Well, this surely contains Action Love which is basically Action Game Skills Test, Shmup Skills Test, CombatZeal and Pengo. For Shmup Skills Test, it is redone for the 4:3 horizontal orientation and there are newer stages and replaced ones. Perhaps, this re-change is suited for the 4:3 horizontal orientation instead of the original resolution as well as 4 player support. Also, the soundtrack is redone with additional stuffs for Shmup Skills Test such as the 8-Bit stage clear BGM for example as well as the new Game Over BGM. There are more of these from the overall game soundtrack to find out once the soundtrack CD is out at the end of this month. Pengo on the other hand, it is redone by Triangle Service because we can recognize the sound effects as well as the famous phrases of the respective loves for games and game genres.
It’s a shame that the Skills Test games are probably the best due to enough old-school fun of button-mashing as well as to tackle those enemies in old-school form. We surely had fun button-mashing the buttons in some of the stages in Shmup Skills Test and my favorite stages in that game are, the one where you shoot off the meteors without running into them, the one where you shoot off the flippers from Xevious, the one where you shoot off the boss after its core lights up and the 8-Bit stage. For the one where you shoot the boss quickly before it forms, it is the reference to Star Force and Star Soldier where you have to quickly shoot any boss piece before all the pieces form to get the bonus but try not to run into any one of these because it’s a waste of a life. Be extra careful not to shoot the boss before its core lights up in that stage or it’ll be hard to destroy it because the health points may be somewhat multiplied. If the pieces form a whole boss, that’s it, you may have wasted a special bonus for not being quick and you’ll have to destroy the boss to move on. Larios and Lazaros are the famous ones but the way they form by pieces may be different. Perhaps, you’ll need Takahashi Meijin’s skills for Shmup Skills Test to see how suitable you are at this genre. For me, I don’t play action games probably a lot but this old-school style skills test game may be for you if you like those old-school game genres.
