Played your Crazy Shuffle. Killer opening dude, and I love the Irish themes.
Some comments (Sorry if I mention anything you where already going to implement or fix):
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Is there a way to skip the opening? If not you'll want to add that option. It's a nice opening but I don't want to watch it every time I start the game. I'd like to be able to skip those black title screens before each level as well. -- Done! You can skip most of the intro by pressing X during load up.
You can't shoot again until your last bullet has left the screen. This means when I'm at the bottom of the screen I can shoot downwards in quick succession but shooting upwards I have to wait a while. Not sure if this needs to be fixed but you might want to change it so you can shoot again after a fixed amount of time has passed. -- This is deliberate, it's mainly part of game balance; do you risk getting up close and landing the shot, or do you try and play it safe and fire from afar, knowing it could leave you open if you miss? I did however increase the hit-box for the card, so it should be a lot easier to land things.
You can still shoot after you've died. Is this a glitch or does it have something to do with Co-op? -- Nope, this was a bug, has been fixed now.
The runner enemies do this glitchy thing where they momentarily appear on the side of the screen and then disappear. It's like they get blocked by something and then run back off screen. -- As confusing as it may seem, I'm more prone to keeping them doing that, for two reasons, the first being is that it's much more common to see it happen for the "Enraged" version, and it makes sense; it's supposed to be harder, secondly is that it does also seem more reminiscent of some of the glitches you find in NES games in general, but the second point is more of a personal opinion than anything else.
Since dying sends you so far back it'd be nice if there was a way to regain health. -- Considering it, but then again I'm unsure how exactly this would impact it. Technically the Health bar is more of a Life Count, but more frequent waypoints would be a good idea.
Sometimes an enemy will spawn where I'm standing. -- They'll still do this, but this time they come in blinking; you can't hit them, and neither can they hit you.
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That's all I've got for now. The games looking good so far.
I've yet to upload a new version to my Dropbox, but I have made some substantial changes to the game. They're as follows;
Skippable Intro.
Darkened Turf tiles to make active objects more visible.
Reduced duration of "pre-round summary" to around 40%.
Fixed shooting after dead glitch.
Introduced flashing spawn mobs to give the player a chance to avoid them when they spawn.
The Basis for the first Boss, including two songs and some sprites (have yet to begin scripting it).
To Do List:
Design the next 3 Acts
Place the remainder of monsters into the stages themselves
Finish Bosses
Complete entry for Crazy Shuffle.
Potential Next Projects:
Fire Breathers - Considering this purely from the perspective that it's a chance to do something -other- than a shooter or a side-scrolling game for A52O. As for Battle Systems, here's what I've come up with; effectively, the screen is divided up in half, one top, one bottom, depending on which type of multiplayer you go for. Co-Operative Wise, the goal is to beat the enemy on the other side with your Dragon; you control it and fire upwards, effectively like Space Invaders, but with complexities thrown in here and there. Vs. mode would be a little different; each player has something akin to 4 bases, or crystals. The players have to bombard one another with attacks on either end, either attacking each other's dragons to stun them briefly or going directly for the crystals themselves. A Mana bar is included for both players, so they don't just spam fireballs at one another, since a mid-air collision destroys said fireballs and allows each player to defend their own base. Upgrades would be included in the field for Versus, which would throw more dynamism to the gameplay mechanic for said mode.
Micro-Mike: Side Scrolling Racing game; the focus is to navigate series of walls and obstacles, picking up powerups such as rockets or boosters to keep in first place. C accelerates and X uses a powerup, of course releasing C would slow the craft down. Would love to put a cheesy 80s cartoon spin on this.
Evil Empire: Very much would focus on a more Zelda II esque realm of gameplay here; with experience and leveling up, but much more focus on navigating perilous terrain and riddles rather than pure on hack and slash.
The Boss: This would definitely turn into some form of homage to Contra, if I could pull it off.
Of course I'm not a fantastic programmer, it'd take some while getting a few of these things done.

Really is a case of dedication though; and we're so far into this project that there's no real reason to just let it disappear now. Is anyone else around that still wants to work on stuff for this?