''Truxton II'' is a 1992
vertically scrolling shooter
A vertically scrolling video game or vertical scroller is a video game in which the Player (game), player views the field of play principally from a top-down perspective, while the background Scrolling, scrolls from the top of the screen to the bot ...
arcade
Arcade most often refers to:
* Arcade game, a coin-operated game machine
** Arcade cabinet, housing which holds an arcade game's hardware
** Arcade system board, a standardized printed circuit board
* Amusement arcade, a place with arcade games
* ...
video game
Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...
originally developed and published by
Toaplan
was a Japanese video game developer based in Tokyo responsible for the creation of a wide array of Shoot 'em up#Scrolling shooters, scrolling shooters and other arcade games. The company was founded in 1979 but its gaming division was establis ...
in Japan and Europe.
It is the sequel to ''
Truxton'', which was released earlier on arcades in 1988 and later
ported
In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally desi ...
to various
platforms.
Taking place after the events of the original game, players assume the role of two
fighter pilot
A fighter pilot is a military aviator trained to engage in air-to-air combat, air-to-ground combat and sometimes electronic warfare while in the cockpit of a fighter aircraft. Fighter pilots undergo specialized training in aerial warfare and ...
s taking control of the HyperFighter
space fighter crafts in an effort to overthrow the returning Gidans alien race led by Dogurava and free the
galaxy
A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, dark matter, bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar System. ...
from enslavement. Initially launched for the arcades, ''Truxton II'' later received a
conversion
Conversion or convert may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* "Conversion" (''Doctor Who'' audio), an episode of the audio drama ''Cyberman''
* "Conversion" (''Stargate Atlantis''), an episode of the television series
* "The Conversion" ...
to the
FM Towns
The is a Japanese personal computer, built by Fujitsu from February 1989 to the summer of 1997. It started as a proprietary PC variant intended for multimedia applications and PC games, but later became more compatible with IBM PC compatibles. ...
by Ving and published exclusively in Japan in April 1993, featuring various changes compared with the original version.
''Truxton II'' received positive reception from critics since its initial arcade launch and later on the FM Towns, garnering praise for the detailed presentation, graphics and sound design, though some criticized the length and noted it to be a standard
shoot 'em up
Shoot 'em ups (also known as shmups or STGs
) are a sub-genre of action games. There is no consensus as to which design elements compose a shoot 'em up; some restrict the definition to games featuring spacecraft and certain types of chara ...
title. Nevertheless, it has since gained a
cult following
A cult following refers to a group of fans who are highly dedicated to some person, idea, object, movement, or work, often an artist, in particular a performing artist, or an artwork in some medium. The lattermost is often called a cult classic. ...
and as of 2019, the rights to the title are owned by Tatsujin, a company founded in 2017 by former Toaplan member Masahiro Yuge and now-affiliate of Japanese arcade manufacturer exA-Arcadia alongside many other Toaplan
IPs.
Gameplay
''Truxton II'' is a
science fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...
-themed vertically scrolling shoot 'em up game that plays similarly like its predecessor, ''Truxton'', where players assume the role of two pilots taking control of the HyperFighter space fighter crafts through six stages, each with a
boss
Boss may refer to:
Occupations
* Supervisor, often referred to as boss
* Air boss, more formally, air officer, the person in charge of aircraft operations on an aircraft carrier
* Crime boss, the head of a criminal organization
* Fire boss, a ...
at the end, in a last-ditch effort to overthrow the returning Dogurava and his Gidan army as the main objective.
[''Truxton II'' arcade flyer (Toaplan, JP)] Several changes were implemented in the sequel compared to its predecessor such as an autofire mechanism.
