Let’s Go Island: Lost on the Island of Tropics (Arcade)

The arcade light gun shooter genre is an oversaturated one, and for good reason. Even people with little interest in video games can understand the simple concept of pointing a plastic gun at the screen to shoot things, and with most cabinets having at least two guns to play with, the genre lends itself to cooperative play even for people of varying skill levels.  Setting yourself apart in this genre is a difficult task, and even within its own company Sega has produced so many light gun shooters you’ll have some overlap of ideas inevitably. Let’s Go Island: Lost on the Island of Tropics doesn’t get off to the best of starts in differentiating itself with a redundant title that only really tells you you will most certainly be shooting things on a tropical island, but this sequel to Let’s Go Jungle: Lost on the Island of Spice does try a few things to earn eyes beyond asserting its setting. The moving boat-like seats you sit in while playing will probably draw some attention of course, but the emphasis on cooperation is probably its more intriguing angle.

 

In Let’s Go Island: Lost on the Island of Tropics, a tourist named Beth enlists the help of a guide named Zack for her tropical vacation, but things quickly go awry when their boat is assaulted by unusually aggressive aquatic life. Thrown off their course by angry enormous animals stationed around an old resort island Zack used to work on, the pair of strangers quickly learn they have to work together to survive, the two usually lucky enough to find guns with infinite ammunition that requires no reloading so they can hold back the wildlife. Their efforts to escape to safety end up complicated not only by the animals that are seemingly affected by a toxic mutagen but a band of treasure-hunting pirates who try to rope the pair into things, but while circumstances are technically dire, Beth and Zack often engage in relaxed and sometimes humorous banter during the adventure. The two are somewhat silly caricatures and the game goes for over-the-top exaggeration in most moments, but underneath the silliness is also the tale of a budding romance as the two can start to grow closer and more reliant on each other as the story progresses. They can end up chilly or even angry towards each other as well if you either don’t have a second player or don’t coordinate with the one you have well, although the already cartoonish presentation doesn’t make the bad ending a totally sour conclusion if you do end up hitting it. Notably, the endings do still provide some good parts, it’s mostly the relationship between the two that will change based on how you played up until then.

To get the better ending where Beth and Zack do warm up to each other though, Let’s Go Island: Lost on the Island of Tropics asks the two players to not focus so much on the broad coverage of incoming enemies that makes having a backup player advantageous but instead focus your fire on the same creatures often enough. You don’t need to be doing this at all times to bring the pair close together thankfully, but outside of boss battles where the range of targets is going to be limited by its very nature, it is unusual that a game that will throw tens of insects, fish, and other aggressive wildlife at you in a way that requires hitting multiple creatures quickly to avoid damage will also incentivize focusing your attention so much. Your bond increases for every mutated animal that received a decent amount of shots from both players and creatures do go down fairly quickly, but it is because of how quickly you can dispense with a single target that this system isn’t the best conceived. The simple fun of blasting your way through is dampened if you and the other player need to keep your guns pointed in the same areas to earn these bonuses, this design idea perhaps limiting the way players engage with the game rather than informing it in an interesting direction.

 

The standard shooting in Let’s Go Island: Lost on the Island of Tropics is admittedly as simple as it can be though. As the action moves forward automatically you hold down the triggers on the cabinet’s attached guns and there is rarely a reason to relax those fingers, the game featuring nothing that you are punished for shooting. Perhaps this was why they tried to include a mechanic that guides you towards thinking about what you shoot more, but there are some concepts in play that better give the game a bit more to it than maintaining a constant hail of gunfire. At its most basic you’ll obviously need to prioritize enemies so that ones that are at risk of damaging you sooner are dealt with first, many of the animals you are up against coming in large groups and are incredibly quick to boot. Focusing on the most dangerous animals though can lead to you missing extra things you can shoot in the background like vases with goodies inside, and one way to keep playing longer without entering more credits is shooting certain things to fill up a Life Up jar that can replenish your health. These still don’t break from the core format too much and the shooting can feel a bit repetitive even when you know there’s other things to shoot than the dangerous critters of the island, but there are some other ideas at play to shake things up.

 

Let’s Go Island: Lost on the Island of Tropics is a rather short adventure, there technically being only three stages to going through the game but the middle stage is one you get to pick from a set of three options. The first level, final level, and even the boss for the middle stage will be the same every time, but those middle stages let you pick between areas like the resort town, a water-filled cave, or a golf course area, and these bring with them probably the best idea for variation the game has. At a certain point in these levels you will be asked to fight back animals not with your typical gun with its endless ammunition but some new weapon type that must be fired more carefully. Bottle rockets take a bit to fire, the golf game has you nail giant crabs with your shots, and the cave features the two characters fighting back with instruments that are slow to swing, these breaks from the norm encouraging planned shots after a game where you are often free to fire as often as you please. Notably, a range of enemy types can also keep the adventure a bit more interesting. Some creative picks like giant sea cucumbers and spiny sea stars mean the game isn’t just leaning on sharks and crabs for all its action, and going from riding a boat to driving around the island to even diving underwater gives more room for animal life variation. While certain segments do focus hard on one species exclusively the game does make shooting down creatures a bit more involved with their different forms of movement.

