I'm reposting this from another message board; my friend posted this there but it didn't get much response and he's trying to track down the game, and hopefully NeoGAF can help him find it!
EDIT: The Kanji name of the game:
限りなき戦い
If anyone can help solve this mystery it'd be much thankfull!Ok, so I'm being an obsessive Treasure geek again, and I found something interesting.
Now, back in 2003, Yaiman, in masks and secret disguise, did a "creator's note" interview to promote the new Astro Boy. Interestingly enough, he talked a lot about Bangai-O during the interview, and even mentioned that he hoped to do a sequel to it (looks like that wish came true). You can read the interview here: http://sega.jp/archive/creators/vol_25/1.html
The new Bangai-O is coming out so I decided to revisit that interview. I asked around about some of the parts I had trouble with and I came up with a rough translation of one of the questions that seemed interesting:
Q: Yaiman, what kinds of games have you developed at Treasure?
Yaiman: Since Treasure was founded, Gunstar and Guardian Heroes, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Silhouette Mirage, mostly working as a System Programmer.
The System Programmer is the unsung hero, but if he's the only one, he has to take the calls in the middle of the night if they find a bug before the release.
I felt a sense of crisis after working as a system programmer all the time. I approached the president and told him "Let me take a year to create something." I was able to persuade him, and Bangai-O is the result.
Bangaio started off as a remake of an X1 game called "*****" [Name purposefully edited out], but then I started to mix in Anime influences from Edeon, Macross and Layzner, and pretty soon it was didn't resemble the original, and so its being a remake became 120% a bluff/lie.
I think the president also liked it, since it was just before the game industry turned cold.
After that came out I went back to system programming on the GBA with Tiny Toon Adventures (*unreleased) and Hajime no Ippo. It also came to make a game portion. But it is although the system is also made since it is one programmer (smile). [No idea on this last line]
So there's an interesting mystery here. Apparently Bangai-O was at one point a remake of a Sharp X1 game, but the title of that game is purposefully edited out of the interview.
But the X1 wasn't a terribly successful system (it got destroyed by the NEC PC-8801) and there's really only a little more than 100 games for it. Most of these are classic arcade ports, adventure games, and RPGs. So I decided to look through the original side-scrolling action/shooting games on the system (there aren't many) and look what I found...
Look familiar? It's called Kagirinaki Tatakai, a tape-based X1 exclusive released by Enix in 1983.
I read up on the game... Apparently it's a free-scrolling shooter in which you can control a male or female main character, with two types of shots (lasers and rockets) as well as a bomb attack.
Alas, I only know where to find X1 disk games, not tape games, so I haven't played it for myself, but it seems like a pretty good match, don't you think?
I need to track this thing down.
EDIT: The Kanji name of the game:
限りなき戦い