A Game That can Pull you into its Action Despite Glaring Limitations.
You're set in the future of human space travel, planet colonization and the search for alien life when one bustling planet colony calls for help. Apparently, a rebellion started up on the planet causing all military and vehicle pilots to go stir crazy destroying every human structure in sight. Thus we enter the distress call's help, the oddly named Verytex, destined to save the day and to help find out what's causing the rebellion. The plot actually has some interesting developmental phases in between, but the problem is they're all written in the manual (in Japanese), so unless you know how to read it, you'll have no idea what's going on. The same can be said for the game's notoriously bad ending which - after months of laborious Kanji translation - pretty much sums up everything established in the game and the manual in a very anti-climactic way while simultaneously refusing to answer a few unresolved questions.
With the story telling aside, Verytex manages to be an immersive little action title despite its almost blatant production flaws. The graphics are stuck somewhere between passable and amateur as, despite the sweet parallax scrolling in its large and rich color palette, manages to make certain backgrounds and enemies look a little cheesy. The main problem is that many of the enemies are just too small, making it look like you're fighting explosive gnats rather than ships. The larger enemies have a good attention to detail and it's often easy to tell what's what except in the last level where most of the tiny enemies blend in with the background.
Graphically speaking, Verytex reminded me of Dezeamon Plus, a Shoot em' Up construction kit that's like Mario Paint meets Raiden. In it, you can make enemies from tiny square or medium sized rectangular palettes and the best way to make big bosses is to make one half of them and copy, paste and switch that half to make the other half. Verytex looks almost identical to a Dezeamon game as many of the backgrounds are blatant copy-pastes of different background/enemy patterns. There's even a glitch on the fifth boss where a detectable part of him lights up when you hit him, despite the fact he's shown in motion. It's also kind of bad to have a space level without stars and to have asteroid satellites colored exactly the same as the asteroids.
The gameplay is unremarkable, yet solid: you get a choice between three main weapons with two side weapons (homing missiles and a Bomb). You can upgrade your normal Vulcan weapon so that it fires in five directions a la Star Soldier, a strong, but straight firing laser beam and this cool looking Bullet Hell weapon that fires plasma shaped like crescent moons. You can power-up your weapons thrice and stock up to six bombs, but the moment you start the first stage, you'll all ready have half the weapons you need: all you need to complete the game is the upgraded vulcan and enough homing missiles to kill everything on screen and most of the enemies are so weak and depend on kamikaze attacks you won't need to bother with the other weapons.
I've heard people complain about how hard and badly planned the final boss is and as much as I agree, I've been able to beat the freak four times in a row with no screw-ups WITHOUT using cheats with that aforementioned weapon combination alone. The difficulty never really kicks in until you fight a rather anti-climactic two-screen long battleship, but even then most of the bosses lack a challenge: so long as you know how and when to move and actually have enough synapses to keep the ship in third gear, you can beat practically anything. While a checkpoint is active, you can pick-up shields that keep you alive more often than not and even if you die, you can continue from the level you started. I find the lack of extends a bit cheap, though: why even have a Points system if it contributes to nothing?
This sounds bad for the difficulty (except maybe on your first play-through), but I've found the best way to die in the game is to not pay any attention. The enemies come fast and often enough to keep you awake and the sound and music departments help energize you, so if you're not ready for anything then you'll indeed suffer.
Speaking of which, both departments are actually top-notch in Verytex. If it's one thing you can depend on in Shmups regardless of production value it's an excellent soundtrack and Verytex has just that. Composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto and the guy who did Gauntlet IV, Verytex' soundtrack is an amazing feat in action game soundtracks. Every level has a distinct song, but each one is pumped with so much adrenaline and so much beat that it's impossible not to get immersed in it. Even the two repetitive boss fights manage to sound dire and threatening; it's like the Mega Drive equivalent of Deep Fear, where the developers decided to put most of the game's budget into the emotional impact of the score. The sound effects are pretty damn effective too between laser blasts and explosions all sounding original, though I swear I heard one sound that was ripped straight out of Two Crude Dudes.
If you can look past the crude graphics, basic gameplay and the luscious and tangible, yet poorly presented story, then you'll find Verytex to be a cosmic blast. It's just a shame at how rare the game is beyond emulation. I've found Eliminate Down more often on Ebay for ludicrously high prices I'd dread to think how much a physical copy of Verytex goes for.
* Seriously: What the Hell's a Verytex??