Shock Troopers a perfectly-paced, bombastic, hyperactive top-down shoot-'em-up loaded up to the eyeballs with infinite ammo, explosions and a non-stop parade of faceless grunts practically leaping to their untimely deaths; all in the name of white-hot adrenaline-pumping action! If that sounds a little over the top to you, then you might want to sit this one out. This is a game where your default weapon is a fully-automatic assault rifle whose bullets occupy 1/12th of the screen, one where you strike a goofy anime pose each time you're hurt and throw grenades like grains of sand. It's sheer dedication to assaulting the senses meant that when I put the game down and blinked, I saw one of the game's bosses burned into my retinas. I can see the game getting tiring on repeat sessions, despite the number of alternate characters and paths to take, but the sheer amount of fun I felt playing Shock Troopers for the first time made it well worth the discount price. As for the port, it's pretty bog standard. The kindest thing I can say about it is that it works, but there are so many options missing. Options like key bindings. Left-handed people are a myth, after all. The game also works just fine on Linux despite not mentioning so on the store page. It's listed as an "extra" in the GOG library, but it's there. What ultimately sold me on this release however is its inclusion of a complete Neo Geo BIOS and ROM file for the game that you can use in any emulator you please. I've been dreaming of a way to legitimately purchase console ROMs for my RetroPie machine for years and GOG finally made it happen. Just extract the Linux version as a zip archive and rummage around. I look forward to more companies allowing me to do the same with their games...
