Truxton is back! The last release in the series, Truxton II (aka Tatsujin Oh! in Japan) was only released a few years ago…in 1992. Ok, fine, that was 34 years ago and only hardcore shmup fans and older players remember it at all. The original Truxton game was released in the late 80s for arcades, the Genesis, and the PC Engine. It was an obscure Toaplan vertical shooter that was particularly fun with some excellent sprite-based graphics. The sequel, Truxton II, had a limited arcade presence and only a single Japanese console release on the FM Towns Marty. But even with that tiny gaming footprint, the series made a mark.
Now it’s time for a whole new generation to play Truxton with the release of Truxton Extreme from developer Tatsujin Co. Ltd. and publisher Clear River Games! This is a whole new approach to the series, creating a complex backstory and multiple different modes for a much more involved experience. When you load up the game, the first thing you’re going to discover is that there are a number of options available here. There are four different gameplay modes: Heart Starter, Story mode, Team mode, and Arcade Mode as well as a dedicated Extras menu. Let’s take a look at Story mode first since that’s the main focus of the game.
In Story Mode, you’ll get the full backstory of Tatsujin Extreme. Aliens have attacked and you’re a tatsujin pilot, chosen as an elete warrior to pilot specialized spaceships in order to drive off and destroy the invasion. Throughout the course of the game, you’ll play three different tatsujin pilots, Ash, Bergamot, and Cyrilla and while you’ll play the same stages with each, they all have different stories. The game starts with only Ash’s story unlocked and as you complete episodes, you will unlock the other two characters’ stories chapter by chapter, replaying stages to move further in each story. The plot is laid out in motion comic form with strong artwork and a surprisingly detailed and emotional story for each character, adding depth and interest to what might otherwise be a fairly run-of-the-mill shmup experience. You can replay any of the motion comics in the extras menu at any time too, in case you’ve taken a break and come back to play later on.
Story Mode is a hell of a grind too. The eight stages in Truxton Extreme are long and gruelling and you’ll end up playing over and over to get the hang of the memorization, only to get taken out at a key moment. Each time you take a hit, you die and return to a previous checkpoint, interrupting your gameplay flow and forcing you to fight through potentially deadly swarms of enemies again. Fortunately, your strength and speed are only partially reduced when you die and you don’t lose your all your accumulated bombs either, but it’s still frustrating to lose your momentum and build it up again. Enemies are static, so once you’ve memorized their patterns, they always come in the same way, but their bullets target you so you’ll have to learn positions to bait their shots to prep for each wave, standard shmup player stuff.
There are multiple types of powerups in Truxton Extreme as well. You start out with the standard Power Shot, and there are four other types of shots available, the Tatsujin Shot (green and focused forward), the Thunder Laser (blue lighting in a spread pattern that locks onto enemies), the Homing Shot (white bullets that seek all enemies on screen), and The Star-Mine Shot which explodes when hitting enemy ships. Naturally you’ll get standard bombs that wipe out enemies and all bullets in your way as well. The bombs have the traditional exploding skull motif of the Truxton series too, a neat homage to previous game designs. Each type of shot can be powered up to multiple levels of strength as well. Colleting three P powerups boosts the power of a shot by one level until you max it out at stage 3. By then you’re essentially an unstoppable killing machine but a single hit will still take you down. You’ll also collect speed powerups that can adjust your abysmal starting speed up to five different levels which you can select once they are activated. Usually speed 4 felt right when we played through but your mileage may vary and different stages have different level designs that may require you to change speeds.
The final key mechanic which is new to Truxton is EX mode. Holding down the EX fire button is basically an alternate firing mode for all types of shots, creating a focused blast of fire that does extra damage to enemies. You have to kill enemies with your regular shot to build up the EX bar and then you can drain it by holding down the EX shot button. Not only does this do a lot of damage, but much as in some Cave games, killing enemies with the EX Shot creates bonus coins that are automatically collected, cranking your score up rapidly. Score enough points and you might even get an extra life…and you’ll need it. After completing a stage, the game takes you through a score synopsis of your performance and then you read the next comic story segment and go back to the stage selection menu where you can choose any unlocked stage to play next. There’s no requirement that you play the next level, but you won’t unlock new stages unless you do.