There are three types of weapons in the game that can be acquired by destroying incoming carriers, ranging from
red
Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–740 nanometres. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and a secondar ...
napalm
Napalm is an incendiary mixture of a gelling agent and a volatile petrochemical (usually gasoline (petrol) or diesel fuel). The name is a portmanteau of two of the constituents of the original thickening and gelling agents: coprecipitated al ...
bomb
A bomb is an explosive weapon that uses the Exothermic process, exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy. Detonations inflict damage principally through ground- and atmosphere-t ...
s that act in a similar way to the red Bakuryu-housen-ka (Exploding Flower) shot from ''
Robo Aleste
''Robo Aleste'', released in Japan as , is a 1992 vertically scrolling shooter video game developed and published by Compile for the Sega CD. Tengen and Sega released the English version of the game overseas in 1993. It is a follow-up to ''MUSHA' ...
'', the
blue
Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between violet and cyan on the spectrum of visible light. The eye perceives blue when obs ...
homing
laser
A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The fir ...
from ''Truxton'', and the wide-reaching salvos of
green
Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 Nanometre, nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by ...
shots, which replace the red weapon from the original game and each weapon can be powered-up several times by collecting the respective color of each one.
In addition, a set of two satellite "options" are activated after collecting any weapon type. There are only two types of collectible
item
Item may refer to:
Organizations
* ''Instituto del Tercer Mundo'' (ITeM), the Third World Institute
* ITEM club, an economic forecasting group based in the United Kingdom
Newspapers
* ''The Item'', an American independent, morning newspaper ...
s; speed increasers for the ship and
bomb
A bomb is an explosive weapon that uses the Exothermic process, exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy. Detonations inflict damage principally through ground- and atmosphere-t ...
s capable of obliterating any enemy caught within their
blast radius
A blast radius is the distance from the source that will be affected when an explosion occurs. A blast radius is often associated with bombs, mines, explosive projectiles ( propelled grenades), and other weapons with an explosive charge.
Use in ...
.
In some occasions, players can pick up a
1UP
In video games, a life is a play-turn that a player character has, defined as the period between start and end of play. Lives refer to a finite number of tries before the game ends with a game over. It is sometimes called a chance, a try, rest ...
icon to increase their lives reserve.
Similar to ''
Dogyuun'' and ''
Gun Frontier
is a 1972 manga by Leiji Matsumoto.In Matsumoto's works, there have been planets with towns modelled somewhat after the Wild West. In ''Galaxy Express 999'', one of them is called Gun Frontier. Another such planet appears in ''Cosmo Warrio ...
'', the game hosts a number of hidden bonus secrets to be found, which is also crucial for reaching high scores to obtain extra lives.
The title uses a
checkpoint system in which a downed single player will start off at the beginning of the checkpoint they managed to reach before dying. Getting hit by enemy fire or colliding against solid stage obstacles will result in losing a life, as well as a penalty of decreasing the ship's firepower and speed to its original state and once all lives are lost, the
game is over unless the players insert more credits into the arcade machine to
continue playing. As with previous shoot 'em ups from Toaplan, the game loops back to the first stage after completing the last stage and each loop increases in difficulty.
Synopsis
''Truxton II'' takes place after the defeat of Dogurava and his Gidan army in the original game, where
volcanic eruption
Several types of volcanic eruptions—during which lava, tephra (ash, lapilli, volcanic bombs and volcanic blocks), and assorted gases are expelled from a volcanic vent or fissure—have been distinguished by volcanologists. These are often ...
s have been occurring on a
planet
A planet is a large, rounded astronomical body that is neither a star nor its remnant. The best available theory of planet formation is the nebular hypothesis, which posits that an interstellar cloud collapses out of a nebula to create a you ...
for some time, which ultimately culminated in an explosion that revealed the returning Dogurava from his previous defeat and the resurrection of the Gidan army as a result. Under a short time period, the Gidans quickly dominated the
galaxy
A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, dark matter, bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar System. ...
, while few surviving
refugee
A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution. s were able to escape from their grasp to deliver news about the current situation to the astroport. Two fighter pilots taking control of the HyperFighter space fighter crafts are dispatched to counterattack the invaders and overthrow their dominance in the galaxy.
