Cotton 2: Magical Night Dreams

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Cotton was originally released by Sega for the arcades and was based on Sega's ST-V hardware in 1997. Months later, gamers enjoyed a virtually arcade-perfect console port on the Sega Saturn. You control a young girl (named Appli) or a scantily clothed witch (named Silk) that flies using a magic broom (the game supports two-players cooperative game). You attack with normal, direct or side shots and power attacks and you may also use "spells" in case things go tough. By defeating enemies you get a number of yellow crystals that you can use to further enhance your firepower by increasing your "experience level". But you need to be careful and not get hit as you'll lose some of your experience level. You also have the option to just shoot these yellow crystals before collecting, to change their color and increase the desired elemental power (those powers have a large effect the game). Rather than just dodging bullets and moving into safe positions, Cotton 2 gives its unique sense of realism and playability that is quite unusual on the shoot 'em up category of games.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
Cotton 2 has gorgeous graphics and great music. The best thing is that its visuals look even better when in motion. The environments have some of the most beautiful and most brightly colored background designs we've ever seen on a Saturn classic 2D horizontal shooter and the animation is flawless. Most of the background graphics are non-static and this makes the game even prettier to watch.
The sound is of high standards as well, featuring a bunch of strong, arcade style sound effects and a few catchy PCM / Synth music scores.