Recca

All you need to do is insert the cartridge and turn the power on. Then expect your eyes to be popped all the time.

Recca is a twitch shoot-em-up developed for the NES in 1992, by Naxatsoft. It was made specifically for play at a tournament called Summer Carnival '92, so the game wasn't released in stores. Very few copies of Recca exist, meaning it's a very rare game.

Recca pushes the NES hardware to its absolute limits, with action that goes even faster than later-generation arcade shoot-em-ups like Raiden Fighters, Donpachi and Giga Wing. It also has an interesting techno-rave soundtrack, taking the system's sound chip in an entirely different direction than most NES games ever did.

Not to be confused with the anime Flame of Recca.

Be prepared for the most ultimate sparky challenge in the world of Famicom.

• Attack Drone: Getting a red power-up will give you one. Getting another of the same letter gives you a second. The attack drone will function differently depending on what letter of powerup you got.
  • They also block regular shots too. Can be crucial to survival, especially when you have two.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Most of the bosses can only be damaged in a small red core on their body while they protect themselves with arms, laser barriers or sheer firepower. Naturally, you'd want to use a wide area, shot-erasing, high-damage weapon on them...
• Beam Spam: Lots of Mooks and bosses do this to your character.
• Boss Rush: Level 4 in the Normal Mode, as well as Level 6 of the Hard Mode.
• Bullet Hell: The entire game (especially Zanki Attack) consists of this, making it pretty much the only Bullet Hell on the NES. In fact, it might be the Ur Example, way before Batsugun and Don Pachi.
• Charged Attack: The Smart Bomb is charged by not firing your main weapon. It also blocks standard blue spherical bullets, a technique that is essential to surviving Zanki Attack.
• Cognizant Limbs: This boss.
• Death in All Directions: The enemies in the game attack your character from all sides of the screen. And they either move very quickly to collide with your ship or fire a load of shots, lasers or missiles...
• Death Is a Slap on The Wrist: Partly. Your character does lose all powerups on death, but since the amount of enemies (and hence the frequency of powerups) appearing is staggeringly high, this is not much of a problem...
• Dramatic Disappearing Display: During boss battles, the heads-up display disappears entirely, meaning the only things on the screen are you, the boss, and the inevitable hailstorm of projectiles that's bound to start. This, coupled with the adrenaline-pumping music that starts up, serves to make the boss fights all the more intense.
  • Weirdly enough, the HUD stays on during two boss battles, with the first one being on Time/Score Attack's stage two boss and the second one that is fought at the very end. Was this trope invoked by the lack of free space for tiles?
    • Just to explain this one as simply as possible. The HUD is part of the background layer. Due to the bosses often not using just sprites, but an entire background layer that moves as well, it is impossible to preserve the HUD without some severe graphical issues. This doesn't thoroughly explain why you can retain the HUD throughout the rest of the game and not have graphical effects, but this is the simplest explanation that can be given without an even larger infodump.
• Dummied Out/Take That: There's a hidden intro buried in the game's code. It's probably a safe bet that someone didn't like SEGA very much.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The end credits state that the game is a "Super Hard Shooting Game".
• Explosions in Space: Exaggerated, Big time. Perhaps, everything that may be asploded (be it enemies or starship Recca)... may be asploded!
• Game Mod: Recca: Pure. With Zanki Attack and Hard Mode available unlocked at the very beginning
• Genius Programming: Naxat Soft did a really good job pushing the NES to its limits, and managed to create an awesome game for an old console. If the 20+ enemies and bullets onscreen with no slowdown isn't enough to convince you, the soundtrack and visuals probably will.
• Gravity Sucks: One of the bosses (a Giant Spider Tank) tries this on you by shooting gravity wells that either attract or repel your character (the blue and white balls are the gravity wells).
• Harder Than Hard: Zanki Attack (lit. "Life Attack"). In this mode, you start with 50 lives, but every single enemy you destroy fires suicide bullets in random directions. If you can reach the end, you're ranked on how many lives you have left.
