Ikaruga has reached a legendary status by now. A vertical shmup with a heavy focus on chaining mechanics and a polarity that makes you immune to bullets of the opposite color, the game is almost a choreography of precise and demanding memorization on top of dodging skills.

It's not for everyone, granted, but you can still try to clear it on Easy to get a taste of the experience and behold at the reflexes, memory and precision required to clear the higher difficulties and at the score ranks required to unlock all the achievements. (Basically, perfect stage chains, no deaths and more.)

Sober in design and definitely a bit less spectacular than its predecessor (Radiant Silvergun), it's still a crowning jewel in the shmup pantheon, despite all the internal memes and jokes about it. (Kudos to that Pro Ikaruga review, a precursor of Civvie11).

Anyway, on the technical side the game runs perfectly fine although I did hear mentions of input lag or a few not ideal bits but at least it sounds, plays and looks great. Comes with a host of extras and incredibly awesome wallpapers and more. There is a reason Ikaruga has been my one and only avatar since I created my Steam account and wouldn't you imagine my joy when it released here on Steam!

Now, unfortunately Treasure seems to be pretty silent about their latest game in development (codename Ubusuna) and the lack of a proper Radiant Silvergun release on PC is also a sour spot so my only hope is that in coming years we eventually see it arriving.

Shmups are almost always like fine wine as most of them, heck, even those with a checkpoint system, still play fine. It's just we get older and our reflexes ain't the same so at least I hope they arrive before I can't play anymore of the genre.

In short, as the original review stated: MAX CHAIN, MAX CHAIN, MAX CHAIN 100/100

Buy it full price, on a sale, you name it, but BUY IT. Let's show Treasure or whoever is still left there we want the others. Heck, a Gunstar Heroes remaster wouldn't hurt either!