Thanks to Bitwave Games for the review code

Title: BATSUGUN
System: Steam (PC)
Price: $7.99
Release Date: 02/01/2024

Prelude

In Toaplan’s final shooter, you… Wait a minute, this is deja vu! We covered a form of this game last year! Well, Batsugun is back, this time from Bitwave using the typical bitwave wrapper and features. Does it stand toe to toe with the Saturn Tribute? More importantly, does the lower price and features make that version redundant, or does the extra BGM and options of that port win over Bitwave’s efforts?

Presentation

With the usual Bitwave features for display and QOL returning, this is yet another port of a similar wrapper and in the same vein as what we’ve seen nine times so far. No complaints there as the display options continue to look good and make this gorgeous game pop.

Like the past few Bitwave releases, this had some rough audio emulation pre-launch, and I was worried as had been habit before that some of the off pitch sound effects and harsh instrumentation in certain tracks would retain to the release build. Luckily, a bunch of the sound effect troubles I wrote about were completely fixed, and while some of the songs have a bit of a shrill sound still compared to the original Arcade PCB, they are much better than how they were when I started taking my notes, to the point I’d argue only diehards or people who listen to the OST in their car like I do would notice the instrumentation differences. Considering how this OST is just as outstanding as always, that is a very good thing. I wish the Saturn arranged OST could have been included somehow, but that’s what S-Tribute is for I guess.

Gameplay

For the core game… It’s Batsugun, but with near instantaneous inputs! The slightly laggy (4-5 frame) response times of the S-Tribute version being completely hard to go back to now as a result of this massive improvement. Being that this was the one aspect the Bitwave releases always nailed, I wasn’t too worried about input lag, but wowza, this feels like butter to play.

Of course, since Batsugun is Batsugun and the Saturn port I covered was pretty much identical to this Arcade original anyhow, these are the same five stages I enjoyed so much last year, but now with a training mode and the usual QOL Bitwave throws in, so you can rewind and turn on hitboxes if you so choose, along with being able to start from any stage with any sort of weapon or character to practice. I really don’t have much else to comment on the game itself since I just did that recently, but Batsugun continues to be just as fun as it was last time, though now with much better response timing.

The Special Version is even here as well, which makes it the first time the Arcade version of that Special ROM has ever seen an official release in any capacity. Considering how Special was the best version for scoring and some balancing tweaks, I was very pleased to see it thrown into this Bitwave port, and it too benefits from the buttery controls, with this being one I’m more than eager to take on the leaderboards for over time. Unfortunately you can’t swap the hitboxes from Special into the OG game like you can in S-Tribute, but otherwise both versions play exceptionally well and are very addictive, proto bullet hell games, and the tight controls make this exceptional game play very, very well.

Conclusion

This port of Batsugun, if nailed properly on the first go and had some of the bonuses from the S-Tribute version, would easily have been one of the best shooter recommendations I could make period, and arguably one of the best score chasers for anyone to buy across all of Steam. As I noted in the S-Tribute review, the Special version alone is worth picking the game up, and since that version is thankfully included here too, this should have been a slam dunk for the $8 price.

Yet somehow, audio emulation issues plagued this game too, with the intense, hardcore music of the original game having weird notes off key and outta wack here and there, and the sound effects being a tad off compared to other versions of the game, such as the aforementioned S-Tribute port. Just like with Tiger Heli though, they did patch some of these issues right before launch (the music is way better and the sound effects are pretty much on point to my ears), but the shrill instrumentation of certain songs like the Stage 3 theme still persist and are slightly inferior to the Saturn Tribute audio, and hopefully that’ll get tweaked in the near future.

Still, the outstanding quality of the game, the perfect input response times, the incluision of Special Version and the leaderboard options do lead to the port being a buttery smooth shooter, and one that I would easily recommend as a must buy to any fan of the genre due to the low price alone. Considering newcomers won’t notice things being too bad and a good bulk of my pre-launch sound issues were fixed, I can still give this a thumbs up at the end of the day, but considering how the S-Tribute version offers not just the Arcade PCB audio in perfect quality, but two more arranged versions of it that sound even better, it honestly pains me to give a very, very slight edge to that version for feeling more robust, even if you take a few frames of input lag to get the better audio, and that version is way, way more expensive in comparison to the $8 price here.

Truly, this could have been the ultimate shooter on Steam with some more polish nailed down, as Batsugun is one of Toaplan’s best games, if not one of the best shooters of the 1990s, but as we stand today, this is just a very good port that plays like butter, but could have been a bit more feature packed like the S-Tribute counterpart. Still, this is a wonderful shmup and the one I can easily recommend to fans of modern bullet hells, since a lot of their DNA came from this very title, making this a perfect Toaplan starting point!

I give Batsugun a 7 out of 10.