Imperishable Night (Tohou Eiyashou) is one in a series of twelve games created by a Japanese developer known as Zen.  Imperishable Night, like the majority of the other games in the series, is a vertical scrolling danmaku shooter.  Danmaku style shooters evolved from games like Raiden and Vapor Trail.  Whereas those games provided challenge through unforgiving penalties upon player death, danmaku style shooters provide challenge through the sheer number of deadly enemy projectiles onscreen.  Danmaku means, translated literally, “bullet curtain”.

     Danmaku games are in the midst of dying the horrible death that all 2d genres seemed destined for, but like the 2d fighters, in their death throes they still struggle for life and scream out to be recognized and resurrected.  The games retain most of their popularity in Japan and just a handful of companies continue to create these challenging and remarkable titles.  Part of the reason that they are dying is the sheer difficulty of the games.  Danmakus require hand eye coordination far exceeding the levels of average video gamers.  Well, that and lots of patience and practice.  Of course, nowadays the average video gamer is anywhere between ages 3 and 100.  Thanks, Nintendo.  Another reason for their lack of popularity is that they still cling to 2d style graphics.  The thing with danmakus, is that they simply are not feasible in the 3d environment.  A simple control field is required to dodge and maintain the absurd number of deadly objects on screen.  Analog control and the 3d camera would hinder the player’s progress to the point of impossibility in the 3d playing field.  And so with all 2d games, comes the great stigma known as “bad graphics”.  To anyone who can appreciate hand drawn art, and a broad color palette, these games are things of beauty far exceeding the 2d games of old.  So many gamers however, simply dismiss any game that is not rendered in 3d with loads of polygons as “bad graphics”.  And so the danmakus are a dying breed.

     However, a keen surfer of the internet will find niches of die-hard danmaku fans, lighting up their own forums with excited fan gushing and assistance to those who would wish to discover this fading genre.  There are even large fan sites created by Americans trying to keep danmakus and other 2d shooters or sh’mups, as they are commonly referred to, from dying out.  And there are a few sites dedicated to helping the non-Japanese speaking gamer delve into the genre by playing the latest and greatest of their kind: the danmakus created by the Japanese developer, Zen, games like Imperishable Night.  These games are collectively known as the Tohou Project, for those interested in googling it, and are published by a company called Team Shanghai Alice.

     One unique characteristic of the Tohou project games as that they are being released for the Windows OS.  While most shooters show up as ports on consoles or in the arcades, Team Shanghai Alice, starting with their sixth game, has been releasing these games for Windows, utilizing the power of the PC to create engaging, unique danmakus.  And they are unique.  While most sh’mups may have one, or even none, unique play mechanic, Tohou games usually have several, making these games true standouts in their genre.  Imperishable Night is one of the finest examples of this.

     Imperishable Night’s story, summed up as briefly as possible, is that an unknown villain has replaced the actual moon with a proxy that can never achieve a full moon status.  The player is in control of a team who is trying to find out who did this and make things right.  While this may sound very odd, I must mention that Tohou games are all set in the same world and have fairly elaborate stories (as sh’mups go)as well as characters from previous games.  But as far as this moon business goes, is that it actually translates to a gameplay mechanic, in which the game’s clock keeps track of time.  You start your journey at 11:00 p.m. and must finish it before 5:00 a.m. or it’s game over.  For every one of the eight stages you pass the game adds an hour.  However, if you collect enough time orbs from enemies you kill, clearing the stage only adds a half an hour.  Continues cost you a half an hour as well.  There are other collectibles as well, including point modifiers and power icons.

      Power icons increase your shot power and at max power (128) the ability to gather all icons on screen by moving toward the top of the screen is gained.  Collecting icons and killing enemies tie directly into another unique game mechanic, where you play as two different characters (switchable on the fly), one human, the other youkai (or spirit person; phantom).  As you kill foes in either forms it pushes your phantom gauge (located bottom left of screen) either towards 100% (phantom side) or towards -100% (human side).  At 80%, pus or negative, you gain extra time orbs for grazing bullets (youkai) or killing enemies (human).  Also, there is a dead zone (plus or minus 30%) where you gain no time orbs.  Some characters have a different range in their gauge but I am not going to get into that. If this sounds complicated, especially for a shooter, it is.  That is what makes Tohou games so good though.

     I mentioned you play as character teams, another unique feature.  There are four teams in this game, giving you effectively eight different characters to choose from.  They are all anime style girls and are hand drawn magnificently.  The bosses are also hand drawn and look great as well.  Characters in the game are colorful and all very different in terms of shot style and power.  The number of characters and unlockable content really make for a high level of replayability.  Of course, all shooters have high replayability as their extreme difficulty and point system begs return play in order to get further or beat your own high score or the scores of the many players who post on the internet.

     Imperishable Night may have complex mechanics and a large cast of colorful characters, but where it really shines is where it counts: the bullet patterns of your enemies.  You will be forced to navigate patterns you have never seen before; from slow floating points expanding to concentric circles to layers and layers of varying speeds and sizes.  They range from simple and elegant to screen hogging mazes of death.  Eschewing further description, I’ll let this screenshot do the talking:

    Danmakus may be a dying breed but they are also a breed at the pinnacle of their evolution and Imperishable Night is at the apex of this pinnacle.  To those who wish to find challenges in the realm of video games beyond what any other genre can give them, the danmaku awaits.  Finding Imperishable Night though, will take a little dedication. You can order it from Japan and patch it with an English translation.  And there are other ways…

     To help any who wish to take up this challenge, in hopes that a new generation of “The Skilled” will rise and perhaps rejuvenate this dying genre to the point where Shanghai Alice would consider U.S. releases of its games, I offer this link: http://touhou.wikia.com/wiki/Imperishable_Night.

-jr      

SCORE: 8 Great