I've read the posts of a few trusted individuals on other forums that assure me that Sapphire is one of the greatest, if not THE greatest, shooter of the 16bit era. At least one of those individuals 1CC'd every single 16bit console shooter in existence before making that assessment, so that has to count for something. :atlantean:
Just based on what I have read, I have to applaud Sapphire for being about a generation ahead of the thinking that dominates most shooters from its era (and console). Most shooters on the PC Engine are content to let you shoot, bomb, and whatever, fight the boss the end lol. By adding the pod attacks which boost the points value of enemies killed, it takes a simple idea and adds a lot of risk and reward to the game. By the mid 90s shootemups were really starting to take strides forward from their 80s predecessors - in terms of incorporating numerous different playstyles. Judging by the results, I suppose Hudson was the beneficiary of designing a shooter so late in the system's life-span!
I really need to play it one of these days. I wish Daemon Tools Lite didn't turn into full-on bloat/ad/malware, since those automatic "mount drive" functions on Windows 10 don't work for dick on emuparadise ISOs (or any of the ISOs I have for that matter). Anyone use anything different (and free) for mounting them? I guess I could burn it but then I'd need that damn arcade card...