Keio Flying Squadron (慶応遊撃隊 Keiōyūgekitai?) is a scrolling shooter video game developed and published by Victor Entertainment in 1994 for the Sega/Mega CD in Japan, Europe, and North America. It is the first game of the Keio Flying Squadron series with a simple shoot-'em-up style of play. Gameplay The game consists of the protagonist Rami riding on top of Spot, who can shoot fireballs at enemies. When Spot is not firing, two smaller dragons (Companion fighters) appear one after another to assist Rami and Spot. The lesser dragons shoot smaller fireballs and can be sacrificed to do larger damage, only to reappear when Spot ceases to shoot. Release In Europe, a demo of the first level of this game was provided by Sega Pro magazine. The game seemed to end after the first level, but in fact the whole game was accessible on the disc by using a level-select cheat to skip to the second level, and then continuing through the game. Reception Retro Gamer included among top ten Mega CD games, calling it "a perfectly acceptable substitute" OF Konami's Parodius that features "similar style of horizontally scrolling wackiness and puts the Mega-CD hardware to good use to produce some excellent cut-scenes and a brilliant CD-quality soundtrack."
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The only outstanding thing about this game is its soundtrack, which I'd admit is pretty great.
Other than that, I just can't understand how people can pay such outrageous prices for a copy of this one. Just stick with Thunder Force IV.
And then there's the elephant in the room: Do Not Put Children In Playboy Costumes, Stupid! Use the robes from the intro! God!
I'd compare to Cotton from a visual standpoint but Keio is more simple with how the gameplay goes: Upgrade your shots, get other weapons like bombs and shurikens, don't fire to get a screen nuke attack, solid stuff. That's really it. The opening is also funny as hell.
It takes a 10 year old anime girl throws her into a playboy bunny costume with high heels riding a dragon that looks like a green chicken fighting dogs on flying carpets and half dressed raccoons with catapults because an old lady voiced by a 30 year old man shouted at her to do so.
I'm going to start with the last part that the voice acting is abysmal. Like early fan dub level bad. It actually hurt my ears during cutscenes. The story and dialogue are just as terrible. The opening grainy scene is a fictional history lesson that is almost completely unrelated to the main plot of chasing a raccoon pirate with an IQ of 1400 who stole a gold key from your grandma. It's all so bizarre.
The story isn't the draw in a shoot 'em up however which is fortunate for Keio. What isn't fortunate for Keio is the gameplay here is just fine, it's not bad but it's not amazing either. You only get two shooting weapon types and three bomb types that drop from enemies that rotate through until you pick the one you want. You can send some baby dragon chickens to do a kamikaze attack and that's the extent of it.
I will say the game is colourful, has some decent sprites and parallax scrolling with some pretty good up beat music it's just basic with some questionable character designs and awful awful writing and voice acting. Not a game I would play again or really recommend.