Recca

Recca is a fast-paced vertically scrolling shooter where the player controls the Recca415 space fighter craft in the year 2302. An invading alien armada plans to destroy mankind after obliterating the Andromeda galaxy shortly after humans made a peace agreement with its inhabitants. There aree three modes of play: "Normal Game", "Score Attack" and "Time Attack". A fourth game mode, "Zanki Attack", is hidden and only accessible via cheat code.

In normal mode, the player must destroy incoming enemies and face bosses while avoiding collision with their bullets and other obstacles across four stages. The Recca ship can be equipped with five distinct main weapons, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. In addition, the ship can also be equipped with two satellite-like options by collecting five sub-weapons that fire in multiple directions. These power-up items are dropped from enemies after being destroyed and can be upgraded by collecting the respective weapon icon.

Recca was created by KID, a contract developer who worked on American-focused games for Taxan, for a shooting game competition hosted by Naxat Soft called "Summer Carnival", which took place on July 17, 1992 and featured alongside the PC Engine CD-ROM² shooter Alzadick. The game was programmed by Shinobu Yagawa, whose later works at Raizing and Cave includes Battle Garegga, Ibara, Pink Sweets: Ibara Sorekara and Muchi Muchi Pork!. The visuals were drawn by a graphic designer only known by the pseudonym of "Etsuka" and the music was composed by Nobuyuki Shioda.

Shioda met Yagawa when assigned to compose songs for Recca, who requested him to score music that lasted four minutes, as Yagawa claimed they could make what they wanted for sound and "do the impossible on the Famicom." Shioda thought that four-on-the-floor dance music would fit for a shoot 'em up and stated that he first tried composing Eurobeat music, which did not fit. Wanting a dark and heavy sound for the game's hardcore techno-style atmosphere, Shioda listened to various CD albums for inspiration and Yagawa also lent him other albums, one of which was Detroit techno but he could not find sample materials for his work at the time, relying on Ryuichi Sakamoto's B-2 Unit (1980) album and recordings of Igor Stravinsky instead. For the musical style he wanted for the title, Shioda turned down the volume on the Famicom's two square wave channels to make low-end triangle wave sounds louder. Shioda also composed three "joke" songs for the sound test screen after being showed the image of a character called "Recca-chan" drawn by Etsuka during development.

Recca received mostly positive reception from critics. However, public response was mixed; Japanese readers of Family Computer Magazine voted to give the title a 16.8 out of 30 score, indicating a middling following among the Famicom userbase. According to composer Nobuyuki Shioda, the game did not sell many copies during its release.

Famitsu's four reviewers commented that Recca is unsuitable for beginners and that there are too many onscreen objects to track—criticizing the graphics but praising the music. Brømba of Polish gaming magazine Top Secret gave the game a perfect rating in 1994, praising the fun factor, dynamic action, game modes, colorful visuals, and digitized soundtrack, regarding it as "one of the best in its class". A writer for Japanese magazine Yuge gave the title positive remarks for pushing the Famicom hardware, stating that "The pleasure of destroying enemies that are constantly attacking shifts to a feeling of ecstasy."