Yeah, yeah yeah, the arcade shooter genre doesn’t do well at retail, everyone plays on emulators and blah, and blah, and blah. But I happen to LIKE packaged games, crazed game historian wannabe that I am. Anyway, Rising Star Games is here to save the day with Akai Katana on the Xbox 360. While this Cave shooter won’t win any awards as the prettiest gal at the party, the intense shooter action is there in all its “bullet hell” glory and like many classics in the genre, it’s all about the replay value over merely blowing through the game once and that’s that.

By the way, Rising Star also has a few fun plans for the Nintendo DS/DSi and 3DS in terms of some cool casual titles, but I’ll save those for a new post shortly.