I was going to focus on network play, but it seems most people want two things – remove ads, and add season play – so I’m going to focus on those. And I’m always open to suggestions, because I not only wrote the game, but play it, and I want it to be the best it can be as well, and other players have great ideas I’ve never considered!

If you want to keep up with what I’m working, check my blog (my first ever blog, so learning there, too) at the prostrategyfootball site.

Mainly, though, thanks again for a great review; I really appreciate it!

Some quick suggestions if you check this again:
- Slide+hold to continue moving, and/or tap to move to a spot I guess.
- Outside/background music support…I actually like the music (reminds me of the Professor Layton puzzle solving music) but I can only take so much if I’m playing for a while.

…and your iTunes description could use more info, hell just copy everything from the webpage!

Did you know that if you press “new game” it keeps your progress, but you can choose new game modes like “random” so you can get brand new puzzles. :D

Many people don’t know that because we failed to communicate it. lol

I found your entry interesting do I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog :)…

It’s embarrassing that I owned Dangun for years and never even knew it had a time attack mode. Or if I did I sure don’t remember it. And it’s all Xevious-y! That’s something I should remember.

Star Soldier R is woefully underrated. Far better than the other Hudson nostalgia cash-ins I’ve played recently. Probably because Backbone had nothing to do with it. I wonder if it even came close to turning a profit. I remember the scoreboard having less than 1,000 people on it. Maybe less than 500. Hopefully it’s higher now. I think the Soldier series as whole is underrated, and I’d love to see that style make a resurgence. If I had the skills to make a shooter it would totally rip off Star Soldier like crazy.

I’ll have to address the time attack stuff in another post, it’s too awesome to be hidden away in comments!

Something like Pac-Man CE or Outrun is much more interesting to me, because there’s a firm, tight time limit and it’s my job to perform as best I can within that limit. It’s also why 8-bit shooters are so much more interesting when they have Caravan modes — the main games tended to be overly long with a slow difficulty curve. The firm limits of Caravan cut out the easy bits and get straight to the meat.

But I do think more games should have endless modes. Bayonetta has this gauntlet mode that you unlock after you beat the game, and it’s neat, but it requires a huge time investment to clear and if you fail you gotta start over from the start. And a lot of the gauntlet’s early stages are dull and easy, and you can’t skip ahead to the harder bits. And it’s bullshit that you had to unlock it in the first place. It should have been available from the start. I think an endless m a ode with tons of options, such as what enemies you face and their difficulty, would have been a great addition. GIVE IT TO ME HARD, VIDEO GAMES.

I’m torn on whether Resident Evil 4 would be a better game without the upgrades. I think it’s one of the few action games that handles them well, and it’s entirely because the combat starts out satisfying. You can still pop heads open with the starting gun, right? You can still cap dudes in the knee and then German suplex them. Yet the upgrades aren’t shallow. The new weapons give you more options, and they’re often really fun options. But they’re not really more fun than the basic pistol. Just different.

The more time passes the more I’m convinced Halo is as underrated as universally praised game can be. It is a game with no upgrades. Your weapon choice is always limited and you’re often forced to change up your weapon layout, and it never comes across as artificial, like it does in so many modern games, where you’d have a cutscene where the hero, like, slams his thumb in a car door, so you can only fight with kicks for that battle. That is considered “variety” by many folks. It’s awful.

In Halo you just run out of ammo and have to grab whatever gun is lying around. A gun that will probably behave differently from your favored gun, but usually isn’t “worse”. And it’s still a gun. You’re still shooting. You’re still doing what Halo does best, just doing it a bit differently, and without the game forcing it upon you. Even the vehicle sections kinda revolve around this concept. It’s a great one. It’s a shame more devs aren’t capable of aping it. Hell, I’m not even sure they’re capable of seeing that the game’s simple nature is why it’s so damn popular.

I guess if you combine Halo and RE4 you end up with Gears of War, huh. That was a pretty great combo. So yeah, RE4 would have been just fine without the upgrades. But they were pretty neat still.

This is pretty rambling, and I actually meant to post about how the linear powerups in Cave games are one of the key elements that make them so enjoyable and set them apart from the pack back in the day Though I’m not sure who hopped off the stupid multiple-power-up train first. Doesn’t Gunbird only have one kind of shot? Is that from 1993? I think once shooters dumped the multiple-power up style and went with different character types the genre improved immensely. But even then, why have different characters? Why even have linear power-ups? Is Ikaruga the only modern Japanese shooter without power-ups? It’s one of the best features of the game.

So uh yeah I agree with you, homes. Right on!