Past meets present: Under Defeat

This column is “Past meets present,” the aim of which is to look back at game franchises and games that are in the news and topical again thanks to a sequel, a remaster, a re-release, and so on. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

As we sit on the eve of the third home release of the game, it’s worth noting that Under Defeat started out as a pretty niche shoot ‘em up, even as far as these things go. It first released on a home platform in 2006, on the Dreamcast, which Sega had stopped supporting half-a-decade before then. Developer and publisher G.Rev hoped to release the final game on the Dreamcast, because that’s the kind of thing that’s fun to be able to say about your game and makes it notable just because of that, but Milestone had a similar plan and released their own STG, Karous, in March of 2007, which to this day remains the last officially licensed game for the platform, though, not the last Dreamcast title. Thanks, homebrewers and indie studios.

Under Defeat actually got its start before the Dreamcast, however, in arcades in 2005. It was developed for Sega’s NAOMI arcade board, which shared its architecture with the Dreamcast’s, hence the port five years after the system’s expiration date, at least as far as Sega was concerned. It would end up with an HD re-release in 2012 — titled, appropriately, Under Defeat HD — for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, in both digital and physical forms. A fascinating thing that happened there, given Under Defeat’s origins, is that the HD edition wasn’t an upscale job for G.Rev: they actually were just releasing the game, visually, as they initially intended to, in a way the Dreamcast couldn’t actually support.

This comes from G.Rev’s president, Hiroyuki Maruyama, who explained in a 2012 interview with Shooting Gameside (translation courtesy Shmuplations) that Under Defeat’s assets were already at the high resolution needed for an HD release, and that putting them on the Dreamcast had actually required scaling all of that down. “We actually drew the original Under Defeat graphics at a high resolution to begin with, and these ports are a chance for us to show off that work properly in an HD format… our original graphical assets are being displayed in their native high resolution. The textures in the Dreamcast version were somewhat lossy, so they didn’t look very good… but they’re done right now.”

And those assets, which are supposedly alternate history World World II-era but only in like, their color schemes, are impressive to look at: the transition had already occurred, for many shoot ‘em up devs, from 2D sprites to polygons, but that transition didn’t always look impressive or beautiful — there’s quite a few games from this era where you look and kind of wish everyone had stuck to their 2D, sprite-based strengths. Under Defeat, though, despite its intentionally dark palette meant to express just how war-torn everywhere you’re flying over with your helicopter is, is a beauty. Everything is well-detailed, explosions and smoke and fire and bullets cover the screen, and yet there’s still room for the little things to look out for, such as the trucks trying to make a break for it, or the little barrels of fuel and boxes of supplies to take out, or the enormous rounds of ammunition loaded into powerful long-distance guns that can be blown up before they’re ever used to hurt anyone else.

It’s no surprise that G.Rev’s developers would want to infuse their games with the kind of visual personality and storytelling that Under Defeat possesses, where even the mundane ends up grandiose due to the attention and care put into it. G.Rev was formed at the turn of the century by former Taito arcade division employees, who had worked on titles like G-Darius and RayStorm. They got their start in contract work for their former employees at Taito, as well as alongside Treasure — they were co-developers of the classic Ikaruga, which certainly has the kind of big, majestic vibes of G.Rev’s work is known for, and would later go on to assist with Treasure’s Gradius V. Border Down is a horizontal shooter inspired by Taito’s Metal Black and G-Darius, the latter of which was itself inspired by Metal Black, and had been worked on by Maruyama. None of these games are straightforward shoot ‘em ups — all of them had some kind of hook to differentiate themselves, along with their high-quality presentation.

Under Defeat is no different. You pilot a helicopter here, rather than a jet or ship capable of space flight. Which means that movement is restricted to the kind that helicopters are capable of: helicopter shooters, as any fan of Toaplan games knows, have a very different feel to them because of this. It’s fitting then, that, like the granddaddy of the genre, Gyrodine, Under Defeat features a movement system very specific to helicopters.

Gyrodine, developed by Crux back in 1984 and published by Taito, was, in some ways, the proto-Tiger-Heli. And not just because it was developed by some future Toaplan employees, either, but because it helped to establish some of the movement rules for helicopters in shoot ‘em ups. As Tatsuya Uemura explained to STG Gameside in 2012, “…because a helicopter is a slower craft than other planes, and it can hover in midair, we felt it really suited a shooting game where the screen was scrolling. In turn, I think that idea influenced us at Toaplan a bit.” Under Defeat handles things similarly, in that your movement is far different than it would be in a jet, and the ability to turn and to hover plays a significant role in how the game plays.

