Emerald Blue

HISTORY

Emerald Blue Is a Vertically scrolling Bullet hell Shoot-em-up game developed by Xtrasoft for the PC. It draws heavy inspiration from Ketsui Death Label through its scoring mechanics, bigger sprites, as well as its shorter length and boss rush mode. It also features a very small hurtbox for the player ship and deceptively small hitboxes for most enemy bullets making squeezing between walls of bullets possible with correct movement and precision.

The game has had two revisions since its release including Emerald Blue Xtrarev which added the much harder Ura route and some balancing changes and Emerald Blue: Crystal Rev which added many QOL changes, new modes, a steam leaderboard and an additional section between the stage 4 boss and the TLB.

Gameplay Overview

Emerald Blue is a three button game featuring two ship modes that hold 3 chargeable bombs that are reminiscent of the Radiant Sword from Radiant Silvergun. Holding shot and focus together allows you to fire a shorter range focused laser that earns you score rapidly similar to Ketsui Death Label's Laser.

Controls

A: Rapid shot

B: Focus/slow

C: Bomb

Ship Modes

There are Two Different selectable modes for the ship, speed mode and power mode each having their strengths and weaknesses.

Power Mode: does higher damage and has a wider shot but is slower and goes into the focus/slow speed immediately when the focus button is held making it less mobile but easier to control.

Speed Mode: does less damage and has a narrow/linear shot but is very fast and retains its full speed briefly when the focus button is held allowing it to slide across the screen quickly while shooting its laser.

Charge/Bomb

The Bomb system in the game known as "Charge" is a rechargeable bomb that activates two large blades from the left and right of your ship and sweeps around you like the Radiant Sword, cancelling all bullets it contacts and dealing heavy damage to enemies usually killing them in one hit and granting significantly higher scoring items. You can hold up to 3 charges and can additionally fill up the charge meter to near max effectively making the max amount of bombs that could be held at once to 3.9 charges.

Items

Ura route

the stage 2 midboss on the omote route

the exact same boss on ura. lol?

If the player achieves 50 million+ score by the end of stage 1 they will enter the Ura route which is a much more difficult version of the game where all the enemies starting from stage 2 will have much more difficult and dense patterns. Additionally the slowdown threshold is increased from 60 bullets on screen to 120, despite this the ura route features more slowdown due to the sheer amount of projectiles covering the screen.

Scoring

Emerald Blue uses a chaining system as the main scoring mechanic, by damaging enemies continuously with your laser they will rapidly drop medium sized gems which increase your chain by 1 each and also granting 100 points plus the amount of your current chain. therefore the main way of scoring in the game is to full chain stages without dropping your chain.

Medalling

The game also features a secondary scoring mechanic similar to medalling from other games such as Battle Garegga. throughout the 4 stages of the game multiple inverted green triangles can be found and if the player has a chain of over 300 hits can be picked up for 100000 points which increases in value by 100 after every additional medal without dropping the medal chain.

"Empty Bomb"

Is a higher level technique where the player uses a bomb charge on an enemy very few frames after they spawn at the top of the screen, the enemies are usually invincible and can not be chained or killed at all in this state however if the player uses a bomb they will rapidly gain large gems every frame the bomb is active resulting in huge score gain as the large gems are multiplied by your current chain. this means that Empty Bombing is most effective at the end of a stage where your chain is very high. Empty Bombs also refill around half of your bomb meter due to the amount of gems you collect off of it.

"Focus Milking"

Another higher level technique where you hold the focus button without shooting causing your ship to get a damaging aura around it, this aura also produces medium sized gems albeit at a slower rate than hitting enemies with your laser. however despite this, because the aura does so little damage it manages to produce more score against most enemies anyways including some of the bosses. additionally, it also builds your bomb meter more as you gain more scoring items.

STORY

This game takes place in 2050, when Japan and America collaborate to become one nation... The Neo-East/West. They invest in many scientific discoveries, one of which being the study of a new energy source, the Core Stones.

Core Stones were found deep in the earths core, and combined with electricity, becoming Emerald Cores. Emerald Cores started being used as a universal power source for everything, until it was found out that they slowly degrade the human body, which was covered up by the government...

A lone military pilot decides to steal the Swan EM-43DSC and break out, to rebel against the cover up and to abolish the main power source of the world...