I picked up Infinos Gaiden via Steam’s summer sale. This is a fantastic game, reminiscent of Thunder Force and other 16-32 bit shmups. Via the Proton utility, this works perfectly on my Linux desktop. Not only does fullscreen mode work fine, but this game supports a 4:3 aspect ratio, which is perfect for my monitor and the overall retro feel. I breezed through the first level, then the difficulty picked up quite a bit.
These are scenes from the animated intro.
Here’s the first level. I cleared it without taking a hit on my first try. Pretty easy. The S powerup is for speed, the B is a barrier/shield similar to Gradius and Darius. The colored orbs provide you bits similar to the Craws from Thunder Force. They can also be used as shields.
I’ve seen a lot of newer shmups that just get repetitive, like Eschatos. It’s a fun game, but it’s just the same enemies charging at you over and over again. In the first level of Infinos Gaiden, you will see the city you are defending getting blasted by the invaders’ lasers in the background. As you can see here, there is quite a variety of enemies that come after you, and they aren’t even the final boss.
The second level takes you to a jungle, and you have to have to deal with this giant, walking mecha on your way into the enemy base!
Inside the base, the boss is this big tank. Neat!
Now you’re in a desert, and oh rats! It’s a sand storm.
This badass sandcrawler mecha is the boss of level 3.
Level 4 is so cool. You fly around this giant airship, and then fly into it.
Oh crap! I ran out of credits. So yeah, this game seems to work just fine on my Linux desktop. I just need to press Ctrl+Enter to get it to full-screen mode. What a neat game! With the 32-bit style pixel graphics and music, you’d swear you were playing a Saturn game. Actually, I saw a comment on Steam that the man responsible for this game’s music also did the music to Hyper Duel and Thunder Force V.