Development and release
''Truxton II'' marked the first time Toaplan made use of
PCM
Pulse-code modulation (PCM) is a method used to digitally represent sampled analog signals. It is the standard form of digital audio in computers, compact discs, digital telephony and other digital audio applications. In a PCM stream, the amp ...
for sound, although the company still made use of
FM as well for the project.
Translation
by Shmuplations. ).
Translation
by Shmuplations. ).
Translation
by Shmuplations. ).
Translation
by Shmuplations. ). The
soundtrack
A soundtrack is recorded music accompanying and synchronised to the images of a motion picture, drama, book, television program, radio program, or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack o ...
was composed by Masahiro Yuge and the team wanted to preserve Toaplan's musical style while challenging themselves with new ideas.
Due to memory constrains, Yuge only used PCM for
drum
The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system, it is a membranophone. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a she ...
s, prompting him to focus on FM sound instead.
In 2020, former
Taito
is a Japanese company that specializes in video games, toys, arcade cabinets and game centers, based in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The company was founded by Michael Kogan in 1953 as the importing vodka, vending machines and jukeboxes into Japan. It b ...
designer Tomonobu Kagawa revealed on
Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
that he was involved during the game's development at Toaplan as graphic designer, as well as creating the HyperFighter ship. Kagawa stated that he was one of the three graphic designers responsible for the
pixel art
Pixel art () is a form of digital art drawn with graphics software, graphical software where images are built using pixels as the only building block. It is widely associated with the low-resolution graphics from 8-bit and 16-bit era computers a ...
, among them being Naoki Ogiwara as lead artist, who later worked on ''
DoDonPachi
is a vertically-scrolling bullet hell shoot' em up developed by Cave (company), Cave and published by Atlus in 1997. It was the second game developed by Cave, and the sixth on Cave's first-generation arcade hardware. As with its predecessor '' ...
'' at
Cave
A cave or cavern is a natural void in the ground, specifically a space large enough for a human to enter. Caves often form by the weathering of rock and often extend deep underground. The word ''cave'' can refer to smaller openings such as sea ...
.
''Truxton II'' was released on arcades in 1992.
Prior to release, it was showcased to the public at events such as the 1992
AOU Show
The Japan Amusement Expo (JAEPO) is an annual trade fair for amusement arcade products, such as arcade games, redemption games, amusement rides, vending machines, and change machines. The event is hosted one weekend per year in the Greater Toky ...
. On September 18, an album was co-published exclusively in Japan by
Scitron
is a Japanese record label that publishes video game music albums.
List of video game albums released
A -
B - C -
D - E -
F - G -
H -
I -
J - K -
L - M -
N - O -
P - Q -
R - S -
T - U -
V - W -
X - Y -
Z
...
and
Pony Canyon
, also known by the shorthand form , is a Japanese mass media publishing company founded on October 1, 1966. The company publishes mainly physical home media on compact discs, including music, films and TV shows and video games. It is affiliate ...
, featuring an arranged song composed by Yuge.
The title later received a faithful conversion to the FM Towns by Ving and was published exclusively in Japan in April 1993, however, it features a cropped resolution and the
parallax scrolling
Parallax scrolling is a technique in computer graphics where background images move past the camera more slowly than foreground images, creating an illusion of depth in a 2D scene of distance. The technique grew out of the multiplane camera tec ...
was removed.
In April 2020,
M2 announced a new version of ''Truxton II'' as part of their M2 ShotTriggers publishing label. It was first announced to be released on the
Nintendo Switch
The is a hybrid video game console developed by Nintendo and released worldwide in most regions on March 3, 2017. The console itself is a Tablet computer#Gaming tablet, tablet that can either be docking station, docked for use as a home video ...
. In 2022, the original arcade version will be included as part of the Sega Astro City Mini V, a vertically oriented variant of the Sega Astro City mini console.
Reception and legacy
In Japan, ''Game Machine'' listed ''Truxton II'' on their August 1, 1992 issue as being the sixth most-popular arcade game at the time. In the September 1992 issue of Japanese publication ''Micom BASIC Magazine'', the game was ranked on the number five spot in popularity.
