Truxton Extreme: a classic brought right up to date

The original Truxton is an all-time classic of the shoot ’em up genre. Released in 1988 by Toaplan, it’s a notoriously challenging example of the vertically scrolling shoot ’em up, and widely beloved in both its arcade and home console incarnations.

Many of the original members of Toaplan have, in more recent years, reformed under the “Tatsujin” banner — itself a reference to Truxton’s original Japanese name — and, as well as licensing out the classic Toaplan games they have the rights to, they also decided that what the world really needed was a brand new Truxton.

And they were right! Truxton Extreme is an absolutely superb new shoot ’em up that strikes a great balance between accessibility for genre newcomers, and ongoing challenge factor for series veterans. Let’s take a closer look after the jump.

In Truxton Extreme, you take on the role of one of three “Tatsujin” — futuristic fighter pilots who have given up much of their human bodies to become cyborgs capable of piloting top-of-the-range spacecraft and taking the fight to the invading “Geranium” forces. And despite being named after plants your grandmother probably grows, Geranium is posing a significant threat by attacking outlying human colonies and preparing a final assault on Earth.

Quite unusually for a shoot ’em up, Truxton Extreme places quite a strong emphasis on its story, with “motion comic”-style cutscenes between each of the game’s six stages, and three separate narratives to follow. The three pilots play through the same stages, but the focus of their narratives is different, providing some intriguing, compelling context for the action.

And this isn’t a throwaway plot, either. If you’ve ever played a shoot ’em up whose narrative component consisted entirely of anime girls shouting Engrish non-sequiturs at one another before inexplicably launching into showers of pyrotechnics, know that Truxton Extreme is a world apart from that. The story gives a background to the action that feels like there are real stakes involved — but at the same time, it doesn’t become obtrusive or stand in the way of the action. Purists will likely still be pleased to note that the option to play in “Arcade” style, with no narrative scenes at all, is also available — though you have to unlock this mode by playing at least a bit of the story mode first.

As noted, the narrative varies according to which of the three characters you choose to play as, since they each have their own reasons for fighting. For example, the first character you will likely play through the game as is Ash, who was 35 years old at the time he became a Tatsujin, and had a family that he cares for very much. His narrative primarily concerns his desire to build a better future for his family — both by protecting Earth from an alien invasion, and by the fact him risking his life as a Tatsujin means that his family will be well-compensated even while he is away among the stars.

The story is much more than a simple revenge fantasy or a mindlessly xenophobic “we must destroy these invaders because they are aliens” sort of affair. It is clear that the sci-fi world in which Truxton Extreme unfolds has been thought through carefully and realised in detail — a stark contrast to what passed for the narratives in Toaplan’s old games, which one gets the distinct impression were scribbled on the back of a napkin during an end-of-week drinking session.

A notable thing about the narrative is that it also doesn’t fall foul of the other extreme that some shoot ’em ups end up leaning towards: it doesn’t get overly ambitious and start straying too far into heavily metaphysical, philosophical territory, giant robot anime style. That’s not to say that this approach is inherently bad — Edelweiss’ excellent Astebreed is a very good example of how it can work — but rather it’s a tricky thing to get right. If you get it wrong, everything just feels impossible to follow, with the narrative feeling more like a chore rather than a reward for progressing through the game.

But no. Truxton Extreme feels great to make progress in; the story is enjoyable, satisfying, thoughtful and, at times, genuinely emotionally engaging. All this is helped by some absolutely gorgeous artwork by Junya Inoue in the motion comic cutscenes — which you can enjoy in physical form if you have the special edition of the game’s physical release. (Bonus points to western publisher Clear River games for making the Switch 2 version not only a complete game on cartridge, but also one that doesn’t need a downloadable update before starting it for the first time.)

Anyway, we’ve talked a lot about Truxton Extreme’s narrative, but at its core, this is an arcade-style shoot ’em up. So let’s talk a bit about the actual gameplay.

Classic Truxton is, in many ways, the quintessential Toaplan shoot ’em up. You have a spaceship that can switch weapons between several different types and power itself up by repeatedly collecting tokens; your only other weapon is a bomb, which you can set off to clear the screen and, in many cases, get yourself out of trouble.

Truxton Extreme doesn’t really mess with this formula too much, with the main difference being that there are now five different weapon types to choose from instead of the original game’s three: joining the red spread shot, the green rapid-firing plasma cannon and the blue lock-on lightning are the homing white shots and the purple multidirectional exploding shots. Honestly, the white shots are so good there does not feel like a great deal of need to use any of the others, at least while you’re just trying to clear the game; the others may be more useful when pursuing high scores, however.

One addition to the basic formula is an “EX” bar that builds up as you defeat enemies. At any point, you can hold down a button to fire a powered-up “EX” version of your current weapon for as long as the bar lasts; this is great for dealing with harder enemies or getting a head start on boss fights — plus anything you destroy with it explodes into gems, which are worth more than you would normally get from just destroying the enemy with regular shots. As such, tactical use of the EX shot will be essential for those taking aim for the top of the leaderboards.

Something worth noting is that Truxton Extreme follows its predecessors’ use of checkpoints rather than instant respawns. This means that it is quite possible to fail a level by running out of lives, and you can’t credit-feed your way through, either. However, unlike the earlier games in the series, you don’t lose all your power-ups on death — and the power-up tokens themselves are in such plentiful supply that even if you did, you would be back to full power and speed in no time. In fact, tactical dying to repeat a particularly “profitable” section score-wise may even get you a higher score in some parts of the game.

