The traditional Japanese 2D shooter is very much like Elvis Presley. Everyone claims it to be dead, yet sightings of it luckily refuse to die, as proven by Border Down and Psyvariar 2. Both also have swarms of dedicated fans, and both are argued to be timeless. The differences between them are distinct though. Shooters sadly will never have attractive women flock to them, and unlike Elvis they now thankfully are actually setting foot in the UK and the many lands of PAL TV.

Riding high on a wave of budget Japanese PS2 titles being localised for release in Europe and particularly France, XII Stag is a highly affordable and unabashed old fashioned blast-em-up. Adhering to its shmup lineage, Stag follows the paths of one-credit survival and high score multipliers whilst injecting something a little fresh into the cocktail: the high score multiplier can only be increased by attacking enemies from either the sides (activated by wiggling the joystick rapidly left and right or alternatively by a singly button press) and rear attacks which are initiated automatically should any craft venture to close to your tail pipe.

The system can be more easily adapted to than that of the first Psyvariar with its need to seek enemy projectiles in order to level up, playing more similarly to DoDonPachi with focus firmly on survival and scoring, from here it also takes its visual cue. Whilst 2D games can be shown to be still fully alive, they all too often end up using low resolution pseudo 3D renders or polygons, such as Shikigami and Psyvariar, which somewhat hurts the point of creating a game in the flat plane, since it forsakes hand drawn artistry for machine created imagery. Like mana for the hungry, Stag takes a distinctly high resolution, sprite based approach, with some of the smoothest sprite visuals this side of SNK.

The player can choose to either ignore the score-multiplier in order to bullet-weave with the hope of achieving the holy grail of shooters, the one-credit-clear, or alternatively, gamers can focus on positioning themselves amidst the deadly attack patterns of enemies to try and squeeze a precious few extra hundred-thousand onto the score tally. Scores are reset if players continue, so while a fine balancing act is needed, gamers can play to suit their own style. This also translates to the levels themselves, with some needing a different approach to others. Stage two lends itself better to symmetrical side-attack points hoarding while stage three is best completed with avoidance by dodging through the bright flames that fill the sky. Coupled with this freedom is an adaptive gameplay system that changes to suit the player's skill, comparable to titles like Border Down. Do well on certain areas and later sections will have an entirely different fleet of opponents or much bigger, juicier bosses. All of this of course helping to boost scoring whilst also increasing chances of meeting the reaper. Such design adds much replayability to proceedings, and ensures that repeated levels rarely become boring. This also helps weaker players who would normally struggle at first, though with Stag's gameplay being simpler than that of its more complex brethren, anyone dedicated is unlikely to have serious problems.

There are further smaller touches that all give the impression of an older style of gameplay. Power ups are released on a score basis, with “Barrier Bombs” for example being relinquished by the fighter that helped push the players score over a certain amount. This helps cast the mind back to the days of Defender and having to judge if using a power bomb will increase pointage enough so that another is awarded. Enemy positioning is pattern derived with only occasional projectiles taking into account player position. While memorisation is the order of the day, patterns are formed in a way that gives an easy advantage when using the side attack feature.

For leader-board junkies though, the real draw is going to be the massive scoring possibilities on offer. The multiplier can be maxed up to twelve (hence the title), with there being two level check-points before the boss which helps to gauge very well the progress made through the game. Scores for each check point are recorded to memory card and after each stage are tallied on a graph, the current against the overall best. Extended play helps build a “TOP” graph derived from the best scores on each level and gives some genuine goals to players wanting to better themselves.

XII Stag comes tantalisingly close to being a game that actually does nothing blatantly wrong. Well balanced and adaptive difficulty, long term play potential, high quality aesthetics, a smart front end, highly configurable and even a Two-Player option is on offer, all bolstered by a very nice price tag. So it’s sad that whilst it manages to flawlessly button every small button on a many buttoned shirt, it came to the party without any trousers. For a game so focussed on scores and graphs, none of them can be accessed without starting a new game, achieving very significant progress and then dying. This is an unforgivable omission that smacks of stupidity and will hamper those wanting to keep tabs on personal development.

Which is basically all there is to XII Stag. Being a budget titles it is unsurprisingly lacking any extra bells or whistles, being merely a shooter that achieves what it sets out to do, albeit with a glaring flaw. Simply dotting every “i” and crossing every “t” though does not guarantee excellence nor greatness, and so XII Stag is left being a game suited only for converts to the genre or those with limited cash who need a gaming fix. Exactly who it was aimed at then.