''Truxton II'' has been met with positive critical reception from reviewers since its initial release in arcades and later on the FM Towns.
Andreas Knauf of German magazine ''Video Games'' praised the elaborated and detailed presentation, regarding it to be better than ''
Vimana
Vimāna are mythological flying palaces or chariots described in Hindu texts and Sanskrit epics. The "Pushpaka Vimana" of Ravana (who took it from Kubera; Rama returned it to Kubera) is the most quoted example of a vimana. Vimanas are also mentio ...
'', although Knauf criticized its length.
The four reviewers of ''
GameFan
''GameFan'' (originally known as ''Diehard GameFan'') was a publication started by Tim Lindquist, Greg Off, George Weising. and Dave Halverson in September 1992 that provided coverage of domestic and import video games. It was notable for its ex ...
'' praised the FM Towns port for the presentation, graphics and sound, regarding it to be better than the
Sega Genesis
The Sega Genesis, known as the outside North America, is a 16-bit Fourth generation of video game consoles, fourth generation home video game console developed and sold by Sega. It was Sega's third console and the successor to the Master Syst ...
version of ''Truxton'' but some ultimately noted it to be a standard shoot 'em up title.
''
Edge
Edge or EDGE may refer to:
Technology Computing
* Edge computing, a network load-balancing system
* Edge device, an entry point to a computer network
* Adobe Edge, a graphical development application
* Microsoft Edge, a web browser developed by ...
'' magazine gave the FM Towns port high praise as well but also slight criticism for the use of infinite continues.
Damien McFerran of ''
Retro Gamer
''Retro Gamer'' is a British magazine, published worldwide, covering retro video games. It was the first commercial magazine to be devoted entirely to the subject. Launched in January 2004 as a quarterly publication, ''Retro Gamer'' soon became ...
'' regarded the FM Towns port as one of the system's "perfect three" games.
Kurt Kalata of ''Hardcore Gaming 101'' gave a positive outlook to the game in a retrospective review, praising the detailed presentation and graphics.
''Truxton II'' has since gained a cult following,
being cited as an inspiration for ''
Cho Ren Sha 68K
is a 1995 vertically scrolling dōjin shoot 'em up video game developed and originally published by Koichi "Famibe No Yosshin" Yoshida at Comiket for the X68000. Taking place in a ring structure, players take control of the Zanki space fighter ...
'',
Translation
by Shmuplations. ). while the rights to the game and many other IPs from Toaplan are now owned by Tatsujin, a company named after its predecessor's Japanese title that was founded in 2017 by Yuge, who are now affiliated with arcade manufacturer exA-Arcadia.
Notes
References
External links
''Truxton II''at
GameFAQs
GameFAQs is a website that hosts FAQs and walkthroughs for video games. It was created in November 1995 by Jeff Veasey and was bought by CNET Networks in May 2003. It is currently owned by Fandom, Inc. since October 2022. The site has a databa ...
''Truxton II''at
Giant Bomb
''Giant Bomb'' is an American video game website and wiki that includes personality-driven gaming videos, commentary, news, and reviews, created by former ''GameSpot'' editors Jeff Gerstmann and Ryan Davis. The website was voted by ''Time'' mag ...
''Truxton II''at
Killer List of Videogames
Killer List of Videogames (KLOV) is a website featuring an online encyclopedia devoted to cataloging arcade games past and present. It is the video game department of the International Arcade Museum, and has been referred to as "the IMDb for pla ...
''Truxton II''at
MobyGames
MobyGames is a commercial website that catalogs information on video games and the people and companies behind them via crowdsourcing. This includes nearly 300,000 games for hundreds of platforms. The site is supported by banner ads and a small ...
''Truxton II''at The Toaplan Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Truxton II
1992 video games
Arcade video games
Cooperative video games
FM Towns games
Multiplayer and single-player video games
Science fiction video games
Shoot 'em ups
Toaplan games
Vertically scrolling shooters
Video game sequels
Video games developed in Japan
Video games scored by Masahiro Yuge
Video games set in the future