Trouble Shooter

About Trouble Shooter

Trouble Shooter (1991), originally Battle Mania in Japan, is Vic Tokai's self-parodying Genesis shooter in which operatives Madison and Crystal fly to rescue a kidnapped prince.

Trouble Shooter in Depth

Combat operative Madison is assigned to rescue a prince who has been taken hostage, accompanied throughout by her partner Crystal. Unlike Madison, Crystal can flip her firing direction to shoot behind them and is invulnerable to enemy fire. At the start of almost every stage, the player picks a special weapon, which must recharge after each use. Four kinds of power-up appear: speed-ups, life-ups, extra firepower and speed-downs. There is no lives system and only three continues, so collecting life-ups to raise Madison's hit points is essential.

The game has a distinctly self-parodying tone in its enemies, story and dialogue. Its concept came from an idea for a manga set between 1995 and 1997, and its influences included the book series The Gaming Magi, 1980s idol Noriko Sakai and locations near Sega's headquarters. One scene shows the heroine stomping on a Super Famicom, added because designer Fujito "Takayan" Takada was annoyed at how much bigger Super Famicom game budgets were; afterwards a fax went out to Sega's studios asking developers not to disparage other companies' characters and trademarks. Crystal's weapon-explaining role was originally given to a man named Fugu with a wheeled, pincered one-eyed cat, cut because Sega's quality assurance team disliked him.

Making Trouble Shooter

Fujito "Takayan" Takada fought to get it greenlit and, with little support from Vic Tokai at first, handled every aspect himself, from design, graphics, programming and music to PR, sales and scheduling, before more people joined and he moved into a supervisory role. Though finished in 1990, it was not released until 1991. It received generally favourable reviews; GamePro praised its humorous story, and Japanese readers of Mega Drive Fan and Sega Saturn Magazine rated it well.