about Radiant Silvergun or even Sin and Punishment, but rather a lesser known game for the Nintendo 64. So sit back, pop that glass marble in your Ramune bottle, open up a bag of shrimp crackers and get ready as we begin to explore the true zaniness of Bakuretsu Muteki Bangaioh (Explosive, Invincible Bangaioh!)!
Released in Japan in 1999 for the Nintendo 64, Bakuretsu Muteki Bangaioh is the creation of Yoshiyuki “Yaiman” Matsumoto. Yaiman is a Konami veteran who did programming for classic Konami games such as Super Castlevania IV and Contra 3: Alien Wars. Yaiman has also worked on some of Treasure‘s most beloved games like Gunstar Heroes, Guardian Heroes and Sin and Punishment. According to an interview in 2003, Yaiman felt “a sense of crisis” after working as a programmer for so long. Yaiman approached the president of Treasure and persuaded him to give Yaiman a year to work on his own creation. He began working on a remake of an old Sharp X-1 and PC-8801 game called Hover Attack. While Bakuretsu Muteki Bangaioh might have started off as a remake, Yaiman says he began to “mix in Anime influences from Edeon, Macross, and Layzner,” so Yaiman decided that calling his game
“a remake became 120% a bluff/lie.”
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