One thing Gyrodine did that Tiger-Heli did not pursue was angled shooting, as Tiger-Heli instead implemented an options system to grant you additional firepower, either forward-facing or to the sides of the craft. In Gyrodine, though, your shots fired at an angle, relative to where the nose of your chopper was pointing. So, you could angle to the left or to the right, and fire shots off diagonally instead of only straightforward, as you flew forward or backed up. It’s the kind of little difference that both justified the use of a helicopter as something besides a visual difference from shooters featuring ships, and helped give it some distance from the likes of Xevious, which was both ubiquitous and being copied and iterated on by everyone in the industry.

Under Defeat ended up pulling from both the ideas of Gyrodine and Tiger-Heli — if not directly, then at least from the games that belong to their lineage. The idea of angled shooting is used here, but it’s more extreme in how it works than it did in Gyrodine. Once you start firing, you lock in at the angle that you’re at, and continue to fire in that direction. The angles were a little slight, but they were there, and the game was built around the idea that you had them to utilize. You’d find your little places to hide and be protected from enemy fire, you’d figure out ways to come at enemies that were appearing on screen by being where their shots would not initially be, you’d circle around bosses a bit and hit their damage points from relative safety instead of being forced to always face them head on, at the bottom of the screen. You end up using more of the screen’s real estate in Under Defeat than you do in most shooters, since the idea isn’t to camp out near the top defeating enemies before they can settle in, nor is it to hide near the bottom giving you the most time possible to react to curtains of bullets heading your way. You slowly move around, everywhere, constantly, lock in at whatever angle works for you, and hold down that fire button until it’s time to move again.

As for the Tiger-Helification of things, Under Defeat also incorporates an option. This option, like the angled shooting, is integral to the game, and you won’t get very far without mastering it. The option is always with you, in the sense that it’s not a power-up add-on, but something you have access to from the start. However, there are three option types, and they’re all limited use in terms of time. They have a cooldown period, with the weakest of them, the Vulcan, firing the most rounds and getting itself ready to redeployment the quickest, the mid-range cannon firing fewer but more powerful rounds with a slightly longer cooldown delay than the Vulcan, while the rocket’s deployment consists of just one, super-powerful blast that is actually the strongest weapon in the game. It doesn’t have the blast radius of your bombs, no, but it actually packs more of a punch than they do if we’re talking per square inch. The Vulcan is for beginners who want a near-constant secondary firing presence. The cannons are for those who want more boom for their buck than the Vulcan can provide. And the rocket is meant for experts who can survive a cooldown period that will feel like it’s taking literally forever in between shots that can wipe out one-third of a boss’ health… so long as it actually hits. You miss, and that’s it until the next one, whereas the others at least provide far more opportunities for a direct hit, even if they’re less potent ones.

What you end up with, then, is a game that plays like no other helicopter-based shooter, because it’s taken multiple concepts that lived in isolation in the past, and combined them together in a new way. Even though it also borrows from the realism of classic chopper shooters — no sci-fi elements, just straight, realistic-ish military presentation, a lack of power-ups and upgrades for your weaponry — it manages to stand out due to how it all comes together into something that, to this day, feels fresh. The system is also immediately “explained” to you from the start, as the first enemy in the game is a guard tower that’s firing way too fast for you to dodge its shots in between firing off your own while coming at it head on. Your solution is to deploy your option right there, firing forward to take on the tower in your stead, to angle yourself off to the side where its turret won’t allow it to shoot and then fire from there, or, do both. It’s the shoot ‘em up equivalent of that first Goomba in Super Mario Bros., where you understand everything needed from you in this new system from the (in Mario’s case, literal) jump.

Maruyama explained in that 2012 interview that, “I like games where you earn your stripes as you fight through the game, and I think leading players by the hand really damages the fun of the game. Now, I’m not saying everything has to be as inhospitable as Tower of Druaga (laughs), but I like to make games where you figure things out and progress by your own abilities.” That guard tower is an example of showing rather than telling, that not only works in that moment, but serves to ground the player in the experience they’re about to have and adapt to, to align their thinking with the kind of situations that the game is about to put them in. It seems like a small thing, but it’s part of what makes Under Defeat work both for those newer to the genre, as well as veterans. The sicko stuff is there, too, but at its heart, Under Defeat is just asking for you to enjoy your run through five stages, and think about what it will take to make that happen.

