Data East’s odd little trilogy of Vapor Trail, Wolf Fang, and Skull Fang is one of those series that quietly came and went without most people noticing its existence, and those that did were likely to manifest an emotion no stronger than mild indifference. I can certainly count myself amongst that number. I like Wolf Fang enough to keep an old PSN purchase around on my Vita and PSP (remember when literally hundreds of PlayStation games were available to buy digitally?), but never quite enough to pick it over Panzer Bandit, Mad Stalker, or pretty much any other title I’ve got sitting on there when I have a little free time. Vapor Trail is little more than “a game I think I have played, maybe”. I’ll tell myself I might get around to it sometime soon, but I know in my heart I probably won’t.
So I approached Skull Fang with a sort of detached curiosity, wondering if there was something—anything—in there that’d make me really sit up and pay attention, something worth remembering when people asked me about it afterwards.
Happily it turns out there definitely is: I just didn’t realise it for a credit or ten.
There are four ships available by default (these will look familiar if you’ve played Vapor Trail before), each with their own specialisms—that’s pretty standard for the genre. What’s not are the two pilot types (fighter and bomber) you choose independently afterwards, your selection affecting what the ship’s constantly refilling charge gauge triggers.
Bomber essentially plays like a typical shmup fighter, with a filled gauge used to trigger the usual screen-wide bomb/temporary invincibility effect: it’s all normal, expected, stuff. Fighter type brings back Vapor Trail’s whirling roll move, which on the surface appears to offer a very helpful window of invincibility and not much else. Then I discovered it also had a new red-coloured variant which does do damage as you spin, creating a sort of highly controlled life saving/damage dealing combination move. It’s a fun change from the usual explosions, and probably something that’d be devastating if wielded with skill and purpose. I hoped there might be some relevant advice waiting in the manual so I had a quick flip through—and that’s when my jaw dropped.
Fighter-type pilots can do what?!
I hope you’re sitting down for this part, because Skull Fang has suddenly gone all weird on us. Using a combination of the C button, fighting game style inputs (which can be simplified to single direction+C in the options menu), and a full charge gauge your chosen fighter pilot can perform movements that the shmup design police should surely have everyone on the staff credits list arrested for even imagining, never mind putting in a game. You can twist your ship to either side, firing across the screen. It’s even possible to sit at the top of the playfield for a few seconds, shooting down towards where your ship normally sits.
Shmups can’t do that. That’s not allowed. You can do full 360° Asteroids-like movement on a single screen. At a push you can even alternate between vertical and horizontal stages (hi, Salamander), but you can’t just have the player decide for themselves they’re going to fly sideways or backwards for a bit while the stage still scrolls vertically… can you? I’ll admit I struggled to use these manoeuvres at all, never mind effectively (the manual suggests using them to needle boss weak points), and as the bomber-type pilots have nothing like this level of flexibility the game ultimately had to be designed with them in mind so this bold concept’s never given a real chance to shine. But even so, I’m glad the game gives us the option to approach a very familiar genre from literally a whole new direction, and I’d love to see the idea revisited.
Slightly less bonkers although definitely still unusual is Skull Fang’s speed system. After choosing your ship and its pilot you then get to pick between two and five tier speed settings, or if you’d rather not muck around with all that extra work you can select an auto mode instead. What’s especially interesting is that unlike, say, Image Fight, how fast you choose to go effects the stage’s scrolling speed, not how fast your ship can zoom around the screen. It’s remarkable to think I have direct control over something as important as this, that I can dash through enemy forces on a whim or actually slow down during one of the game’s numerous mine-laden sections, giving myself the time to navigate the painful streams of floating spike balls flooding the screen.
During boss fights this feature really comes into its own. Unlike most shmups these gigantic foes are not content to sit in their designated spot on the screen until you’ve blown them to pieces but instead may suddenly rush off ahead or slow down so much you might overshoot them unless you reduce your speed, the relatively tight timer making sure you have to work hard to keep them within firing range. Some of the later ones will even unleash shield-sapping lasers for you to avoid while they’re off screen. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that in most cases this’d be a cheap shot at best, but Skull Fang has another clever idea up its sleeve to balance these blasts out: Sky-Eyes.
This is the name of a small window that helpfully pops up whenever a boss pulls away (alongside a handy indicator around your ship, letting you know exactly how far ahead or behind the are), and serves as a live satellite feed of the action so you can see exactly what they’re up to even when they’re not sharing the screen with you. Like the fighter pilot style movements it’s a bit strange and scrappy, but I’m happier Skull Fang tried and sort of succeeded here than I would be if it had offered a more polished but forgettable experience.
Between all the novel ideas layered on top of regular shmupping this could easily spiral into an overwhelming fuzz of too much of everything, but luckily of us the manual’s on hand to help cut through all the noise. The text takes the time to recommend the Sylph II/bomber type/auto speed combo for beginners, and descriptions in general consistently lean more towards giving you as much useful information as possible, rather than telling you the points value of a few enemies and then wishing you luck.
The manual also comes with a full page warning: although you can set your heavy CRT TV on its side to take full advantage of Skull Fang’s arcade-like 3:4 mode, Data East don’t officially recommend it and you do so entirely at your own risk. For once this TV tilting does feel like a truly optional feature as the default display maintains the original aspect ratio by adding thick black bars to the sides of the screen, and in motion the graphics appear virtually no different to what they are when the screen’s rotated. It’ll never be a “true” fan’s preferred way to play, but as far as genuine issues go… I really don’t think there are any.
Is Skull Fang a good shmup? A bad shmup? I don’t really know. Maybe its most promising ideas are stymied by their execution, maybe its a bland shmup elevated by some daring concepts. What I do know for certain is that Skull Fang is an interesting shmup packed with a heap of ideas I didn’t even realise these games were allowed to have, and that makes it an impressive—and memorable—experience.
Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster 