ABOUT

A genre retrospective published by MyWay Publishing in its MyWay Mook line, released in late 2019 at 127 pages. Its organising idea is unusual: rather than surveying games title by title, it anatomises 57 boss encounters from across the history of the shooting game, the confrontations that sit at the end of every stage and every credit. The cover promise is that those final bosses live again, dissected in detail.

The games it draws on are the classic canon, with Xevious, Star Soldier, Gradius, R-Type and Darius II named on the cover, spanning arcade and home releases. The National Diet Library records the full title as a permanent keepsake edition, all 57 subjects thoroughly dissected. As a reference it is slighter than the encyclopedic series in this collection, but its boss-centred angle covers the one element of shmup design most books treat only in passing.

CONTENTS

• 57 boss encounters anatomised in detail
• Xevious
• Star Soldier
• Gradius
• R-Type
• Darius II

DESCRIPTION

Xevious, Star Soldier, Gradius, R-TYPE, Darius II: classics that transcend their era. All 57 taken apart in detail. Those final bosses live again.

ゼビウス、スターソルジャー、グラディウス、R-TYPE、ダライアスII… 時代を超越した名作たち 全57体徹底解剖! あのラスボスが蘇る!

Translated by this site from the publisher's Japanese blurb.

GAMES IN THIS BOOK

Xevious 1982 Namco Star Soldier 1986 Konami Gradius 1985 Konami Darius II 1989 Taito R-Type 2021 TheRoboZ

DETAILS

WHERE TO GET IT

Searched by ISBN, so a shop that has this exact edition will show it and one that does not will come back empty. Most of these were printed in Japan and never distributed elsewhere.

Library record