Last Battalion, Sting's first game! Options

[P.P.A.]

http://www.sting.co.jp/play/battalion/index.htm

I was randomly looking around Sting's site when I clicked their games page and scrolled all the way down, to surprisingly find this! It's a vertical shooter for Sharp X68000 (I need to buy one, it's got excellent arcade conversions) made in 1991. The music is pretty cool, the graphics nothing special and the game's pretty hard and fast. At least from what I could tell from the first stage on Normal. Because Sting was so nice to have the ROM of the game up there for free. :o
You can collect Power-Ups to increase your main shot and orbs that add two Options to your ship. The orbs change colour and you can collect them when they've got the desired one. When blue, the options behave like the ones in Gradius, and there are also others that diagonally fire into the direction you went the opposite of and ones that rapidly circle your ship. You can take multiple hits before you die.
Was this known?

This post has been edited by P.P.A.: Sep 30 2008, 02:09 PM