Heartstarter is the next mode, and it’s basically easy mode for the game, but there are some big caveats there. You can only play the first stage and the difficulty is significantly lower which means you don’t get used to enemy attack patterns and it really isn’t challenging. The main game is a big step up and it’s weird that this mode is even included with a single stage. There are no formal difficulty settings for Truxton Extreme and this is the only easy play you’re going to get. There is also a Team mode which allows you to play two-player simultaneous and share bombs to save damaged allies which we didn’t spend much time with as it’s important to have similarly skilled players to get anywhere, an Arcade mode, and a lot of unlockable content including some surprises that will definitely catch you off guard.
There are several other modes as well. The first of these is Arena mode which unlocks after a certain amount of play in Arcade mode. It’s basically a two minute time attack mode if that’s your thing. You can set the lives to infinite or a single life or whatever you want and then just play until the timer runs out. It’s fine, but nothing special. Then there’s training mode, which is also unlocked after play. It allows you to practice certain stages of levels once you’ve unlocked them and set the parameters for the stage so you can get the hang of individual portions to get better at the overall game. Finally there’s Arcade mode itself, which is essentially the third level of difficulty in Truxton Extreme. Enemies are very slightly faster and have more challenging bullet patterns. The tricks you learned in Story mode won’t cut it here and you’re going to feel like you’re learning the game all over again. It’s precise, it’s difficult, and it’s probably going to be the go-to mode for hardcore players.
That’s a lot, right? But what’s weird about Truxton Extreme isn’t the complex modes, the scoring mechanics, or the beautiful visuals. It’s the level design. Truxton Extreme’s levels are long and challenging, but they’re also weirdly inconsistent. The further we got in each stage, the more it felt like the later portions were only their to drain your resources. Asteroid fields in the first stage going on and and on when it feels like you should be at the boss. Swarms of mounted turret enemies in stage 3 where the bullets get denser and denser but you’re doing the exact same thing over and over. This kind of design is frustrating because it doesn’t feel like a natural progression. Stages feel too long in Truxton and then the whole game becomes an exercise in long-form memorization. Combine that with controls that are just a smidge too floaty and you end up working your way through stages only to take a hit at the last second nearing a boss.
Speaking of bosses, they’re also a bit too variable in Truxton Extreme. The Stage 1 boss in story mode has attacks that are so fast and unexpected that there’s almost no way to dodge them besides bombing. Even in Heartstarter mode, his attacks are a bit fast, but on story and arcade, the level design and enemy patterns simply don’t warm you up for the sudden burst of bullet hell that you abruptly have to dodge. Other bosses have similar issues, forcing you to resort to bomb spamming to survive, something that takes away from that feeling of achievement that you want to get out of a shmup. That’s not to say you can’t no-miss a stage…we managed it with the first two stages after some practice, but the whole game is going to take a lot of practice, even with the static enemy attacks. A couple seem a bit easier than they should too, but perhaps that was just being in the groove so to speak.
While the game might be rather challenging and frustrating at times, Truxton Extreme is a beautiful game too. Enemies, bosses, and especially backgrounds are spectacular and the comic art is excellent. You can check out all the 3D models in detail in extra mode as well, which is pretty cool. There’s a weird little hiccup in the scrolling in Stage 1 that’s almost nausea inducing if you’re focused, but aside from that, the game is beautiful from start to finish. The sound is another story though. The soundtrack for Truxton Extreme is definitely sub-par with some rather irritating tunes in some stages that you honestly just want to shut off entirely. This is one of the least exciting soundtracks for a shmup in a long time and that’s definitely rather disappointing.
Truxton Extreme is an interesting game that has a lot of options but can be frustrating as much of the game is locked behind skill walls. It’s hard to get better at the game without practice but a lot of access is locked, forcing you to get better and you can’t credit feed it to practice like a regular arcade shmup. Instead, you’ll just have to struggle until you succeed and the difficulty might be off-putting to some players. More advanced shmup players will find the challenge interesting and the EX scoring is a neat addition to the series, but Truxton Extreme doesn’t have the speed or excitement of a Raizing or Cave shmup. It’s a methodical marathon of a game that will give you plenty of hours of gameplay and some interesting options however, and at only $25 on the Switch 2, it’s definitely worth your time to check out!
This review is based on a digital copy of Truxton Extreme provided by the publisher. It was played on a Switch 2 in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well in both (though it’s hard to see on a portable screen). Truxton Extreme is also available for PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC on Steam.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.