Under Defeat has a scoring system that takes real effort to understand, but that’s also clearly just there for those sickos. This is one about making it to the end more than it is about scoring the most points possible, to the point that there aren’t any extends in the game, not through items nor through scoring. The lives and credits you have are it; complete the game with those, or don’t. Though, if you’re into the idea of scoring as the focus after you’ve learned how it all works, Under Defeat certainly presents a challenge.

The scoring is based on a few things you absolutely must keep in mind if you plan on making a dent in the leaderboards. Post-level makes up a not-insignificant amount of your scoring capability. Any leftover bombs you have are worth 10,000 points, for one, so as much as the game encourages you to utilize them to save yourself, you’ll score more if you try to go without. In addition, the “Contribution” is another post-level scoring system that’s absolutely key to master. Your Contribution rate is shown on-screen at all times in the modern versions of Under Defeat, and refers to the percentage of special enemies that you’ve defeated in a stage. These are things like tanks that have a slightly different look to them, and that shoot at you more regularly than standard tanks, or, supply trucks trying to make a getaway, or, some of the bigger (and less realistic) weaponry, like massive tanks and turrets, or even non-weapons like the aforementioned massive guns that are just sitting there, not firing at you nor pointed at you — blow up their ammunition so they can’t be used, and your Contribution percentage goes up.

There’s a multiplier for your Contribution percentage in the post-level scoring screen based on how many remaining lives you have, which is meaningful on its own, but you also can’t lock in a second loop of Under Defeat without an overall Contribution score on a run of at least 95 percent. Meaning, if you want to have a great score instead of just a good one, you’re going to need to figure out where all of those Contribution enemies are, and defeat them, so you can then do it all again a second time on the same run.

Easy enough, right, given all of those foes stick out in some way? You’d think so, but if you kill a Contribution enemy with a bomb, you don’t receive credit for that kill as far as Contribution goes. And your Life Count Multiplier actually goes up if you’ve died, so a perfect run where you never get hit isn’t actually perfect at all as far as scoring goes, meaning that you have to maybe think about dying on purpose one or two times in order to maximize your score.

In addition, you get bonuses depending on how much time is remaining when you’ve defeated a boss. Which is where mastering the rocket comes in: that option might shoot just once, but if it blows the entire side of a giant bomber off in one go, and you can take out another third of its health before the cooldown is over, well. You’ll have lots of time left when that thing goes down. (Thank the folks at shmups.system11.org for figuring out the less obvious inner workings of Under Defeat’s scoring.)

That’s just the post-level scoring count, however. There’s also the in-level part that’s the most significant contribution of all, and it’s where the option comes in. Every enemy defeated by your autonomous option is worth twice as many points as one you defeat with the chopper, which, when deployed correctly, can lead to some significant boosts in scoring. It’s why the Vulcan might shoot a lot, and fast, but since it’s weak it’s not defeating many enemies. It’s more likely to catch a few strays and soften up other foes for the chopper’s guns. The cannon can take out far more enemies, but, like with the Vulcan, in a straight line depending on the angle at which it was deployed at. The rocket, though, has a blast radius, and can wipe out multiple foes at once, leading to some significant point bonuses.

Again, none of this has to be paid attention to if your goal is just to make it to the end: Under Defeat separates the idea of scoring and survival like almost no other game, since scoring takes so much more effort and there’s no benefit to it outside of being able to say you scored more points than if you’d just played things straight. Luckily, it’s still a great time even if you’re simply trying to survive, since it’s full of strategy and impressive set pieces and enormous foes.

When Under Defeat HD released, the major change and update to the game came in the form of its New Order mode. This was designed with widescreen, horizontal monitors in mind, rather than the vertically oriented TATE monitors of the arcades of 2005. While the assets were all high resolution, G.Rev had to focus on enlarging them and rebalancing everything for the idea of being horizontally-based instead of vertically so. New Order mode isn’t just a stretch to widescreen, but Under Defeat: Widescreen Edition. Which is why there are now more enemies swooping in from the sides instead of coming in from the top, In addition, with the switch to home consoles, G.Rev added twin-stick support: it’s optional, but it’s there, and it’s the superior way of playing Under Defeat. With a twin-stick setup, you aren’t locked in to the direction you’re shooting, but can instead spray shots in multiple directions. Still at the limited angles of before, yes, but now you have to hold the stick in place to stick with shooting in a straight line.

