Ghost Blade the upcoming Dreamcast exclusive sh’mup by the developer of the Dux trilogy was delayed in September from December 2014 to TBA 2015. The delay was caused when Hucast Games lead programmer left the team due to an out break of war in his part of the world. Since then the Germany based studio has found a new programmer and the games development has resumed.
On October 6th, Hucast Games published the following press release on his blog:
Train to become the ultimate weapon!
HuCast Games, announces the new retro shooting hit, Ghost Blade, for Sega Dreamcast will be available in 2015.
Its gameplay hearkens back to the flying shooter games of the 1990s with 2010s graphic style and special effects.
In Ghost Blade, Earth is invaded by an alien race who threaten humanity’s very existence. To destroy this menace, the Earth’s Army launches its new powerful weapon: Ghost Blade, the most lethal, fastest spaceship developed from men.
Use Ghost Blade’s powerful arsenal against waves of enemy ships and save the human race!
To celebrate the release’s announcement of ‘Ghost Blade’, HuCast Games released a new trailer, showcasing the exciting gameplay and the wonderful graphic style of this title.
Pre-order it now on http://hucast.com/
YoutTube Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbuiDgoOBGk
Become our fan on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hucastgames
Game Features
3 Game Modes with 3 player ships too choose from.
Screen Orientation
TATE (“3:4”) and YOKO (“4:3”)
Game Modes
Stage Mode: 5 Stages
Caravan Mode: 2 min./5 min.
Time Attack
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ABOUT HuCast GAMES
HuCast Games is an independent publisher and distributor founded by René Hellwig based in Hannover, Germany.
Our project is continuing to support the SEGA Dreamcast console at the end of its lifecycle developing 2D shooting games.
If the press release doesn’t particularly get you excited René Hellwig released a new teaser trailer on his YouTube channel.
The trailer continues the trend of featuring salaciously drawn women, only this time she is scantly clad as well. What was admirable was that her limited wardrobe greatly complimented the Dreamcast White and Orange Color palate. Given that our resident artist Kopke is an aficionado of anime art style, I had to request him to share his opinion with us on the character and see if he could draw any parallels to the Sega’s endorsed anime Hard Girls which also draw inspiration from Sega consoles such as MegaDrive, Saturn and Dreamcast:
“The art looks manga based and pretty well done, reminds me of Bubblegum Crisis and Evangelion, loved the paint work on the characters and spaceships. Textures look neat.”
Comparing the character to Hard Girls
“Not much really, more like Evangelion anime instead. She looks like Asuke Langley [main character of Evangelion]”
Do you find this salacious?
“Nah, don’t think so. Manga may sound kinky but it has an appeal. So think more in the manga sector”
Personally the art style does not work with me, which is fine as I probably don’t really fall under the real target demographic. Moving forward the teaser takes the Dreamcast fan service up a notch by featuring the famous “Dreamcast: It’s Thinking” marketing campaign. “It’s Still Thinking” has been a slogan for Dreamcast scene for a very long time but it would appear that this is the first time an upcoming game has utilized it, so kudos to Hucast for incorporating the slogan.
The rest of the trailer shows more stages and the usual action featuring bullets flying and stuff exploding. The action on screen does look impressive especially in contrast to Hellwig’s previous games however the press release states that the game will be attempting to bring 1990’s gameplay to graphics from 2010, from what I have observed the game has a long way to go in the graphics department. From the limited game play footage that I have seen Ghost Blade has a long way to go before it can even live up to the graphics from a decade ago. That said, the game is not scheduled for release any time soon so let’s see how the game continues to evolve.
Another interesting note was that the gameplay footage was being played off a Samsung LCD tv, I don’t quite know what to make of that.
Let us know in the comments of what you thought about the trailer.
