Star Force
Guest Review By: Mike "Midback" Pfister
| Star Force is a clone of some famous Space/Flight Sim games such as "Galaga" and "Galaxian" but most resembles dB-Soft's "Galg" in which you can move the ship on a vertical axis as well as a horizontal one. Another feature that made its way into Star Force is the scrolling screen that adds a sense of speed to the game. Enemies will speed past you in many different ways and although some of them are on a set pattern, a large number of enemies are not and will actually react according to your movements. They are also bestowed upon with their own weapons and are twice as fast as you doubling the difficulty factor of this game. |
| The history of this game is confusing and I could not get a straight answer from Tecmo or any other company that has had any dealings with this game which is surprising because in it's day the game sold over one million copies of the NES version in Japan alone. That does not include the other platforms or versions of the game that were released. Speaking of different versions of the game it was released on many different machines including Arcade Machines in "Play Choice" as well as even the PC and two very similar versions for the Nintendo. The two Nes version I speak of are the Tehkan-Hudson Soft release and the latter, Tecmo version of the game which included music and sound effects better than the original also had marginally better graphics. |
| The Story behind Star Force is a cliché-ridden story and quite a short one if as well, which is fully described on the back of the box it came with. As it goes: Moving in the darkness of the cosmos is a evil planet named GORDESS. Everyone gave up fighting against GORDESS because of it's awesome power, until one day a soldier riding a space patroller challenged GORDESS to fight! I forgot to mention the exceptionally bad grammar which makes me come to the conclusion that this game was translated from Japanese (and possibly into a few others before it was fully translated) into English. Well, I'm sure you're more interested in the facts of the game anyway so why don't I take a short paragraph to tell you about it. |
| The game starts off on a platform with your ship ready to blast off into space. The music starts and your number of lives flash until your ship finally departs from it's holding where you will almost instantaneously meet up with some of the more common enemies of the game. After your short meeting with the peons you'll come across your first asteroid base. The base is mainly just one big rock that has been inhabited and includes many different buildings and secret powerups that you can blow to smithereens. Of course this doesn't mean that you will be able to mosey your way around blowing up defenseless buildings. There will be countless numbers and varieties of enemies to encounter on your way each with their own attack style that you will have to overcome to move on. At the end of each level there is the obligatory boss guy that is thankfully nothing but a round object that moves around shooting slow pellets at you. You will first have to avoid any contact with this being and it's platform, which it takes off from (and also fires on you) but after you clear the main platform you'll just blast the boss and be on your way to the next level instantaneously. If you die don't worry you'll start off again on another platform but you will be in whatever level you made it to last. If you do manage to defeat the boss you won't move on to the next level like you would in any other game. First it will calculate your total score (all the while your ship is still there flying forward) then after it finishes with the tabulation of your score you will gain control of your ship once again and you will already be (ready or not) in the next level! |
| Another great aspect of this game is the way you powerup your ship. At designated points you will find a small orange ball floating around that you might mistake for an enemy the first time you see it. Go ahead and shoot it because it will turn into a small ship, which will then fly around from one end of the screen to the next until you touch it. When you do get ready for some bonus flying and attack speed as well as some nice bonus music. Beware though, colliding with the orange ball before it transforms into a ship will result in an explosion of your ship. |
| Look at it this way. If you've never played a Scrolling Space Sim (where have YOU been?) then you should definitely check this out. Well, why wouldn 't you? It's free as a rom and it works fine (with the exception of the first release by Hudson Soft) so get it already why are you still reading this. Oh, one more thing. If you CAN find the Tecmo version of the rom online please let me know because my Nintendo is old and it's on the fritz.. |
| -Mike "Midback" Pfister |
| You can pick this rom up freeroms.com. |
previous reviews:
Rygar
City Connection
Crash 'n' the Boys: Street Challenge