G.Rev didn’t develop this new version of Under Defeat — which releases on February 6 for Switch, Xbox Series S|X, and both Playstation 4 and 5 — as they did with the HD release 13 years ago. Instead, Take x Off, a studio that also brought ports of Cave’s Deathsmiles and Akai Katana to modern systems, worked with City Connection on this one. The same spirit that caused G.Rev to make an entirely new and reworked mode of the game in 2012 persists, despite the change in developer, however. This new mode can be played by anyone, as well, but it’s certainly designed with those who have already gone through two versions of Under Defeat in mind. This is New Order Plus, which builds on 2012’s New Order mode in two meaningful ways. One, you can now move your helicopter’s nose along a full 180-degree line, meaning, you can now shoot directly left or right instead of just angling slightly in those directions. And two, to counter this newfound freedom that would have made the game a whole lot easier in a maybe unsatisfying way, there’s a new “Warning Gauge” that slowly fills as you progress through the level, until hell is unleashed upon you.

Think of it as a temporary boost to the game’s Rank system — rank, for the uninitiated, is not a ranking of your ability or score, but in shooter terms, has to do with internal game settings that determine just how difficult the title is going to make things for you. It’s based on things like lives lost, shots fired, enemies destroyed, and the like. Under Defeat has a rank system — it even displays your existing rank on-screen these days, with negative numbers meaning the game is currently easier than “normal,” and positive numbers meaning it’s more difficult than usual. What Under Defeat’s New Order Plus mode has done is basically set a timer to spike the game’s rank, temporarily, through the roof. The scrolling tends to stop in these moments, but the flow of enemies onto the screen does not. This means more opportunities for scoring and differentiating your score in what has been a very solved game for a long time now in terms of maximum possible scores, and also more opportunities to die. It’s Under Defeat’s hard mode, basically, on top of the actual in-game settings for difficulty, and it’s the kind of add-on revision of an existing system that’s welcome when a game like this is seeing another re-release. You have to pull me in with something besides “it’s higher resolution now,” and Under Defeat has managed that feat twice in two attempts, even without G.Rev at the helm this time around.

In addition to the New Order Plus mode, there’s also yet another version of the soundtrack to listen to: the original was composed by Shinji Hosoe of Ridge Racer fame, while Yousuke Yasui handled the HD arrangements. Hosoe is back this time around, and has given the new “Boosted” soundtrack a far more electronic dance club feel. It’s a good soundtrack, but given how much attention was given to Under Defeat feeling like a gritty, realistic, military shooter — albeit one with giant bombers the size of small cities that you have to take down with a single chopper and its drone — it does sound a little off here. Especially given there are some moments, like at the start of the final stage, when the sound effects cut out for dramatic effect as the fate of the continent is being decided by the violence and death unfolding below by the opposing forces locked in battle, that the music just doesn’t quite fit as well as the original(s) do. Again, though, it’s not bad, and is a fun listen if you’re just kind of vibing instead of playing Under Defeat with an As Originally Intended thing going on.

The online leaderboards introduced for the HD edition of Under Defeat are back, which is an obvious benefit to those who care about such a thing. While Under Defeat isn’t that kind of shooter, it also is very much that kind of shooter if you’re looking for the experts’ way to play. Which, nearly two decades in, on its third home release, you very well might fit the bill at this point. Plus I just told you about how the entire scoring system works, so you’ve got a leg up on everyone who isn’t aware yet.

If you’ve purchased Under Defeat before, this is the definitive version of the game, and should not be ignored simply because you’ve already got it. G.Rev’s work is still here, in the sense the arcade original and the New Order mode are included, and all previous paid downloadable content is simply part of the base package now, as well, but more importantly, the spirit of their work also lives on through Take x Off’s variant of the game, which took the addition of freer movement brought on by the twin sticks setup to its logical conclusion, with added difficulty to boot. If you’ve never played Under Defeat before, but have an interest in shoot ‘em ups, casual or otherwise, this is a great one. It’s approachable for newcomers to the genre, and still stands out as unique in a genre often dominated by slight iterations for those with far more experience. Like with so much of what G.Rev has touched over the years, it’s a classic, even if it’s niche among niche.

Under Defeat releases on Xbox Series S|X, Nintendo Switch, and Playstations 4 and 5 on February 6. A review copy for Nintendo Switch was provided by publisher City Connection and Clear River Games.

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