Virtual Boy. PLAY IT LOUD! (If you dare)
Before you start the game, you can choose to select one of 50 color palettes out there, even a Virtual Boy-like one which is recommended for those who are asking for "VB Nauseam", permanent brain damage and eye injuries. Also, whatever you do, play the game on Normal or Easy, 'cos this game pulled the idea of reducing your initial health based on the selected difficulty: Easy sends you with 12 Hit Points, Normal with 6, Hard grants you only 3 HP and Extreme is 1 hit death. Once you're in the game, you'll be on the tutorial where they explain you the main aspects of the game.
STANDARD BULLET: Your default weapon. Fires a bullet straight to the right. Pressing X shoots the weapon on Auto Fire and B is for single shooting.
BOOMERANGS: Shoots boomerangs in the front and back that moves back to the player unless he/she moves from their trajectory. Think of them as the Boomerang Cross from Castlevania.
BOMB: Fires a bomb that flies a short distance before exploding, causing considerable damages, just like the Grenade on Super E.D.F.: Earth Defense Force. But here's a catch: Stay out of the bomb's explosion 'cos it can kill you.
SPREAD SHOT: Fires three bullets from the front and 1 from the back. Good to take enemies quickly and break blocks behind your ship. However, it is a short ranged weapon.
Time for an aerial mission on Happyland
As soon as you begin playing, this game seems to be a clone of Fantasy Zone as it borrows cute'em up elements of the game such as the happy upbeat music and kid-friendly graphics, but the gameplay is a little bit different from what you expect. First off, the switchable weaponry, this is pretty much like the Gameboy Advance version of Phalanx as you are allowed to carry four weapons on the go. Unlike Phalanx, you have those weapons by default. There's items like coins scattered across the levels, but unlike Fantasy Zone, coins are worth points for your score. Occasionally you'll find an "S" item which grants you a force field that protects you from five hits giving you a breath when you have low energy or you're playing on the higher difficulties. Speaking of energy, if your energy runs out and you die, you'll go back to the beginning of the segment. Quite R-Type-ish, but not as frustrating or annoying like IREM's shmup. Like R-Type Final 2, you can touch the ground without getting damaged or being killed, unless the screen scroll runs you out, making this game more friendly with those who are new to the genre. The only flaw of this game is that if you die, there's no continues, forcing you to start all over again.
Unlike Mario Bros. 3, there's no selectable card at the end of the screen.
While most shmups and games are all linear until you reach the boss at the end of the stage, this one breaks that concept by diving the level in segments. After a few minutes of flying you'll see a dark dead end on the right side of the screen. Just go ahead to finish that segment and proceed to the next one. After repeating this process a few more times, you'll enter a room with health items to recover your precious health (unless you're playing on Extreme).
In 2022...The Moon...Will Come...To us
Boss fights are very easy to learn, yet fun to fight as you can experiment which weapon is more convenient against each boss and (occasionally) sub-boss. More of a mindless fight rather than going strategic like most shooters.
Check this out, that's how you get that damned "Unreachable" coin.
Stage 2 makes a change in the shmup concept as the game introduces the hidden paths. Not just to find secrets, but also to find your way out of an apparent dead end.
Of course, this requires some quick thinking due to the screen scrolling.
Time for the summer party.
Enemies above AND below the sea.
Things once again make a change in Stage 3 as we have indestructible blocks, but they can be broken by shooting at the bomb-marked blocks as if they destroy them in a puzzle game-styled chain reaction. Not too difficult to learn, but this one was a well executed fun idea for a shmup.
Destroy the B's or "B" blocked out!
Once you're in Stage 4, the game will throw another curve ball on the gameplay mechanics. This time is throughout not one, but two things: The first one is by "B" Blocks which act as the required switches to open the gates of the stage. Missing one of them will result in a collision and obviously instant death. The second twist in this game are the mid-stage warps that takes you to a different path in the same level.
The "Inconvenient Wind" strikes again.
Stage 5, Shattered Spaceship features a pushing wind that pushes your ship to the right. It was an interesting (and double-edged) thing on the second stage of Ninja Gaiden II where you had to use it to jump on the desired direction, but here it becomes annoying as it will result on a collision that you're trying to avoid. Combine that with segments marked with warning symbols and electric tracks that reduce your movement is pure ragequit, especially if you're playing the game on Extreme. Ironically, the boss is quite easy to take down with the bomb.
Another Hell's Run.
Stage 6 will combine the laser track thing from the previous stage, along with "S-path" like manuevering with screen scrolling, along with a new enemy: Black blobs that ambush you jumping from below, along with a screen pelted by Bullet Bill-like things. This is a brutal stage when the game is played on Extreme difficulty due to the 1HP rule.
The Magical Shootout in space.
