Cotton 100% Review

Initial release date: April 22, 1994

Rerelease Date: October 29, 2021

Series: Cotton

Developer: Ratalaika Games

Release Date: October 29, 2021

Reviewed On: Switch

Publisher: ININ Games

Genre: Shmup

Platforms: PlayStation 4, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 3

"Review Copy Provided By ININ Games"

The Cute-Em-Up genre has seen a plethora of series from the Parodious games to the Cotton series and there’s no letting up. While The Parodious and many others have had numerous entries in the west, the Cotton series hasn’t been so lucky to always get releases until 2021 where we got both a remake/reimagining of the best elements of the series in Cotton Reloaded along with several releases of the older entries that never released here such as Panaroama Cotton and today’s game being Cotton 100%. Do these rereleases do anything to add to the older formula or have quality of life changes to the games and does Cotton 100% hold up nearly 30 years after it’s original release? Let’s find out!

Gameplaywise, this doesn’t play any differently than any other Cotton title so if you’re expecting a radically different experience than the norm than this isn’t it. You still fly around the battlefield and shoot your power shots and then go on to collect powerups from the crystals dropped by enemies upon defeat. You can gain additional fairy partners which allow for having more independent streams of shots flying forward with you being able to gain a maximum of 3 total fairy partners. You also have access to the series standard Magic which allows you to shot screen clearing nukes and concentrated blasts and more. They drain the magic meter which you can fill up as you progress in the levels.

Levels are of average length taking no more than 4-5 minutes per level start to finish and have you taking on mid and end level bosses which offer a variety of challenge requiring you to learn their fairly simple patterns in order to progress. In series tradition, once you clear a stage, then you can go on to participate in “TEA TIME” which allows you to collect the various tea cups to increase your score and end level score and potentially gain a 1-UP.

You can complete the entire game in 30-45 minutes and can take on the other modes for some added challenge.

Strangely, the game (just like Panaorama Cotton) doesn’t see any effort put into an English translation for the script which is all left for the most part in Japanese in Katakana which unless you can read that will have you not able to enjoy what the story is no matter how simple it could be. It’s further strange since the games’ menus and more are all in English, just not the actual games’ campaign.

Graphically, there are no enhancements made to the game as it is presented in its original art style and 4:3 aspect ratio with the option to stretch the image to a 16:9 aspect ration and shrink it to a pixel perfect image with an adjusted aspect ratio.

Cotton 100% will is a fun little romp into the series’ past. If you love SHMUPS and Cute-Em-Ups then this has what I feel is something that just about anyone can find a way to have some fun with to keep you coming back to it over and over. I say give Cotton 100% a shot!