While some shoot ’em ups have a deliberately obtuse scoring system that takes a lot of time and effort to master, Truxton Extreme’s scoring mechanics are fairly straightforward. Aside from the base value you get from destroying enemies and the bonus gems from destruction caused by EX shots, you can also trigger 5,000 point bonuses in various ways, including dispatching certain complete enemy formations and collecting speed or weapon power tokens when you are already fully powered up. Attaining these consecutively increases a score multiplier, up to a maximum of 10x, that applies not only to the 5,000 point bonuses, but also to the EX gems.

As such, the strategy should be clear: get fully powered up as quickly as possible, then continue to collect tokens to build up the multiplier, then settle into a good rhythm of charging the EX meter on fodder enemies, then unleashing EX shots on high-value targets to maximise your score income from gems. It’s straightforward on paper, but remembering to follow that process in the heat of battle is another matter, providing plenty of scope for continuing to improve your performance even once you’ve comfortably cleared the main game multiple times.

There are also a number of end-level bonuses you can attain to boost your score further, including completing the level with a minimal number of lives lost and a certain proportion of enemies and installations destroyed, plus bonuses according to how many bombs and lives you have left, along with how quickly you dispatched the boss at the end of the stage. It’s a good balance: the mechanics are simple to understand and parse, but maximising all those bonuses presents a worthwhile challenge.

Truxton Extreme’s six stages each have their own distinct feel to one another that mostly comes down to the enemies you’ll be facing. Of all the stages, the third is probably the one that stands out the most, as a majority of enemies on this stage spew out “suicide bullets” when you destroy them, meaning that unlike in other stages, where blasting enemies before they can get a shot off is often the best strategy, here you will need to be ready to dodge as soon as you hit something.

As in the original Truxton and its sequel, Truxton Extreme is designed in a somewhat memorisation-heavy fashion, meaning that you will be confronted with predictable, learnable enemy attack patterns each time you play. However, even while learning the game, it always feels fair; bullets are clearly visible at all times, and it’s rare you’ll be caught completely by surprise without having any time to react.

It helps that the new game eschews its predecessors’ TATE orientation and instead makes full use of a 16:9 display, even going so far as to scroll a short distance to both sides, too. This means that you usually have a lot of space to avoid incoming attacks — though the game does make up for this with some quite intense bullet patterns as you progress through the stages, particularly in the boss fights.

The boss fights themselves are well-crafted, and make good use of the fact that everything in the game is a 3D model rather than a sprite. This means that you can, for example, see beam cannons moving into position before they fire, allowing you to anticipate their next attack and get out of the way preemptively. Several bosses also morph into various different forms as you progress through the phases of the fight, too, with each form challenging you to contend with various different attack patterns.

On the whole, Truxton Extreme is very well balanced, with a good difficulty curve aside from an arguable spike in the suicide bullet-heavy third stage. Shoot ’em up newcomers may find it a particularly stiff challenge, but a friendly “Heart Starter” mode allows you to play the entire first stage without your ship blowing up when it gets hit; this is a good way of allowing newbies to learn the attack patterns of the beginning of the game in a low-stress environment — plus it’s an interesting high score challenge in its own right to take on this first stage with the full knowledge that you won’t get set back to a checkpoint if you clip a bullet or obstacle.

Not only that, but repeated play also unlocks several other ways to play, including the aforementioned Arcade mode, which challenges you to make it through the whole game in one go, and an Arena mode, which is a timed “caravan” mode where you have to score as many points as possible against a fixed time limit. Like many other modern console shoot ’em ups, you also unlock various new options as you play, which can potentially make things easier for newbies — things like increasing your starting number of lives to 10, or automatically setting off bombs — but purists (or those competing for leaderboard spots) will want to keep the settings on their defaults.

It’s probably worth also mentioning the game’s presentation. I’ve already noted that the comic book scenes are beautifully presented — and, at times, metal as fuck — but the game in general looks great, too. The backgrounds to the stages are arguably a little bit bland and samey, even from stage to stage, but this just means that they don’t distract from the all-important chaos happening in the foreground. Performance is solid on Switch 2, with some mild (and possibly deliberate) slowdown when unleashing some of the more screen-filling EX weapons, and the music. Ah, the music.

For the unfamiliar, Truxton was designed by Masahiro Yuge, who was not only a skilled programmer, but also a talented musician. As such, the Truxton experience has always been as much about the audio-visual experience of playing the game as it is about the mechanical side of things. And Truxton Extreme brings things bang up to date with some brilliant new arrangements of classic tracks from Truxton and its sequel.

Wailing guitars, noodling synths, driving drumbeats and soaring, triumphant melody lines are all present and correct; while the storyline, at times, is quite dark, the musical accompaniments to each stage make you feel on top of the world while you’re blasting enemies into space junk. The importance of those melody lines in particular shouldn’t be understated; Yuge knows how to compose a formidable hook, meaning you’ll be humming many of these tracks to yourself long after you step away from the game.

All in all then, Truxton Extreme is a top-notch shoot ’em up, and a worthy successor to a legendary name in the genre. In fact, so far as newcomers are concerned, I’d probably be more inclined to recommend they start here and then explore the rather more unforgiving prior entries in the series if they get bitten by the shmup bug from there.

All Truxton is good Truxton, though, and I was immensely glad that this new entry lives up to the name it proudly carries. Here’s hoping this isn’t the last modernised Toaplan shoot ’em up we see from Tatsujin; I think this is a winning formula, and with Toaplan’s back catalogue being such a consistent lineup of bangers, it’d be great to see more “Extreme” takes on the company’s classics.

For now, though, if you have the slightest interest in little spaceships blowing things up to a cheery soundtrack, I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending you add Truxton Extreme to your library.

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More about Truxton Extreme

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