Dangerous Seed

***Dangerous Seed*** is a vertical scrolling shooter arcade game developed and published in Japan by Namco in 1989 along with Blast Off. Controlling one of three different starships (Alpha, Beta, and Delta), the player is tasked to destroy an alien race known as the "Danger Seed" before they wipe out all of mankind. Each fighter has their own set of weapons and abilities, such as Ring Lasers (Alpha), Melt Missiles (Beta), and Hyper Bombs (Delta), and could sustain multiple hits before being destroyed. The player individual ships could also combine into the combined ship, ***"Moon Diver"***, featuring the stronger shield and additional weapons (Hyper Bomb as Moon Diver's personal special weapon much like the Delta Ship). This game runs on Namco System 1 hardware.

This game was designed by Yuichiro Shinozaki, a character artist for Namco's own *Babylonian Castle Saga* franchise, with music that was composed by Yoshinori Nagumo. Early versions of this game were known as "*Kristallkern*", which remains in-game during the end credits. A conversion for the Sega Genesis was released a year later in 1990, which included new features such as additional stages (Inside Danger Seed for example) and arranged soundtrack. *Dangerous Seed* was also met with mixed reviews from critics — although the game was praised for its graphics, fast-paced gameplay and soundtrack, it was criticized for lacking originality and for being unable to stand out among other similar games. Some reviewers stated that it was one of the better shmups released for the Sega Genesis.

## Gameplay

If the arcade owner has set that the shot dipswitch in the game's options menu to "manual", you'll have to press the fire button rapidly to shoot at the enemies; however, if anyone has set the shot type to "rapid" or "full", you could press and hold the fire button to continuously fire shots at the enemies. All the bosses in this game will also retreat if you take too long over defeating them and the text ***"MISSED THE TARGET ENEMY!"*** will appear on the screen - and if you should allow this to happen on the 5th stage (Mars) whenever Multi-Squid retreats, the 6th stage will take place in Saturn instead of Jupiter (fighting Monster Head instead of Shark Mouth). Also, if you should allow it to happen on the regular 6th stage the seventh stage will take place on Pluto when Shark Mouth retreated (instead of Uranus, fighting Monster Mouth, instead of Twin Claw), and if you should allow it to happen on the secret 6th stage the seventh stage will take place in Neptune instead of Uranus *or* Pluto when Monster Head retreated (fighting Ultimate Tiger instead of Twin Claw); the enemies who appear on these secret stages are also tougher than the ones who appear on the stages they'll replace, but the music you heard remains the same.

Stage 1: 1st Tube (Triple Eye)

Stage 2: 2nd Tube (Strike Ants)

Stage 3: 3rd Tube (Roller Snail)

Stage 4: 4th Tube (Hunter Moth)

Stage 5: Mars (Multi-Squid)

Stage 6A: Jupiter (Shark Mouth)

Stage 6B: Saturn (Monster Head)

Stage 7A: Uranus (Twin Claw)

Stage 7B: Pluto (Monster Mouth)

Stage 7C: Neptune (Ultimate Tiger)

Stage 8/Final: Seed Pod (Danger Seed)