[Skrybe]

Today's Lost Levels Virtual Console Alternative is the unreleased game Titan Warriors, from Capcom.



Titan Warriors is the spiritual successor to Capcom's very first game, Vulgus, an endlessly looping shooter released in arcades in 1984. Titan Warriors borrows Vulgus' title villain, placing it in a more traditional shooter, with distinct stages broken up by boss fights.



Capcom managed to hit a lot of the typical shooter clichés, not the least of these being the obligatory organic stage. However, there's still a good amount of originality in the game. One of my favorite touches is the incubating alien embryo that's found in a couple of the stages. While it's easy to destroy just enough of the incubator to get around it, if it isn't destroyed entirely, the mature alien will appear in the following stage, replacing the regular stage boss.



Longtime Capcom fans may notice something very familiar about Titan Warriors' soundtrack. The music was composed by "Mrs. Tarumi", who also wrote the soundtrack for NES games such as Bionic Commando and Strider. The similarity in musical styles between Titan Warriors and several of Capcom's early NES titles is immediately obvious.



And, hardcore (read: masochistic) shooter fans will be pleased to know that Capcom had them in mind when designing the game. After beating the game the first time, a second loop starts, this time with the difficulty turned way up.

Download Titan Warriors here. The NSF, ripped by Chris Covell, is available here.

[Skrybe]

As a side note, Vulgus was released as freeware by Capcom a few years back. The download link on the official page is dead, but you can get the game here.

[kap]

If there's any game that should somehow, someday have it's story told, it's this one.

[TheRedEye]

What makes you say that? The story is probably "We converted the game, added some new material, and decided that the market wouldn't support it, so it was never published."

[kap]

That's what I was thinking too, but it would sound really good when embellished :P

[handofg0d]

Pretty fun. It held my attention for a good bit. It's kind of sluggish though, and no rapid fire by default seems like a silly idea. As far as the origins of the cart, did it appear to be a 'final' copy for review that got shelved, or more like a beta? It's pretty complete but again could have used some more polishing. Pretty good artwork for a shmup.

[Smeg]

The Bionic Commando music was composed by "Gondamin", not Misses Tarumi - unless Gondamin is Misses Tarumi.

[TheRedEye]

All I know is that it's gotta be whoever composed Mega Man 3.

[Skrybe]

Chris said earlier:

[iamstillhiro1112]

I was wondering why these were being released here instead of the main site. They need an interesting story behind their development. Regardless, it's good to see more unreleased games coming to light.

[Smeg]

[TheRedEye]

[iamstillhiro1112]

I wasn't saying there was an interesting story. But I was wondering why these weren't released on the main site instead. It's because the main site is only for games with an interesting backstory.

[ProgrammingAce]

[kap]

[TheRedEye]

Yeah, the idea behind the VC Alternatives is to just quickly give out all the stuff we have that we don't have the time or energy to create real content for. We all have day jobs, some of them involving video games, so it's hard to come home and research something compelling for Lost Levels instead of cracking open a beer and watching a movie or something.

[AlabasterGothe]

I'm gonna have to try this out. I can't resist playing through that alien embryo level, thanks for the download.

[Akumu]

Skrybe's site seems to be down, the game link nor the screenshots works

[Skrybe]

You're the second person that's said that in the past day. Everything looks fine here, is it still not showing up for you?

[handofg0d]

Works fine for me. Cleared out my cache just to be sure.