ACA NEOGEO Prehistoric Isle 2

Genre: Shmup

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local), Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Prehistoric Isle 2 is a Shmup released in Arcades in 1999, with this modern release coming to Nintendo Switch and Xbox One in 2018, and then ported to PlayStation 4 in 2019. This game has players piloting an attack helicopter, rescuing bystanders and fighting off energy blast-shooting dinosaurs and other creatures attacking modern-day cities.

The bystander-rescuing gameplay element is a nice twist on what is otherwise fairly standard Shmup gameplay, but in addition to this Prehistoric Isle 2 offers some pretty great visuals for its time, apparently making use of some pre-rendered imagery both for enemies and backgrounds, with the latter making for some impressively dynamic scene transitions.

I should note that this is yet another one of those games that, by default, forces you to press a button for each shot fired, a frustrating limitation you often saw in older Shmups, though thankfully you can change this to auto-fire in this release’s option menus.

When it comes to negatives, the main one here is that the game’s visual style makes it very difficult to tell what is an obstacle or enemy to be avoided and what is a background element that is only there to add to the presentation. Plus, even enemy attacks that clearly must be avoided aren’t very clear about where it’s actually safe.

This release of the game includes a new “Hi-Score Mode” that challenges players to get as far as they can in one run. There is also a new “Caravan Mode” that does much the same, but with the limit being five minutes. In addition, this release of the game includes both English and Japanese versions, and gives players a decent array of options, including various display options, sound options, challenge modifiers, button mapping, and online leaderboards.

At $8, the Arcade Archives release of Prehistoric Isle 2 seems fair enough, particularly given the semi-obscure nature of this game. Having said that, one of this game’s greatest strengths, its presentation, is also its greatest weakness, making it more difficult to play. In the end, I think that Shmup fans, at least, will want to give this one a look.

tl;dr – Prehistoric Isle 2 is a Shmup where players pilot helicopters fighting off dinosaurs and rescuing bystanders. The presentation here is great, but this also makes it hard to tell what’s safe and what’s not. Overall, this is a decent but flawed game that fans of the genre may want to check out.

Grade: C+

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