Iwanaga

Saturday nights are alright for sitting alone in your pants browsing indy game blogs. Yes, I found bizarre semi-scrolling blaster Iwanaga over on Independent Gaming (which is an absolute corker of a blog run by "Tim W", incidentally). Having figured out that the game doesn't work on Vista, I'm now hunched in front of my XP machine, and have descended into a kind of shmup-trance. I'm blasting stuff over and over via Iwanaga's strangely disconnected cursor/character method. You hold down Z to shoot, and can't really move as you do it, and instead control a cursor independent of your 2D character. Stop firing and you can move and jump your weird troll thing to avoid incoming hazards. Mmm, weird pixel-death...

I pinched this image from TIGSource because my grabs were all corrupted. I am a pro, yes.

The main Iwanaga website is all in foreign, so here's a direct link to the game files. The game is beautifully drawn in retro-pixelated fashion, and has the most peculiar flat Japanese horror atmosphere. There's also my favourite intro sequence in years. Brief, and to the point. I think you should take a look for yourself.