  • It's made even worse by the fact that it ends up being more bullets than the system can handle on screen, meaning they start flickering, effectively turning a lot of them invisible. Especially if you're playing Zanki Attack on Hard difficulty. Bullet Hell? Try Bullet Hell without being able to see the bullets!
  • But through some rigorous bombspamming, Zanki Attack can become easier than Normal Game for rehearsed players due to a few properties involving the bomb, like making most of the bullets in range disappear. Some players have seen all of Normal and Hard difficulties on Zanki attack, but can't even get halfway across either difficulty on standard mode.
• Homing Projectile: The Homing weapon naturally, as well as your Laser weapon at maximum level. As for the enemies- too many to count.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Many of the larger enemies use this. And don't get me started on some of the bosses...
  • The Final Boss ups it a notch by having ALL his missiles home in on the player!
• Mecha-Mooks: All the regular enemies.
• Mirror Boss: One of the later bosses is a small ship that can use smart bombs just like yours.
• More Dakka: Quite possibly more bullets than any other game made for the NES.
• Mutually Exclusive Powerups: The blue Power Ups for your main weapon, and the red powerups for your Attack Drone positioning mode.
• Nintendo Hard: The entire game. Even the end credits state that Recca is a "Super Hard Shooting Game".
  • Harder Than Hard: The New Quest mode.
• Normal Mode Mockery: The Normal Game is only four levels, while Hard Mode has seven.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: The starship.
• Orchestra Hit Techno Battle: The entire soundtrack, not just the bosses. Bonus awesome points for such a soundtrack being on the NES.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Starship Recca. Oh yeah and HOW.
• Puzzle Boss: One of the bosses has two long, diagonal laser "arms" that absorb all your regular shots and swing about slowly, severely limiting your character's ability to Attack Its Weak Point or get near him. To defeat it, you have to get really near its core when the arms move to one side, them fire off your Smart Bomb.
• Reflecting Laser: Used by one of the bosses, who also loves to Teleport Spam.
• Segmented Serpent: Present in this game, and like most examples, are only vulnerable in the head. Two of them you fight serve as Mini Bosses.
• Sequel Hook: After defeating what looks like the final boss, you see the credits roll. After that, your ship comes face-to-face with another huge boss, but the action stops and says "TO BE CONTINUED..."
  • And, needless to say, the sequel was never released.
• Smart Bomb: Instead of having a stock of smart bombs, you have to let go of the fire button to charge up energy, and when the gauge is full you can fire a smart bomb.
• Sphere of Destruction: Your Smart Bomb is definitely one.
• Spread Shot: The V weapon, which fires a spread of 5 shots forward, as well as the F weapon, which fires a 3-way forward and a 2-way backwards. Some of the enemies will use both the regular burst as well as the spray burst on you.
• Teleport Spam: Two of the bosses use this very frequently.
• Timed Mission: That timer on the HUD is there for a reason. In the Normal Game and Hard Mode, you have 60 minutes to complete all the stages. If you take longer than that, the game's over. This is only really a problem in Hard Mode, it being three stages longer.
  • Not to mention the timer still counts down even when the game is paused...
  • Then there's Score Attack, in which you have 2 minutes to score as many points as possibe, and Time Attack, in which you must reach 1 million points in under 5 minutes.
• Time Keeps on Ticking: Your timer keeps counting down, and that's even when the game is paused!!!
  • What else would you wish. This is a game made specifically for a gaming event. Cue to Nintendo Hard.
• Title Theme Drop: In Hard Mode Area 7, the background music is the title screen theme.
• The Unfought: After the end credits, your ship returns to base, and is promptly attacked by this guy. You never fight him in-game, and your ship can't actually battle him during the end credits. The words "To Be Continued" appear, but Recca has no sequel...
  • And no, don't stare at the Summer Carnival games made for TurboGrafx-16. First, they were developed by a different team (although done for the same kind of tournaments). Second, they have completely nothing to do with Recca story-wise. Third, they completely lack the insane speed Recca had.
• Wave Motion Gun: This boss has five of them, but usually tends to fire one to four at a time.. In the event where it fires all five, you have to move in between two of them.