Ten thousand billions points is the lowest score in the default ranking.

User Rating: 7.9 | Yokushin: Giga Wing Generations PS2
There is something about vertical shooters... I can't really say what, but they hit my sweet spot. It may be the ability to pick them up immediately, the easy yet hard gameplay, or even the fancy colors raining from above the screen. Well, that said, there is shooter and shooter. At times you'll have fun, and other times you won't be so lucky. For Yokushin: Gigawing Generations it's the former case, although with results that, at times, can strike as disappointing.

As far as I know, this game was never released in USA, so I guess you're out of luck. I found this little CD-Rom case in the bargain bin of a supermarket... not exactly the best place to find hidden gems. I say CD-Rom because this is one of the few PS2 games NOT using a DVD-Rom (which is what led to my decision of buying it, for reasons that anyone who has experienced the darkness of "Disc Read Error" can probably understand). I think it's a porting of an arcade game of the same name, released by Taito in Japan, and probably part of a series. And that's pretty much all I know, because I'm too lazy to gather more data about it.

I'll start my review talking about the gameplay. As usual. Uhm, since pretty much everyone here should have seen at least one vertical shooter in their life, there is not much more to say. It's got airplanes, huge enemy ships, smaller enemy ships, and lots of bullets, way more than the usual game of this kind, making it a tad bit harder than one would expect. You get to choose between four planes, with firepower different enough to actually make the difference through the story mode. As usual, enemies shot down will release points and power-ups. You can also use bombs to clear the screen from all enemies (a given), and a special devices called Reflect Screen, which allows to eflect enemy attacks for a short peiod of time, and even send them back to the attacker. The device recharges quickly, allowing you to use it very often. It's not a bad thing, though, because the game would be darn difficult without it. There are eight difficulty levels, for the more experienced players, and while the Arcade Mode can be completed very quickly, if you don't use any "Continue" it becomes a different story altogether.

Technically, the game isn't that good. The models appear very rough, and while the bullets have various nice shades of colors, the textures for planes and enemies are below average. I understand, though, since this is no more than an arcade conversion. What I don't understand is the framerate, which can get very bad in some situations. Of course, this doesn't make the game unplayable in any way, but it's irritating. The game offers you two screen sizes to choose between: original and arcade. The original one covers most of the screen, while the arcade one is about one half in width, and makes the game very hard to play. The sound is pretty standard stuff, and the musics are forgettable, but not bad.

The scoring system, though, deserves a paragraph of its own. I have a knack for writing reviews of generally unknown, or very old, titles, and this one makes no exception... but what actually brought me to write a review for this game was the scoring system. It's downright ludicrous. When you destroy a small enemy plane, you get ten millions points. Uh, what? And after completing just the first stage, I was at 3 millions billions points. Yep, ludicrous. Maybe that's one of the reasons why I like this game, I have a weakness for extremely high scores. Considering this went for E10 (about $12) I think I have made a good choice. It's not a bad game per se, and it gives a nice challenge. If you want to see the highest scores ever in a game, go and buy it. If you want a nice vertical shooter, you can buy it, especially considering the price tag. But remember that your only hope would be importing it from Japan or Europe.