Ikaruga is an amazing game developed in 2002 by Treasure, one of the masters of 2D-based action games. Treasure is able to distill what made “old school” gaming great and finds innovate ways to push the essence of gaming greatness to its limits.Ikaruga originally came out for the Sega Dreamcast Console in 2002 and the Nintendo Gamecube in 2003. As with most shooters (which can be traced back to the classic Space Invaders and Galaga) you are a spaceship that needs to blow up everything it can as the level automatically scrolls you through various obstacles. Despite the gobs of enemies and bullets, one hit by the wrong bullet will lead to the loss of a life.One significant tweak to the Shooter Genre brings great depth to the gameplay experience. Your fighter can switch colors at the press of a button between being black or white. When you are black, you can absorb black bullets, but get hurt by white bullets. When you are white, the opposite happens.As you navigate through the game, you must decide which color your ship should be and appropriately avoid the opposite color bullets. Furthermore, when you are black your bullets are twice as effective on white enemies…when you are white you are twice as effective on black enemies. As you go through each level you really need to strategize where to position yourself and what color you should be to minimize risk and maximize point accumulation.There’s also a color based score multiplier that gives the game even more strategic depth…but I won’t go into that since 95% of the people that play this game (myself included) will have enough to worry about to stay alive!Ikaruga is almost sadomasochistic in its difficulty. But it’s brilliant design and deep gameplay are so fun that you’ll forget how badly you are being punished!Check out the video (above) to see a superior Ikaruga player playing through level 5 in “hard” mode.