A crazy fun
2D shooter for
Nintendo 64 and
Dreamcast made by
Treasure. The plot is typical Treasure hokum just to give a quick justificati It is the adventure of siblings Riki and Mami Masaki as they use their father's
mech, the Bangaio, save
Dan Star from the
SF Kosmo Gang and their illegal fruit trade. Everywhere they go, Riki and Mami will flatten Gangsters and innocent bystanders alike.
Anyway, the gameplay is somewhat like
Smash TV, with independent 360 degree movement and shooting, but with the
Y axis representing up and down instead of north and south. Another difference is that Bangaio has Riki mode, who fires homing missiles, and Mami mode, who fires bouncing lasers. Riki is best for open areas while Mami is best for tight spaces. The biggest difference is that the player can launch anywhere from 40 to 400 missiles or lasers in all directions when surrounded by the enemies' bullets and missiles. The more they shoot at you, the more you can shoot back.
To get score, you need to destroy enemy vehicles and collect the fruit they leave behind. The weird and cool thing about this is that the game counts how many explosions there are onscreen. The more explosions, the more tasty and valuable are the fruit that the enemies leave behind. So to score high, you not only must destroy lots of enemies, but you must destroy lots of enemies simultaneously, and do so by waiting for them to shoot first.
Despite being 2D and using only 2 layers of
paralax, Bangaio can pull even the Dreamcast below 10 frames per second by putting over 1000 sprites onscreen. One fun thing you can do with Bangaio is turn it into a fireworks display! Make yourself invincible by entering your name as 3
groundhogs, go to options to make the adjustment, go to an open and heavily populated area like
Level 23 - It's raining robots! Did you bring your umbrella? or
Level 25 - Shadow Battle. The Dark Reflection., then just let a screenful of enemies pile up around you. There will be so many baddies and bullets that you can do several 400-missile blasts, guaranteeing dozens of
watermelons (the best fruit in the game) and a very pretty fireworks display.
The game's full name is
Bakuretsu Muteki Bangaioh, which means Explosion Invincible Bangaio.