Developer: Naxat Soft Publisher: Naxat Soft Release: 09/28/90 Genre: Shooter
Video games have always fallen through the cracks. These days the number of games that release daily borders on insanity and it is impossible to keep up. There are worse problems to have than being spoiled for choice. But even back in the day when new releases were slower some games go unnoticed. W Ring: the Double Ring is an import only PC Engine shooter that flew under the radar. It did not garner much attention at release and is still unknown even today. W Ring is a bit derivative it is still good for an afternoon of fun.
The controls in W Ring are simple. One button fires and the other controls speed. This simplicity extends to the weapon system. By default you have a rapid fire cannon and missiles. Enemy drones carry a power-up that cycle through the five colored weapons available. Blue is your standard laser and the most powerful. Red grants orbs that look like options from Gradius. However rather than supplement your attacks they act as mobile shields. Pink is a spread shot while green is a ripple laser. Orange is homing missiles and a more powerful regular shot. These power up three times which is easy as the items are plentiful. Hidden in every level is a (?) block that will further alter each weapon. Empowered red orbs will shoot balls that bounce off walls and destroy bullets and enemies alike. This item is hard to find but generally worth it.
The Double Rings in the title refer to the rings that rotate around your ship once you pick up a weapon. These rings both power your weapons and can deflect bullets. As cool as that sounds the exact mechanics of doing so are a mystery. My best guess is that it is all about positioning. More than likely there are specific spots on the ring that will absorb bullets. But since the rings are always in constant motion timing it comes down to luck. The sound effect when a bullet bounces off the ring is satisfying but consider it a happy accident whenever it occurs rather than a reliable mechanic. It is a shame that there is no consistent with the mechanic as it could have been a defining feature of the game.
W Ring wastes no time with any kind of story to give context to your journey. All you need to know is that you are on an intergalactic journey to protect Earth from some unknown threat. The planet hopping means the game has a lot of variety on offer from one level to the next. The journey begins on the lush greens of the planet Saturn. Stage three takes place on Neptune and features waterfalls that obscure enemies and bullets. It is frustrating but damn is it picturesque. The H.R. Geiger like enemies and scenery of stage two represent Uranus. Seeing as we’ve never landed on its surface who is to say that is artistic license? From there the game devolves into a series of mechanical themed environments that lose the visual creativity but up the action.
For as much as I like the game I cannot ignore the fact that it takes many cues from Gradius. Aside from its weapons being taken straight from Konami’s series some of the stages are near identical. Stage five is a high speed that might as well have been pulled from Gradius III. Even the minibosses and end stage boss look like similar to enemies from that game. I like the art direction of Uranus but in practice it is a Moai stage without the famous Easter Island statues. The EX routes could have differentiated them further but I do not blame the designers for doing that much work. While the game is derivative if you are going to copy at least copy from the best.
On the default setting W Ring is very easy. While bullet deflection can feel random even without it the game is easy to manage. So long as you have one weapon you can survive two hits before death. With the frequency of weapon drops chances you will rarely have to worry about that. The laser is seriously overpowered; at max power it covers a good portion of the screen and kills most things in one hit. With the right weapon some bosses die in seconds which is insane. Stage six is the one challenging area. Stage six is very long and chaotic with less item drops. The conclusion leads into stage x, the final level. Here there are no weapons at all and if you die you must complete level six again. But even mentioning this it is not exceptionally difficult, the spike merely comes out of left field.
In Closing
W Ring: the Double Ring is another strong shooter for the Turbo Grafx. At this point I sound like a robot as I repeat this same epithet repeatedly. But I will never tire of speaking the truth. Had NEC handled the system’s rollout in the US better maybe it would have released here. It should have been released in the US; I cannot believe someone thought crap like Cyber Core and Deep Blue were better choices than a quality game like this. I can only imagine what could have been.
