Rapid-fire legend Takahashi Meijin’s StarGagnant shmup arrives in May

Regista and Takahashi Meijin have announced that vertical scrolling shoot’em up StarGagnant will be released on the Nintendo Switch in Japan on May 25. The game will support English, Japanese, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Takahashi Meijin is a former employee of Hudson Soft who currently works with companies like MAGES. Since the Famicom era, he has championed the shmup genre, and became well-known at the time for his rapid button pressing speed that allowed him to fire 16 shots per second.

In addition to announcing that development on StarGagnant was complete and its release date, Takahashi also revealed some gameplay details. A major feature of the game is the “SPECIAL Attack” system, which alters the power of your shots depending on how rapidly you press the button. This system encourages players to adjust their firing speed in response to the current situation and was devised during discussions between Takahashi and development staff member Terarin.

The game includes a seven-stage ARCADE mode; a CARAVAN mode, where you aim for high-scores within a two-minute time limit; and a CHALLENGE mode, where your skills are judged based on various criteria. All three modes support local and online leaderboards. There is one more mode called RAPID FIRE, in which up to four players compete to see who has the highest button pressing speed.

StarGagnant was developed by Regista, based on a concept born from Takahashi’s desire to create “a retro-style, rapid-fire shmup that anyone can enjoy.” Regista is a game developer that has created titles in a variety of genres, including escape games. It also has experience working on shmup games such as Moon Dancer, RagingBlasters, and MissileDancer.

Furthermore, Takahashi mentioned on his personal blog that the crowdfunding campaign held for the game last year raised a total of 2.25 million yen (around $16,800), which is more than double the 1 million yen (around $7,400) that they were seeking. He plans to reveal even more StarGagnant gameplay details on his blog in the future.

The official site for StarGagnant can be found here.

Written by. Marco Farinaccia based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2023-04-27 12:33 JST)