The game was known for having high sprite counts while maintaining fast speeds. Recca is described by shoot 'em up fans and reviewers as one of the toughest games in history. By using a rom hack or cheat code, the Sega logo appears and explodes, then the Nintendo logo appears.
Development
The game was developed by programmer Shinobu Yagawa, who would later work on games like Battle Garegga,, and Ibara. The music for the game was composed by Nobuyuki Shioda. As its name indicates, Recca was created for a shooting game competition called the "Summer Carnival" by Naxat Soft, which took place on July 17, 1992. Although it is a little-known game, Recca is one of the few games that pushes the hardware of the Famicom console to its limits. For example, the game shows sprites for effects at 30fps instead of 60fps to work around the sprite limitations of the system. Another game to use this technique is Contra.
Release
The game was released on July 17, 1992 in Japan. As only a few copies were sold, the game is now quite rare, with cartridges selling for around. One reason for its general obscurity is due to the fact that upon its release in 1992, focus was already on the Famicom's successor, the Super Famicom console. In 2014, the Famicom cartridge was listed as costing £350—£400 in the United Kingdom. It was released for the Nintendo eShop on December 12, 2012, costing only. It also was released for the first time in North America and Europe on the Nintendo eShop on September 5, 2013 and August 15, 2013 respectively. The soundtrack was released by Scitron on September 21, 2005 as Legend Consumer Series - Summer Carnival '92 Recca Original Soundtrack.
Reception
On release, Weekly Famitsu gave the game a score of 19 out of 40. Famitsu writers commented that it is unsuitable for beginners, and that there too many enemies on screen to keep track. In 1994, Polish magazine Top Secret gave the game a score of 5/5. Nintendo Life rated the 3DS Virtual Console release an 8/10 and commented that "it's hard to recommend Recca to anybody but the most die-hard fans of the genre. Despite this, however, it is easily one of best and most impressive shoot 'em up games made for the system, and anybody who isn't afraid of a challenge will find this a more than worthy pickup."
