Pulstar / Blazing Star relationship

[Yoshi]

All right. I had always believed that Blazing Star was the sequel to Pulstar, which was a quazi-sequel to R-Type. I understand that Aicom, the team that developed Pulstar, was made up of former Irem employees. I am not sure where Yumekobo, the development house responsible for Blazing Star and Prehistoric Isle 2, comes in. Is there truly a relationship between Pulstar and Blazing Star, or is it only a coincidence that they both have "Star" in the title?

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It's not easy being green...

 

[Iori]

the girl running in the pulstar intro (someone here uses it as a sig) is also in blazing star. That's all I know

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[sadoanarcho]

Pulstar and BlazingStar have the same script on the title screen. Also the ship of Pulstar (I think it's called Dino something) is available in BlazingStar.
BlazingStar is a modern shootemup (skill is only needed if you go for points), while Pulstar is damn hard to finish (which is much harder to design). It's obvious that the designers of Pulstar are more talented and spent more time in producing their game.
I like BlazingStar, I love Pulstar.

 

[RyoGeo]

Um...the only thing harder about Pulstar is that it restarts you at a prior point whenever you die and you loose ALL of your power ups as opposed to just one level of power. That seems like a pretty simple way to inject some difficulty to me. Not so sure about "...much harder to design."

I do think Pulstar is marginally harder in terms of pure game play, but once you remove the restart/no power up death model, Pulstar shouldn't be much harder than Blazing Star at all.

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-RyoGeo

 

[djbomberman]

I believe that Blazing Star IS the sequel to Pulstar. Yumekobo just produced the sequel to it. Kinda like Contra and the other company picking it up and making a sequel to it.(Not the best example but you get my point.) Actually kinda like Metal Slug. Nazca made the first one and then SNK made the Sequels. I think Blazing Star sounds better than Pulstar 2:easier than the first one....

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---GROOVY!!!---

 

[Yoshi]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by djbomberman:
I believe that Blazing Star IS the sequel to Pulstar. Yumekobo just produced the sequel to it. Kinda like Contra and the other company picking it up and making a sequel to it.(Not the best example but you get my point.) Actually kinda like Metal Slug. Nazca made the first one and then SNK made the Sequels. I think Blazing Star sounds better than Pulstar 2:easier than the first one....

Oh God! You had to remind me of the horror that was the Appaloosa Contra sequels on PlayStation. I need to go go scrub myself with lava soap now...



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It's not easy being green...

 

[RabbitTroop]

Actually, it is worth mentioning that Prehistoric Isle 2 is even easier then Blazing Star! If you keep Pulstar on it's default settings I can get to level three... then die, and that's it... once you die you can never get up enough power to continue the mission... and the game is over... no reason to Continue... You call this good game design? I walk away from the machine after I put in 50 cents. Blazing Star I sit in front of until I am done... maybe it is $2.00 later, but I feel accomplished like I can actually beat the thing. See I don't agree with the majority, I bought Pulstar... played it for about a week. Shelved it as a dud... pulled it out later and wanted to like it... shelved it after a day and put Aerofighters 3 in. I do not think the difficulty in Pulstar is due to good game design, I actually believe the opposite. For me I like Blazing Star, you can be as cheap as you want in a shooting game, but you better not make me go back and face that same problem over and over again or I am walking.... just my two cents.

-Nick

 

[RyoGeo]

Well put, nruva. Taking my ship, moving it back in the level and removing ALL of my weapons that matter is not genius game design. It is a way to squeeze longevity out of a level design that is actually fairly short. Pulstar is more or less no harder than Blazing Star once this punishment is removed. I would probably still be struggling with Blazing Star if I had to start from scratch EVERY time I died. That sounds like fun.