Bosses are few in this arcade game though and one of them, the octopus, puts in quite a few repeated performances. The main differentiation between a boss battle and shooting down normal animals is that the boss can only take damage at certain times and in certain ways. Target rings appear over areas that need to be shot during those periods of vulnerability, the players needing to do so quickly as the boss will get in an attack if the rings aren’t cleared in time. Some bosses like the giant queen bee make this a bit more interesting by having her carried by underlings you need to try and shoot down when possible but the major complication beyond just the boss’s own movements causing those target rings to shift position is that they can be attacking during that phase as well. The octopus might fire squids at you at the same time, meaning you need to destroy them to avoid damage while also trying to balance time so you can hurt the boss. This battle style is a break from the regular play but still not too demanding, but it does help the game avoid settling into the mindless shooting a touch more.

 

However, the last bit of varied play Let’s Go Island: Lost on the Island of Tropics injects isn’t the best idea. At certain points you’ll stop shooting as you need to focus instead on a few moments of play that are almost minigames. One of these will have an arrow on screen spinning around, the players needing to point their guns in the direction it points at when it stops to avoid damage. Similarly, there are points where the button otherwise only used for starting the game crops up. The big button will need to be hammered rapidly at some points to avoid damage in a bit of action that isn’t engaging and only made difficult because it requires you to move away from your weapon for a bit. The times when you need to press your button with proper timing are at least a challenge that tests the player in some way, but these are also very tight in their requirements and both players need to perform it properly, this almost feeling more like a way to squeeze more credits out of players if they’re doing too well at the guns. Most of the adventure isn’t overly difficult and most enemies give you a fair bit of time to react so having these small moments where the game almost seems like its trying to squeak in cheap damage aren’t the best, but they are also small enough they don’t draw too much attention away from the shooting action.

THE VERDICT: In quite a few ways, Let’s Go Island: Lost on the Island of Tropics is a very basic light gun shooter. It picks some interesting aquatic life to go up against at points and the goofy presentation of the island settings keeps it light-hearted, but it is mostly a game of pointing and shooting without much extra depth. It does attempt a few ideas to spice things up, the bosses having a different fighting system with a bit more focus and pressure and the weapon swaps during the middle levels encourage an interesting focus on accuracy over constant gunfire, but other concepts aren’t quite there. The cooperative element seems to restrict your options more than improves them if you choose to go for developing Zack and Beth’s bond, but the button press and gun pointing sections are the only sections where it feels like the game truly introduces something that weakens the basic thrill of blasting your way through an island of monstrous twists on island wildlife.

 

And so, I give Let’s Go Island: Lost on the Island of Tropics for arcade machines…

An OKAY rating. Developing a bond with the player beside you in this light gun shooter is a fun concept and one with potential, and even if you aren’t trying too hard to focus on it you can accrue some decent chemistry between Zack and Beth. Unfortunately, actively going for the better outcomes of the story feel like they’re restricting your options in a game where the pace and enemy variety don’t quite gel with the concept of focused fire. Bosses benefit since they will have clear areas to target and even parts that can be destroyed more quickly if you do work together, but the regular enemies are abundant and often attacking too quickly to try and really coordinate which one you want to target. Perhaps that is why the game is not too fussed if you don’t develop the bond between the two leads, the overall light tone meaning an ending where they don’t become romantically involved able to instead lean into a humorous finale. Still, this emphasis on cooperation felt like what could have pushed this above being a fairly typical light gun arcade game, but most of the adventure will still be holding that trigger and pointing the gun around with the enemy variety just enough that you won’t zone out or lose interest. The breaks from that format are unfortunately too mixed to really deserve praise, the weapon swaps a nice idea but then you need to do the button pressing minigames that don’t offer much even if you do execute them correctly. The weapon swaps at least allow you to recover from a missed shot and the gun pointing minigame also won’t lead to a player being doomed if they aren’t completely on the ball, but the button pressing feels awkward every time it interrupts the action and the game probably should have thought of other ways to briefly tighten focus.

 

Let’s Go Island: Lost on the Island of Tropics did have some ideas on how to set itself apart, but few worked out to its benefit. On the bright side, blending into the middle ground of arcade light gun shooters means people who pick it up probably won’t be too bothered by the weaker ideas, but it also means this likely won’t be a game drawing players back. The cooperative partners testing their bond and bringing the two leads together if they can coordinate well isn’t even unique within Sega’s arcade catalogue, but blasting enormous island fauna in a goofy game world can still provide a brief surge of fun for the kind of casual players this game will probably rope in. Perhaps the oddly redundant and generic title was a clue to this game’s inevitable mediocrity, but since arcades already have a limited amount of games on offer, if this is the light gun shooter they opted to buy, then you won’t be too bothered if you do give it a shot.