Vasara Collection is a great bundle and very easy to recommend for fans of ship games. Each of the classics has its own characters and settings, making either of the two installments highly replayable. The graphics are excellent and the music accompanies the whole. The screen fills up very easily with gunshots and it's a lot of fun to dodge and counter-attack enemies. Unfortunately the control scheme is very demanding in an already difficult game to start with. The Timeless mode seems like a separate game, inspired by the original games and completely focused on multiplayer, as it requires several players to control the entire screen and the challenge comes from achieving better scores to put them on the online board. For those who aren't fans of the genre, this might not be the ultimate game, but it's worth a try at a low price.

Snappy Game Reviews - Timeless collection As a huge fan of the genre, I’m always happy when a new shoot-em-up (SHMUP) gets released nowadays. There used to be a ton of them back in the good old days but sadly that’s not the case anymore. We have to look back to the end of this golden age to find a pair of rare Japanese arcade exclusives developed by VISCO Corporation known as VASARA and VASARA 2. These two SHMUP’s that came out in the late ’90s and early 2000s are known as the swansong of the company and had never made its way out of Japan, until now. QUByte Interactive decided to bring these two cult classics to the modern age together with a couple of extras like a new game mode and online leaderboards in the VASARA Collection. The action takes place in feudal japan with characters based on real historical figures but in all honesty, you don’t need a detailed background story to any of what’s going on to enjoy either VASARA game. All you need to know is that you get to choose one of a few warriors, each with different stats, and you get to fly around in a flying hoverboard with all kinds of weaponry to take down everyone that dares to oppose you. You get to pick either of the two games from a straightforward menu system. After making your selection, you can tweak the settings of the game itself, such as the difficulty and the number of lives or even toggle the screen filter. There’s also the option to play either of the two classics in TATE mode which is the preferred way to to it, at least on the Nintendo Switch in handheld mode. The original VASARA has three characters which are your usual balance, speed and heavy types that you would usually find in arcade beat em ups. Through its 6 stages, you fly around while taking down enemy soldiers, mounted cannons and giant mechs. The rate at which things come flying towards you is pretty insane even on the lower difficulty level and at times you’ll have to rely on bombs to clear out the screen. The other way to clear oncoming fire is by using your sword, this can be done by holding down the fire button and releasing it at the right time. This mechanic is essential to survive and to also build your score as you’ll get a score multiplier for each enemy that you strike down at once. By collecting diamonds that fly around the screen as things blow up you’ll build a vasara gauge, once it’s full you’ll get a supercharged sword attack that trashes everything on the screen. VASARA 2 is more of the same but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The sequel bolsters a slightly larger cast of playable characters and two game modes, one of which doubles the number of stages present in the previous entry. Gameplay-wise it’s pretty much identical, you still collect power-ups to boost your attack power and pick up diamonds to build your vasara gauge, or should I say gauges. Yes, there’s three of these now and there aren’t any bombs to save you this time around. This makes the gameplay even more intense as there’s a bigger emphasis on collecting diamonds than before, adding to this the bigger cast and larger number of stages makes VASARA 2 the better game in my opinion. As for the new game mode, VASARA Timeless features procedurally generated stages where up to four players can aim for a high score that utilizes a slick 3D engine to spruce up certain elements from both VASARA games such as characters and bosses. Seeing that there are no continues in this game mode, it makes sense for the difficulty to be toned down but since every stage is procedurally generated there really isn’t anything really exciting going on at any given time. VASARA Collection is a true love letter that brings two cult classic SHMUP’s to the west with all the bells and whistles you’d expect while also adding a brand new game mode and online leaderboards. Even though VASARA Timeless didn’t manage to grab my attention for more than a few minutes, I still find that this package has great value to fans of the genre and people looking to discover more about what made old school SHMUP’s so great.