Down Load
Horizontal shoot 'em up for the PC Engine. The player, as cyber-diver Syd, must fly his hoverbike through the future city of Kabukicho to rescue his partner Deva from the corrupt police. Download is a horizontal shoot 'em up set in a dystopian cyberpunk future in which the main character, Syd, is haunted by memories of his friend Ohala falling to a cybernetic menace. Meanwhile, he receives a call from his contact/partner Deva and must rush to her rescue when she is abducted by the Kabukicho police force. The game's story is depicted in a series of animated vignettes before each stage, similar to Ninja Gaiden. Beginning with the mean streets of Kabukicho, Syd will eventually jack into the internet and fights in a similar manner through cyberspace.
SCREENSHOTS
HISTORY
Down Load is a 1990 horizontally scrolling shooter published by NEC Avenue for the PC Engine. It was followed by Download 2 and also inspired an anime OVA.
Gameplay
Down Load is a horizontally scrolling shooter.
Development and release
While most text in the game is in Japanese, it includes infamous examples of "Engrish".
Reception
Down Load was met with generally favorable reviews. The Japanese publication Micom BASIC Magazine ranked the game sixteenth in popularity in its November 1990 issue, and it received a score of 21.88 out of 30 in a 1993 readers' poll conducted by PC Engine Fan, ranking among PC Engine titles at the number 175 spot.
STORY
The year is 2099. “The Company” hires people to connect their brains to computers to investigate accidents in their corporation’s highly-developed computer network. Sid’s lover was one of them.
Lured by a mysterious man, Sid came to a bar in New Kabukicho to learn the truth of his lover's death. But soon, the inside of the bar becomes a sea of blood, and Sid is attacked by a sniper. It appeared that the passing of his lover was part of a larger conspiracy. As his battle rages on, he'll expose surprising facts - including the identity of this conspiracy's mastermind .
1CC RUNS
One-credit clears we point to as the benchmark for this game.