Stage 7 is a mix between the classic "Collapsing fortress escape" with an "Overpowered ship" extravaganza as the Spacewing gets the Color Star power and gives you a superpowered version of the Spread shot with full range and Wave Beam-like passing through objects properties, something that you're gonna exploit later as the stage will comprise of a montage of the previous stages and a spam of mid-bosses which you'll be taking down easily as your beam destroys everything with one shot. Until the final boss takes the Color Star away from you and use it to power himself up, starting the final battle which will require you to use all of your weapons.
CONGLATURATION !!!
WITHOUT THE VIDEO GAME
LET's TRY ANYTHI...Wait a second.
After clearing the game, the game will throw you a warning, there is more. ¿Sequel Threat? Not exactly.
Just go back to the main menu and you'll see what they're trying to say with that message.
Here's two brand new modes. Good Luck.
After finishing the game, you'll unlock two modes: Challenge Mode and Uufoo's Quest. The first one is a harder version of the standard game, so it's pretty much the same as before.
Undefined FUN-tastic Object.
Uufoo's Quest allows you to control the enemy UFO. But this time, the gameplay takes a twist as the game no longer auto-scrolls like in a shooter. It now moves as you fly to either left or right, making it kinda "Shmuptroid-esque". As the UFO, your weapons are completely different, starting off with your default weapon, from a single way pea-shooter, you can fire in four directions, granting you both vertical and horizontal fire on both sides. The changeable weapons were replaced with Special Attacks that you can switch, and you now have six attacks instead of four. But this time they indeed act like special weapons as they consume a battery gauge which is replenished by killing enemies or picking battery items.
Red and Black fits well for the anger frustrating atmosphere of the mazes.
While the game makes some interesting twists in this mode, it turns for the worse on the final levels as they become a maze that will definitely make you feel like a rat because there's very little hints to tell you where to go, and added to the die-and-restart the segment thing, it just adds more frustration than the necessary. If you are the kind of gamer with a bad temper, avoid it.
Its the ultimate battle against the UFO Lord.
Along with a new game mode, you'll be facing a new final boss and this is gonna be time consuming for two reasons: Your low fire rate and its enormous amount of HP given. Don't be surprised if the timer hits the 59:59:99 mark before you do.
Yep, the game locked during the game-ending transition.
What a sore loser.
Just when everything was going fine after the cryptic labyrinths and the final boss fight, the game locks up after defeating the boss. I mean, as soon as it fades to white, it will stop and you'll be hearing a sinister hum-hissing noise but you can't skip it or return to the menu, effectively forcing you to close the game, and rendering the last two unlockables impossible to unlock. The only comforting fact about it is that finishing this mode doesn't affect trophy progression. NOTE: The crash happened on the XBOX Series X|S port, I don't know if its the same on Switch or Playstation.
Nintendo would be proud.
The graphic aspect is what takes the most attention on this game, as the backgrounds and stage title cards look and feel like an official Nintendo game, to be more exact, in the style of HAL Laboratory's Kirby games as we have this Cute'em Up fantasy land setting with happy forests, angry rainclouds and silly looking enemies. Not to mention, Stage 3 is very Super Mario Land-like in the level graphics and even the fish enemies, they really look like if they belong to a Mario game! The enemy sprites are also very well made and the big ones recreate the Gameboy standards pretty well. The only contrast are the cutscenes and the player's ship which looks "home-made" rather than the professional spritework from big commercial games.
The decision of adding multiple color palettes are a homage to the Gameboy, the Super Gameboy and some of the Gameboy Color with those random color choices. There's also the reference to the infamous Virtual Boy with that horrible red and black screen. I don't know why, but if history itself taught us about how horrible and injuring that monstrosity was, ¿Why would a game developer want to include a Virtual Boy palette on an indie game?.
Now, let's talk about the music shall we? This game is also a Gameboy homage in that aspect as the chiptune borrows elements: Cute, happy tunes in the style of Kirby and Mario and even "Action-Stage Select" style in pure Megaman influence (the main menu screen). Almost all the sound effects are on-par with the Gameboy, except for the player death sound which sound quite "realistic".
SPACEWING CURIOSITIES
- Pesz is a wordplay on "Pez" which means "Fish" on Spanish.
- The boss Monkey Mate is a reference to Bonzi Buddy
- Killing yourself using a bomb in the tutorial on Extreme will trigger the following error message before crashing the game:
######################################################################
ERROR in action number 1
of Step Event0 for object o_player:
Unable to find any instance of object index '124' name 'o_playerspawn'
at gml_Object_o_player_Step_0
######################################################################
At least it wasn't a trash gamerscore milker.
While the game aims to revive the Gameboy nostalgia in both graphics and its simplicity in enemy attacks it becomes unnecessary arbitrary with the decision of limiting your HP because of difficulty reasons and demanding in levels that require to destroy all switches before they're offscreen sending you to an inevitable crash.
Aside of the broken Uufoo's Quest minigame, Spacewing War is a shooter that retro-gamers will love as it homages Nintendo's portable console and hard difficulty maniacs will like for an extreme challenge.
A Neutral result in the Lea Scale.