Homura [The Best]

Countless games have been set during the Warring States period of Japan when clans fought for control of the entire country. Taito's vertical shooter Homura is also set in the fractious period with but the historic backdrop is secondary to the shooting action which is reminiscent of Psikyo's Sengoku Blade where the hero is capable of blasting shots and attacking with a sword. The original arcade hardware was based on a Taito Type X which sports a Celeron running at 2.5GHz and pipes video through a stock AGP Radeon 9200SE with 128MB of onboard ram. Overkill specs for a 2-D vertical shooter? Absolutely... but Homura shows no slowdown despite the amount of enemies and shots that roll, rotate, and swirl on screen. Even on the PS2 conversion, there's no slowdown for an excellent home conversion of the coin-op original.
The game mechanics are fairly routine with players controlling an airborne hero who battles wicked generals which are all capable of morphing into mighty demonic alter-egos. The "O" or "SQUARE" button blows out shots while the "X" or "TRIANGLE" button swings a sword. The sword may be used to reflect and deflect enemy shots right back at them for a added bit of strategy and high scoring tactics. «NCS Game Notes»