The New Classics #29: Cotton Reboot!

 

 

The Backstory: Back in the ’80s, some developers grew bored of dark and serious Shoot’em ups, and decided to shake things up and bring a breath of fresh air to the genre. Thus was born the Cute’em up subgenre, bringing some much-needed glitz and wackiness to the mix. The Cotton series is one of the subgenre’s luminaries, along with Fantasy Zone and Parodius; as for Cotton Reboot, it’s a remake of the original game released in 1991 on a slew of platforms. I love Shoot’em ups, and I adore flashiness; wouldn’t that be a match made in heaven?

 

 

The Game: Okay now, I had a blast right from the first second. Cotton is all smooth physics, exhilarating speed and colourful sparkliness — and instant controls appropriation! It’s also not too technical — meaning that you can shoot at random and still clear the way. It’s obviously meant to be a game you play by instinct, and to have fun without timing your every move. 

 

 

The ‘Time Attack’ mode is perfect for getting small bites of shooting — two or five minutes, precisely. Then you have the main remastered game, which I obviously didn’t complete, and the original X68000 version (screenshot above). Now that’s a really interesting addition: not only is it a valuable piece of gaming history, but it also allows the educated gamer to realise everything modern console capabilities bring to the series. The X68000 version, while being quite colourful compared to shooters of that era, remains much more subdued than the remake. You clearly get the feeling that the series is only now reaching its full potential, and will only get better with time.

 

 

The Verdict: No suspense here, I just discovered myself a New Classic! Now I just wanna make the ultimate stretch and buy Cotton Fantasy: Superlative Night Dreams, the series’ newest canon exclusive entry. It’s a sure shot, honey!