1988
 l
(Above) Sub-bosses in Truxton liked
to gang up on you in groups,
spraying you with bullets
from point-blank range
(Below) Intricately detailed , if
occasionally rather purple scrolling
backgrounds were a notable
feature of the game.
The Japanese release of the
Sega
Megadrive conversion
1992
'Be the king rather than
Expert!!' shouted
the arcade poster for Truxton 2.. I've
no idea what they meant either..
Side pods are cool.
 
Also
from Tsuneki Ikeda, designer of
Truxton/Tatsujin 1&2 is Batsugun
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Truxton
aka Tatsujin
1 & 2: Infamously
unforgiving, these two Toaplan space shooters set
a design template for future vertical shmups like
the Raiden series and a distinctive visual style
that would carry on through from their late 80's
origins into the era of the modern shooter..
 Truxton
was the game in which Toaplan's
graphic designers first developed their
colourful, intricate backgrounds and
characteristic visual style along with the use of
large 'set-piece' bosses which would carry on
through titles like Outzone, V-Five
(aka Grindstormer) and Batsugun, and into later shooters
by ex-Toaplan staff at Cave. It
also featured game mechanics which would, along
with its forebears Twin Cobra and Flying Shark, influence
Seibu, the designers of the Raiden series,
particularly its 3-weapon incremental power up
system. In ways not dissimilar from other early Toaplan
shoot'emups (Flying Shark does indeed spring to
mind) Truxton was notorious for its difficulty.
Featuring an incredibly harsh restart-point
system which put you back several screens if you
died, less-competent players could potentially
find themselves going backwards through
the game substantially should they be killed
several times in a row.
 
Beautiful hand-drawn textured backgrounds in
Truxton,
a definite improvement over Toaplan's earlier
games.
Part
of the reason that Truxton is so radically
different visually from previous Toaplan games
was the desire of the designers to use larger
sprites on-screen for the player, enemies and
bullets. However, this did tend to mean that
conversely the play-field was effectively reduced
in size giving you less scope to avoid
destruction. Truxton often tended to throw
several fairly large enemy ships on screen at
once which then proceeded to pepper you with
large numbers of fast-moving bullets at 45 and 90
degree angles from point blank range.. survival
becoming a matter of whether you could hammer the
fire button quickly enough to destroy them before
falling foul to the inevitable killer barrage.
 
I think these may be the only Truxton bosses I'm
familiar with to any degree, the one on
the right is a particular bastard and likes
nothing more than decend down the screen
and proceed to shoot you from a distance of about
half an inch. Note the
smart bomb (left) which has a nice skull graphic
effect at the end
of its animation..unhelpfully not shown here.
Truxton's
power-up system gave you the option to speed up
your ship, change or increase your
weapon/firepower and add to your smart bomb stock
via collection of floating icons. There were
three available weapons in the game, useable only
one at a time. However due to the slow pace of
powering up (requiring the collection of five 'P'
icons for each weapon power increment) two of the
three weapons were less useable than the default
'spreadshot' one. The blue 'lightning
weapon' was practically impossible to
use when not powered up due to its intermittent
and unreliable fire rate and the green
beam laser wasn't much cop as its field
of fire was so limited. Seibu
later took Truxton's weapon/power-up system
almost part and parcel and implemented it in
their own first shooter Raiden,
where the spreadshot became the favoured 'vulcan'
cannon, the lightning weapon became the infamous
'toothpaste' laser and the green
beam weapon became the high damage inducing 'piercing
laser', versions which worked much more
nicely than in the game that had inspired them.
Probably because of its insane difficulty, the
original Truxton was not a game that I got to
know very well at the arcades, but I do remember
seeing the Sega Megadrive
(Genesis) version for the first time at a local
branch of Dixons and being blown away by the
graphics. Being a humble Commodore 64
owner, I'd never seen such incredible visuals in
a home shoot'emup before. The conversion by Sega
was top-notch and captured the arcade original
very well indeed. So I suppose if anything
Truxton's role in introducing me to the 16-bit
console generation was an important one. It's
still a solid game, though you have to be in the
right frame of mind (or masochistic) to play too
much of it in one sitting, if only because as
well as that ridiculous difficulty the lack of
auto-fire and extremely long stages of up to ten
minutes duration are incredibly punishing on your
poor trigger-finger.
However.. after a break of four years Toaplan
released what is arguably their masterpiece in
the vertical shooter genre.. Truxton
2(Oh). Truxton 2 does everything right
that the original did wrong and is a hell of a
lot more fun to boot. Your ship is smaller and no
longer such a bullet magnet, and starts off at a
decent speed instead of the snail-like pace of
the original. Auto-fire has been added (no more
feeling like your hand is about to explode after
boss encounters) and the three in-game weapons
actually work properly and now fire from little
side pods subsidising your main shot weapon,
which is the only one that most people ever
wanted to use in the original Truxton
anyway.
 
Enemies
no longer constantly assault you from point-blank
range (unless you are daft enough to just sit
there underneath them) and the breezy pace of the
levels means that reaching each boss no longer
feels like you've run the shoot'emup equivalent
of a marathon.
 
Two
players can now play simultaneously, and indeed
this is a good way to play as it cuts down
restart point frustration, however restarts here
are a hell of a lot fairer than in the first
game.. none of that going backwards malarkey
here. Now bosses don't pummel you into submission
(or death) in about 6 seconds flat but are
actually beatable with one life (and maybe a bomb
or two). And the graphics.. did I mention those?
They are just flat out gorgeous. I mean.. take a
look at some of these bosses. The art direction
and painstaking graphical detail in Truxton
2 is second to none among Toaplan games
with the possible exception of Outzone. Huge, intricately
designed multi-part bosses are the order of the
day and it's enormous fun trying to take them out
piece by piece.
 
Here we have in six screenshots an array of
nefarious boss types from Truxton 2
ranging from huge mechanical creations to the
Giger-esque final boss
Ultimately though it's the sheer
playability of the game that shines through and
it's a shame we never got any home versions here
in the West (the Japanese FM Towns Marty had a
conversion apparently but who ever managed to get
hold of one of those?) Luckiliy I now have the
arcade PCB and it's one game which I can see
myself playing for a long time. Mike
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