Genetos (26.9Mb)
Genetos is a ‘different ‘, - unique in its own way, and thoroughly enjoyable Japanese vertically scrolling shooter, where you actually play through and go through the history of space shooters in five evolutionary stages. It starts off as a mundane Space Invaders clone, progressing to a game more like Galaxians in the second stage, then on to greater things!
Throughout you have energy orbs to collect as well of course as firing at enemies. You gain extra weapons and movement abilities as you go through the stages, and each level is more sophisticated than the previous levels. Interestingly, your success, movement patterns and firing patterns determine future enemy and boss behaviour, adding significantly to the levels of challenge involved. They also affect your weapons and reactions to enemy fire, so if you move forward aggressively you’ll get to use the ‘blade’, a powerful short-range weapon. If you take too many bullet hits you’ll get the ability to slow the game down, making it easier for you to dodge bullets.
The third level is a far more standard and much more modern vertically scrolling shooter with bombs added to your weapons arsenal. Things continue to get more interesting, with simple 3D graphics and a bullet hell environment for level 4. From level 4 on, you can also scroll the screen sideways. Should you get as far as level 5, the Final Generation, you’ll find that it has more of a story to it, and it goes through the phases of evolution such as birth, variation and extinction loosely following the theory of natural selection and Darwin's theory of evolution.
At the default difficulty level you do get plenty of extra ships, but you can always choose the highest difficulty level for a real challenge! Collecting green DNA powerups allows the player to gain special attacks and bonuses as does things like defeating a boss with a weak ship or weak weapons. There’s a boss or ‘mutant’ to defeat at the end of each stage.
Controls are ‘Arrow’ keys : Move ship / Move cursor; ‘ Z’ : Shoot / Decide; ‘X’ : Launch a Bomb (at level 3 or higher) / Cancel; ‘L-Shift’ : Sub-weapon & Move slowly (at level 4 or higher); ‘ L-Ctrl’ : Move slowly (at level 4 or higher); ‘ V’ : View the Navigation; and additionally ‘Spacebar’ : Toggle pause mode; ‘ESC’ : Quit game; ‘ 1’ : Reboot game; ‘F1’ : Change Fullscreen / Window mode; ‘F2’ : Change window size; ‘ F3’ : Toggle Mute mode; ‘F4’ : Toggle Negaposi mode (Reverse the screen color); ‘ F5’ : Toggle Motion blur mode; ‘ G’ : Display Collision Area; ‘ L’ : Display Enemy's Life Gauge; ‘ B’ : Apply Motion blur while holding key.
It plays Windowed or full-screen in XP, Vista and Win 7. The graphics and sound are rather more basic for the first two levels but you should love the graphics from level 3 on! The game has an English manual and English menus.
It’s a great shooter, with an interestingly different premise, and don’t worry, it shouldn’t take you too long to clear the first two levels! From level 3 on, it really is a very most excellent space shooter!
Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_ardYbBvrc
Download http://www.tatsuya-koyama.com/software/wg002_genetos_eng.html
