A "cute 'em up" originally released in Japanese arcades in 1991. It was the first game in the Cotton series. Driven by her sugar cravings, Cotton helps the fairy kingdom remove the dark mist that is terrorizing their dreamlike world.
On today's Octurbo, we're going to look at a game far less stupid. Well, maybe not far less. It's Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams, the originator of another strange but fairly well-regarded shoot 'em up franchise that saw its first home release on the TurboGrafx-CD. Remarkably, despite being a very Japanese "cute 'em up", both the Arcade and TGCD versions saw US releases. That's unfortunately less true for the many Cotton games that followed, many of which are considered some of the better shoot 'em ups for the PS1, Sega Mega Drive and Sega Saturn and these days come with the sort of legendary price tags you'd see on other Sega shoot 'em ups like Radiant Silvergun.
As for the plot of Cotton, the player is a purple-haired witch on a mission. A mission to eat as much candy as possible, and perhaps take down an eldritch horror or two if they happen to get between her and her sugar cravings. As would eventually become the case for many Touhou games, the player's "ship" is simply Cotton herself on a magical broom -- though she's unfortunately a rather large target, given the size of her sprite, so there's no clever tiny hitbox dodging here. Also, unlike Cotton's cutesy saccharine sequels, this game can be... well, kind of dark. Well, I guess we'll find that out soon enough. (Props also to the music! I don't know if rockin' guitars fit this magical witch girl game as well as they do something like Rondo of Blood or Lords of Thunder, but I'm not complaining.)
I'm Starting to Cotton Onto Turbo-CD's Anime Weirdness, But Not Onto Finding Better Puns
Welcome to Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams! Or Fantastic Night Dreams: Cotton! Either's probably fine! The opening story reveals that the world was suddenly plunged into permanent night and that everyone's kind of bummed out about it. Well, except Cotton, who is kind of drowsy right now from a lack of blood sugar.A fairy beseeches Cotton to use her magical talents to remove the mist that plagues the dreamworld and restore all the sunshine and rainbows and-Nah.However, it's only when the fairy mentions Cotton's favorite candy is in some way involved that she starts paying attention.We have ourselves an accord, it seems.Cotton's a shoot 'em up of the horizontal bent. It's also kind of weird. What's with that creepy moon?As well as the usual waves of enemies, you occasionally bump into instances like this weirdo here. The rotating rocks appear to be invincible, so you can either attack the core or just try to avoid them.Enemies drop these crystalline power-ups which can be shot at to cycle through their colors, like the bells in TwinBee. Red and blue give you one-off beams of death (in both fire and lightning varieties, respectively), while yellow and orange ones increase Cotton's experience bar. All going up levels does is increase the strength of Cotton's standard fireballs, but she levels down every time she loses a life, which makes holding onto these upgrades fairly tough.These circular power-ups (the thing at the bottom middle of the screen) upgrade your bombs instead, which roll along the ground like in Gradius. A lot of the more annoying enemies tend to hang out at ground level, so -- in the words of Big Jeffrey -- drop 'em.This nightmarish Waddle Doo is super annoying with that eye laser. You can't dodge it, and it arcs upwards to catch you unawares.This weird thing from the Chronicles of Riddick movie is the first boss. As well as these green shots fired from a part of its anatomy that I don't want to think about too much, it'll also stomp the ground and make the screen all "Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy" for a few moments.After each boss, you have an opportunity to grab as much cash as possible. Far as I can tell, the only reason to earn points are for bonus 1-Ups.I have no idea what Cotton's fairy is named, so we'll just call her Princess Pandering. We're just tallying up points here before the next level.Cotton finds the first candy, which she calls "Willows" for some reason. That's, uh, quite the expression.The fairy informs her that she needs to collect all seven Willows, at which point they turn into a bigger one? And Cotton buys it.We're back to flying eyeballs and this weird little nymph who jumps up and sends music notes out in every direction. These murder Cotton instantly if she hits one, so it can't be very good music. Oh wait, maybe these are mandragora then? Or womandragora? I'm just going to shoot fireballs at it and not worry about correct nomenclature.These weird little acorn/Daruma guys are adorable. If you shoot the pile, the guys at the bottom fly out and have to run back to the top again. I just flew over it.Holy crap these clouds creep me the eff out. They're loving the abuse.Here's this stage's mid-boss, which appears to be a tree from Mortal Kombat filling in for Whispy Woods. All it does it spit out seeds that turn into little tree monsters, but these seeds can appear right on top of you.It gets even creepier looking after it explodes, but this stage isn't going to stop with the heebie-jeebies any time soon.Now it's graveyard time, and the worst enemy type yet. Zombies throw their heads at you and the heads are super effective at homing in on wherever Cotton appears to be. They eventually stop moving and plummet out of the sky, but if you're underneath it when this happens you're pretty much boned. It's when you're dodging two or three of these at once that it starts becoming untenable.This Grim fellow is our next boss. Initially, he just fires homing missiles at you.Eventually he does this. Now there's a whole bunch of flying crap to watch out for. Fortunately, the flying hands go down after a few volleys. The skull takes a bit more firepower to destroy.And then he decides to do this. Yuckers.Now that is the expression of someone who has finally lost all semblance of sanity. Only five more stages to go!Probably best I call this one before any more nightmare fuel shows up.
Cotton's a decent little shoot 'em up, and another one of those games that forces me to question whether the genre is inherently hard as balls or if I just suck at them. It is shockingly easy for Cotton to fly off her little broom while making dumb noises, and it was only through liberal use of the save state key that I was able to make it this far. I really don't care for the "power-down when you die" rule that these games tend to exhibit, because most enemies require a few seconds of constant fire before they explode and making the game considerably harder every time I die is not how you do difficulty curves. The constant downgrading is why I didn't much care for Cave Story either (well, that and its abstruseness).
It's certainly not bad though. I hear the 1999 PS1 port Cotton Original is the definitive version, because it takes the music from this game and the graphics from the Arcade original, which seems like a smart way to do a late port. And talking of the music...
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