There's no end of shoot 'em ups on the NES; relatively easy to program and without too much to draw or display in most sections, these games dominated arcades and home consoles for a while, alongside other titles. So its only fair to take a look at a few of the shoot 'em ups that made their way to NES for the beginning of my 12 Days of NESmas feature. One thing to note is that despite the misconception, the 12 days of Christmas begin on the 25th of December and carry through to January; this is not late, it's right on time!
Game: Life Force
Console: Nintendo Entertainment System
Developer: Konami
Release Date: 1988
Life Force is a fairly by-the-book shoot 'em up that sees players make their way through 6 levels, alternating between side-scrolling and vertical. Every now and then there's sections that result in dead ends, which can be frustrating on the first time around. For every red-powerup collected, players can cash in their progression up the weapons tree and use a more powerful weapon until losing a life. There's a laser, a pulse weapon and a double shot, but they're all about as effective as eachother in the end.
The game's not particularly easy, and I did find myself using the Konami code to progress through it. This is a staple feature of NES games though, and since a full run of the game could take around 30 minutes, it's only natural for the developers to try and push some more distance out via difficulty. There's no real issue with the amount of enemies or bullets that come at players however; its mainly the landscape that causes the loss of lives, and bosses at the end of each level.
Graphically the game can be hard to make out at times, especially in section with repeating backgrounds, but once players are used to things, there's an interesting game world, filled with menacing if a little repetitive enemies, and inventive bosses. Musically there's some fun tracks featured in the game as a whole, and it's definitely in the top half of NES games in the sound department.
Overall Life Force can initially seem daunting, repetitive an unfair but with the Konami Code entered, a little practice and some perseverance the music, bosses and game world are unique enough to provide fun and a good experience for players. It's still a pretty generic shoot 'em up in terms of gameplay, but unless you're Ikaruga there's not much you can do about that.
Rating: 56/100
Grade: D
Game: Galaxian
Console: Nintendo Famicom
Developer: Namco
Release Date: 7th September 1984
Having recently reviewed the arcade version of Galaxian, the Japan only Famicom port seemed like it might be interesting as to what was changed from the original game. Players still attempt to shoot an invading fleet, some of whom break off from the pack and fire back at you. That's about it though; shoot your way through all of them, and you'll get another lot to go through. Repeat 68 more times and the game loops back to the beginning.
It seems also that the difficulty has been lessened somewhat as it's easy to keep playing through the game. The problem is that it isn't fun to keep playing through the game; after 5 stages or so I was really hoping there'd be some sort of interlude, but it kept going, and going until I finally made enough mistakes to lose all my lives.
Graphically the game is fine; it looks good for an NES game and the invading fleet look fairly menacing. There's no real music and with the repetitive nature of the game, there's really not a lot to do for a piece of software released in 1984. Obviously developers were still getting the hang on what people wanted to see from video games, but it probably wasn't 69 incrementally harder versions of the same task.
Overall Galaxian is disappointing as a concept, and while better as an arcade game since there's high scores to chase; not even fairly tight controls and good hit detection can save the game from being entirely too easy and boring.
Rating: 33/100
Grade: E
Game: Galaga
Console: Nintendo Entertainment System
Developer: Namco
Release Date: 1988
Galaga is a slightly more exciting Space Invaders based game; enemies enter with a twirl and then line up in the usual formation to be shot at, periodically coming down to try and kill players. After every 2nd stage there's a Challenging Stage where enemies fly in much faster, twirl around a bit and then exit. Shooting every enemy in one of these stages earns an extra life. The sequence then repeats at a higher difficulty level.
Though subtle, the changes in gameplay from Galaxian to Galaga are crucial as they give players a far more challenging and enjoyable experience. Instead of being instantly replaced with another unit, the enemies fly in a few at a time and allow for greater strategic planning. The challenging stages give players a nice break to try and earn a reward for accuracy, and this makes the game ultimately far more replayable.
Graphically the game outdoes Galaxian with larger sprites and a little more detail. The animations are far better and there's more fanfare to the explosions featured. There's a nice little tune on startup but after this there's only sound effects, which are pretty standard. Overall it's a nice little arcade style title, but console games definitely had more in them at the time.
Rating: 45/100
Grade: D
Game: Exerion
Console: Nintendo Entertainment System
Developer: Jaleco
Release Date: 11th February 1985
When Exerion hit arcades, it had something new and interesting up its sleeve; the game featured parallax scrolling and inertia effects, which were pretty much unused in other games of the time. Two years later when the game came out for NES, there were more competitors who featured these in their games. Upon starting the game, players will notice that the combination of parallax scrolling and realistic inertia make it fairly difficult to play without a fair bit of practice.
Players have a choice of two shot types; a slow double shot which never runs out or a faster single shot which is limited in ammo. There are a few different levels with changing backgrounds and enemy designs, but past a certain point the game loops, giving less than 10 minutes of unique gameplay. For any players that can get past the weird feeling of parallax inertia, boredom isn't too far away.
Graphically the game looks very nice and the parallax scrolling effect definitely doing something, even if its simply making players feel slightly sick. The sound effects are pretty annoying after a while and there's no real music featured in the game. Overall save for its 'unique' features, the rest of Exerion is pretty bland and basic.
Rating: 39/100
Grade: E
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