Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

Dezaemon Plus starts with the kind of temptation that can swallow an evening: put down a few enemies, give them weapons and behavior, then fly through your own work to see whether it feels exciting or immediately falls apart. It is a vertical-shooter builder first, and its strongest trick is how directly it lets you shape the pressure. You decide where enemies appear, how they act, where power-ups go, and how bosses fire. That makes even a short test run feel personal in a way most shooters cannot match.

The real learning curve is not simply using the icon-driven tools; it is learning why a level works. A wave that looked intimidating in the editor may be dull in motion, while a modest enemy formation can become tense once you give the player just enough room to escape. You can adjust the player, enemy, and boss artwork, their explosions, and the scenery around them, so the process invites constant iteration rather than a one-and-done construction job.

Constraints give the project some needed discipline. You only get five levels, and all graphics draw from limited shared memory. That can frustrate anyone arriving with a giant arcade epic in mind, but it also pushes you toward a focused set of enemies and a coherent visual theme. Saving creations to a memory card and sharing them gives that work a reason to leave the editor.

Controller-based image editing is where the enthusiasm can snag. PlayStation mouse support helps, but if you are using the Japanese PSOne Classics release on later systems, there is no USB mouse support or analogue control, making careful pixel work more laborious. You should come in ready to tolerate fiddly editing, not expecting a smooth modern level-design suite.

Graphics

The look is whatever you can make of it: you draw the player craft, enemies, explosions, and scrolling backgrounds yourself. Parallax scrolling for backgrounds and enemy sprites gives your creations more motion than the earlier Super Famicom version, while the shared graphics limit forces you to be selective about what appears on screen.

Daioh Gale and the included contest submissions are valuable visual reference points, not just bonus shooting. They let you see finished games built with the same tools before you commit to designing every sprite from scratch.

Story

There is no authored campaign story driving Dezaemon Plus. The game is interested in the drama of a shooter stage—dangerous enemy waves, power-up placement, and boss attacks—not in fixed characters or plot developments.

That blank space is appropriate for a creator tool. If you want a game with a story already waiting to pull you forward, this will feel dry; its motivation comes from making a stage, testing it, and improving it.

The included Daioh Gale update and contest creations give you playable examples with their own themes and pacing, but they function mainly as inspiration. They are most useful when they make you think, “I want to try a version of that,” rather than as a narrative destination.

Overall Experience

Dezaemon Plus is a wonderfully specific kind of PlayStation game: part shoot-’em-up, part compact development kit. Its payoff arrives when separate pieces—your enemy placement, weapons, music, sprites, and background—finally behave like a stage you would actually want to play. Few games let you own that result so completely.

It is not effortless. The five-level cap, shared memory, and awkward controller drawing can turn ambition into irritation, and untranslated menus in the PSOne Classics Japanese import add another barrier. Yet these are tolerable hurdles if the act of making a shooter sounds as satisfying to you as playing one.

Give it a chance if you enjoy tinkering, have affection for vertical shooters, and can accept a deliberately old-school editing process. Skip it if you only want a polished arcade campaign or need modern creation tools. For the right gamer, the included examples and broad control over stage design make Dezaemon Plus far more than a curiosity.

Retro Replay Score

7.5/10