Ghost Blade
Title screen
| Developer: | HuCast |
|---|---|
| Music: | Rafael Dyll |
| Program: | Daniel Lancha |
| Art: | René Hellwig |
| Release date: | 2015 |
| Previous game: | Previous game of the developer |
| Next game: | Next game of the developer |
Contents
General Information
Ghost Blade was developed and independently published for Sega Dreamcast in 2015 by german developer HuCast. In 2017 a remastered Version of the game was released for Nintendo Wii U, Playstation 4, Xbox One and Steam, under the name of Ghost Blade HD. The new version of the game featured HD-graphics, higher difficulty, a time attack mode and technical fixes. The Dreamcast Version was re-released in 2017 and 2018 by JoshProd.
Story
The Artificial Intelligence „Shira“, once created to protect the inhabitants of Mars, runs wild and attacks the colonies. The Earth Defense Force (EDF) is capable of defending Mars and push Shira back into outer space. Shira now hijacks an abandoned space station and the EDF sends out its pilots to chase and defeat it once and for all.
Gameplay Overview
Ghost Blade is a vertical scrolling manic shoot-em-up with 5 stages and 5 bosses. The players ship has a spread shot and a focus shot. The spread shot starts narrow but can be upgraded by collecting weapon power-ups. The focus shot can be used to navigate more precisely through the bullet patterns. The player can also use a bomb to clear the screen from bullets. In the Dreamcast version the bomb effect is a swiping firewall starting from the bottom of the screen, going up and in the HD version the bomb has a round shape and effects only the area around the center from where the bomb has been dropped. Bombs can be restocked by collecting tech-orbs to fill the bomb gauge. When the gauge is full the player gets an additional bomb.
Extends can be achieved by scoring or be picked up as extra life in certain spots of some stages.
Both versions have a practice mode.
Both versions feature a local coop mode.
The HD-Version has a score-attack mode.
Controls
Ghost Blade is a 3-button-game and the button layouts vary depending on the system.
- A: Shot
- B: Focus shot
- C: Bomb
Ships/Characters
- Ghost Blade Spectre (Stella): Spread/Focus shot; Speed 3
- Rekka Unit-1 (Rica): Wide/Focus shot; Speed 3
- Milan V1 (Mimi): Narrow shot; Speed 4
Difficulty Setting
- Dreamcast version: novice mode and normal mode.
- HD version: easy, normal and hard difficulty.
Items
- Medals: adds to the score and the end-of-stage-bonus
- Gold: adds to the score and the end-of-stage-bonus
- Power-up: upgrades the ships weapon and increases firepower
- Tech-orb: fills the bomb gauge and adds to the end-of-stage-bonus
- Extralife: gains the player one extra life
Scoring/Strategy
Defeated enemies drop medals or gold, that can be collected for score.
The combo-multiplier rises as long as the player keeps destroying enemies or enemy parts. It starts slowly counting down, when no enemies are destroyed. If the player gets hit, the combo resets to 0.
At the end of each stage the player gets a special bonus for collected medals, collected tech orbs, maximum combo, remaining lives, collected gold (HD only) and remaining bomb stock (HD only).
Bosses have destroyable parts, so killing them piece by pieces gets the player extra points.
Version Differences
The Dreamcast version was met with criticism by the Dreamcast and shooting game communities for being too easy and for technical issues, mostly caused by the technical limitations of the console. So the HD version was remastered in several points to improve the gaming experience.
- Difficulty Settings: The HD version has easy, normal and hard difficulty, the Dreamcast version only novice and normal
- Bomb: The bomb in the Dreamcast version is a screen clearing firewall, in HD the bomb has an area of effect around the centre.
- End-of-stage-bonus: the end of stage bonus for collected gold and remaining bomb stock are only available in the HD version.
- Bullet patterns: the HD version has remastered and more difficult bullet patterns
- Score-attack mode: Only available in HD version
Gallery
See (Template Page)/Gallery for our collection of images and scans for the game.
References & Contributors
