This new port supersedes the Unity versions that Bethesda has been selling for the last few years and includes a whole host of new and very welcome features; Boom compatibility being the big one from my point of view. There are also some really nice extras in this package such as the "id Vault" which brings a lot of pre-release spritework and contextual information and is great to see presented in this way for the long-time fan. In many ways this port attempts to be the "definitive" version of the classic Doom experience, but unfortunately this is overshadowed by the inclusion of the modern censored IWADs which feature things like green crosses on health pickups (required under the Geneva convention or some such nonsense, but very jarring if you've been playing since '93) and modified artwork in the Wolfenstein 3D levels. I wish there was a way Bethesda could provide us with a remastered version of the game that includes the proper IWAD versions, but unfortunately until that happens there will always be a need to plug the IWADs from the DOS versions into a source port for the true experience.
Fantastic port of probably the earliest example of the danmaku, or bullet hell, genre of shmup - smaller hitboxes, elaborate bullet patterns etc. The final shooter from Toaplan which has a mixture of Psikyo/Cave feel to it. The port itself is really well done and plays fantastically. You get two versions of the game here: the original and the "Special" version which rebalances the game somewhat and makes things slightly easier for novice players. This is the first of the Bitwave ports I've purchased as I'm not such a fan of the more old-school style of shmup these days, but if this is anything to go by I'll certainly be keeping an eye on their future releases. If they could get their hands on any Cave titles and bring them to GOG I would be very happy indeed.
This was one of a few games of my childhood/early adolescence that was still missing from GOG, so I'm really happy to see it arrive here finally. At the time of its release, Raven were one of my favourite developers, and I enjoyed pretty much all of their output. While this is a top-down shooter it always felt to me like a typical FPS of the time, but played from that top-down perspective. TNP allows you to set up the classic WASD + mouse control scheme right out of the box, and there's just a kind of mid-late '90s Quake/Build era vibe to the game, despite its altered perspective. I had a lot of fun with this back in the day, although never actually finished it due to a lack of skill at the time, coupled with the rather confusing hub-based navigation the game uses - probably one of its only weaker points. If you enjoy '90s PC FPS games I'd really recommend checking this out as it scratches a very similar itch, albeit from a top-down view. Now we just need its fantasy counterpart, Mageslayer, to be added!
What can be said about this - easily the best run 'n gun shooters of the 8 and 16 bit eras, assembled in one great package. This release includes all major regional variants of each game, which is particularly useful from some such as Contra III (Contra Spirits) and Contra Hard Corps as the Japanese versions are a tad more forgiving - Spirits gives infinite continues (limited in US/PAL versions of III/Super Probotector) while the JP version of Hard Corps allows you to get hit three times before losing a life as opposed to the US and PAL versions' once.
