Johnny Turbo’s Arcade: Heavy Barrel Quick Thoughts

The entire time I played SNK 40th Anniversary Collection, I couldn’t stop wondering about Heavy Barrel, a Data East arcade game that used similar twisting joysticks to Ikari Warriors. Then, suddenly, a week later, it comes to the eShop!

And the result is… okay.

Basically, pushing left or right on the right analog stick rotates your aim, or when using a single Joy-Con, it’s the L and R buttons. This is basically what I would have expected, and it’d probably have been easier to accept had that darned SNK collection not just come out.

Having the “push right analog in the direction you want to aim” here as well would have been a dream. I’d even just like the option to have my character fire in whatever direction they’re currently facing. (I don’t honestly know how easy/hard that is to implement, though.)

I think this is a case of really bad timing for launch date. Had I been FTE Game I’d have gotten this out either earlier than SNK 40th Anniversary Collection or given it like a month to let the excitement die down a bit—especially given both are on the exact same platform and targeting the same crowd.

I also think it’s bad timing because it’s coming one week after a singular release that houses multiple games of this type. There’s a bit of “do I really need another game in this genre” feeling that cropped up five minutes into playing.

So, another reason to give it some buffer.