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-RyoGeo

 

[Bobak!]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by nruva:
Actually, it is worth mentioning that Prehistoric Isle 2 is even easier then Blazing Star! If you keep Pulstar on it's default settings I can get to level three... then die, and that's it... once you die you can never get up enough power to continue the mission... and the game is over... no reason to Continue... You call this good game design? I walk away from the machine after I put in 50 cents. Blazing Star I sit in front of until I am done... maybe it is $2.00 later, but I feel accomplished like I can actually beat the thing. See I don't agree with the majority, I bought Pulstar... played it for about a week. Shelved it as a dud... pulled it out later and wanted to like it... shelved it after a day and put Aerofighters 3 in. I do not think the difficulty in Pulstar is due to good game design, I actually believe the opposite. For me I like Blazing Star, you can be as cheap as you want in a shooting game, but you better not make me go back and face that same problem over and over again or I am walking.... just my two cents.

-Nick

I had the exact same issues with Pulstar. Whats the point of cranking up the difficulty if you can't really get anywhere? Arcade games are supposed to pump you for money, not piss you off after a few credits.


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Bobak!

You can also see me in the classic SNK game, "Guerrilla War" (known in Japan as "Guevara")

 

[Neo Bomber Man]

This just keeps getting more confusing for me. I eventually concluded that Aicom must have been either swallowed up by Yumekobo, of whom I had never previously to Blazing Star heard, or Aicom metamorphosed into Yumekobo. I think the two games are pseudo sequels or something, for the Pulstar ship & pilot being in Balzing Star.

In 1997, there was a game in development called Pulstar 2, re-named Pulstar Blast, with SNK claimed as the company responsible. The game got pushed into 1998, and I'm guessing that Blazing Star is the result, since I don't have enough documentation to track this fully, and there seems for the moment to be no other explanation. Kind of made me wonder about the relationship between SNK & Yumekobo (partial ownership?), also since Yumekobo was responsible for Prehistoric Isle 2, the original being by SNK, as well as some Pocket games by Yumekobo which I believe were of SNK/Nazca origin. Well, I don't think I've accomplished anything with this post, but perhaps someone else can enlighten us. They're both superb games, though I sort of like Pulstar more for the simple fact of being an atypical shooter with the checkpoint system.

 

[Big Bruno]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by RyoGeo:
Um...the only thing harder about Pulstar is that it restarts you at a prior point whenever you die and you loose ALL of your power ups as opposed to just one level of power. That seems like a pretty simple way to inject some difficulty to me. Not so sure about "...much harder to design."

I do think Pulstar is marginally harder in terms of pure game play, but once you remove the restart/no power up death model, Pulstar shouldn't be much harder than Blazing Star at all.

well on the cd version there is a code for full power that you execute when you are still flashing after you revive from a death.
you press up,up,down,down,left,right,"A", "B" I think you may not need the "B" at the end but I don't remember.

at any rate one thing about pulstar is there are patterns to be found with each boss and level. The design of the levels and boss are also much better IMO then blazing stars.

Blazing stars is more of a straight foward shoot and go. and come on a screaming morphing baby as an endboss??? I still have not gotten over that one.

 

[sadoanarcho]

You guys are too weak. I played Pulstar for MANY hours and I know what I'm talking about. I got through every passage with no item from a scene before. If you can't manage this, that's your problem. Designing a game which is wicked hard but always fair is a damn hard thing to do (and there are very few of those games).

 

[RabbitTroop]

Well, I guess we disagree then, I play a lot of shooters as well, but I don't think Pulstar is anything but cheap half the time... if you or others love it, I don't want to step on toes, it just isn't my type of game.

-Nick

 

[Bobak!]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by nruva:
I don't want to step on toes,

-Nick

OWW!

Grrr... I was wearing Sandles!
I'll Kick your ass!

 

[Neo Rasa]

Blazing Star is a follow up/side story to Pulstar the same way Waku Waku 7 is to Galaxy Fight or Contra Force to Contra. Aicom, Yumekobo, Garapagos (defunct?), and Nazca are extremely small second party companies that are pretty much programming teams within SNK, sort of like how 989 Studios, Psygnosis, etc. are all basically Sony inhouse developers.

The most obvious Pulstar/Blazing Star connection besides the original woman+ship being available should be how the first form of the final boss of Blazing Star shares the same look/pattern, music, and even the same hurt/attack voice sample as the first level boss from Pulstar.

Edit...

I think Aicom no longer exists and that they ARE Yumekobo now, but I'm not sure.

[This message has been edited by Neo Rasa (edited March 27, 2001).]