Arcade Archives: Burning Force (PS4|5 - Switch)

[Sturmvogel Prime]

DANGER ZONE (PART LVI)
FORCE AND BURN: NO FLY ZONE

The "Danger Zone" series of reviews so far
DANGER ZONE VOL. I

Spoiler

I: REVVIN' UP YOUR ENGINE, LISTENIN' TO HER HOWLIN' ROARING - (E.D.F.: Earth Defense Force)
II: IS THIS YOUR IDEA OF FUN, MAV? - (Binarystar Infinity)
III: PLAYING WITH THE (ARCADE ARCHIVES) BOYS - (Arcade Archives: Thunder Dragon 2)
IV: THAT'S RIGHT! ICE...MAN. I AM DANGEROUS (SEED) - (Arcade Archives: Dangerous Seed)
V: THE ELITE. BEST OF THE BEST. WE'LL MAKE YOU BETTER. - (Super E.D.F.: Earth Defense Force)
VI: GONNA TAKE YOU RIGHT INTO THE DANGER ZONE - (Star Hunter DX)
VII: IT TAKES MORE THAN JUST FANCY FLYING - (Earth Defense Force 4.1: Wing Diver The Shooter)
VIII: INSTRUMENTS OF DESTRUCTION - (Devastator by Radiangames)
IX: ¿WHO'S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD TUBES? - (Arcade Archives: Tube Panic)
X: SWIMMIN' IN THE FLOODS, DANCIN' ON THE CLOUDS BELOW. I AIN'T WORRIED 'BOUT IT - (Arcade Archives: Fighting Hawk)
XI: PULLING A RABBIT OUT OF THE HAT - (Arcade Archives: Rabio Lepus)
XII: WINGS OF SILVER, NERVES OF STEEL - (Arcade Archives: Darius)
XIII: FULL SCALE ASSAULT - (Arcade Archives: Assault)
XIV: WE'RE GONNA NEED A DIFFERENT KIND OF BUGSPRAY - (Arcade Archives: Gaplus)
XV: DOWN THE ALIEN SECTOR - (Arcade Archives: Baraduke)
XVI: WHEN YOU'RE DRAWN TO THE GROUND BY THE DRAGONS - (Arcade Archives: Dragon Spirit)
XVII: SOME RETICENT GODDESS PUT THE CHILDREN TO SLEEP - (Arcade Archives: Metal Black)
XVIII: I SHOT THE WILD LIZARDS - (Arcade Archives: Gun Frontier)
XIX: HOW WE GONNA GET THIS MUSEUM PIECE IN THE AIR? - (Arcade Archives: Galaxian)
XX: SHATTERED KAWAII SKIES - (Arcade Archives: Ordyne)
XXI: ENTER THE DRAGON (SABER) - (Arcade Archives: Dragon Saber)
XXII: SEEMS LIKE WE'RE NOT THE ONLY ONES HOLDING ON TO OLD RELICS - (Arcade Archives: Galaga)
XXIII: OLD WARBIRDS, RETRO ARCADE ACTION - (Arcade Archives: USAAF Mustang)
XXIV: ARCADE STYLED HELICOPTER BATTLEFIELD - (Arcade Archives: Metal Hawk)
XXV: CLASH OF THE GODS - (Arcade Archives: Phelios)
XXVI: BACK IN (METAL) BLACK - (Metal Black S-Tribute)
XXVII: NAMCO'S TAKE ON THE NBA - (Arcade Archives: Grobda)
XXVIII: DOUJIN SHMUPPING "GM" STYLE - (Graze Counter GM)
XXIX: MIXED AND REMIXED - (Raiden IV x Mikado Remix)
XXX: EXPLICIT DIFFICULTY - (Arcade Archives: Gradius III)

DANGER ZONE VOL. II

Spoiler

XXXI: HAVING THE EARTH IN MY SIGHTS - (Layer Section & Galactic Attack S-Tribute)
XXXII: FAST, FURIOUS AND DANGEROUS - (Arcade Archives: Turbo Force)
XXXIII: CHORUS AND CHORES - (Chorus)
XXXIV: SAVE THE SUN - (Sol Cresta)
XXXV: NAMCO WHISPERS IN OUR EARS AND SAYS THAT "YOU ARE IN NAVARONE" - (Arcade Archives: Navarone)
XXXVI: A SHORT (ASTEROID) BREAK TIME - (Space Scavengers by Xitilon)
XXXVII: GIVE ME A "REZON" TO HOLD ON TO WHAT WE'VE GOT - (Arcade Archives: Rezon)
XXXVIII: A COSMIC TROUBLESOME GANG - (Arcade Archives: Cosmo Gang The Video)
XXXIX: WHAT'S THE PLAN? SAVE THE MOON, SAVE EARTH - (Arcade Archives: Moon Cresta)
XL: A HERO FOR THE EARTH - (Arcade Archives: Terra Cresta)
XLI: BACK TO THE '88 - (Arcade Archives: Galaga '88)
XLII: SUPER ROBOT SMASH - (Arcade Archives: Mazinger Z)
XLIII: FREEDOM FIGHTERS OF THE FUTURE - (Arcade Archives: Thunder Dragon)
XLIV: HAMSTER SAID "IT'S SHARK WEEK ON ARCADE ARCHIVES" - (Arcade Archives: Mad Shark)
XLV: MESSED UP NETWORK - (RayCrisis)
XLVI: AN INC-RAY-DIBLE COLLECTION - (Ray'z Arcade Chronology)
XLVII: AN INC-RAY-DIBLE COLLECTION II - (RayStorm x RayCrisis HD Collection)
XLVIII: 99 NAMCO BALLOONS GO BY (Arcade Archives: King & Balloon)
XLIX: ATTACK ON BOSCONIAN - (Arcade Archives: Bosconian)
L: MIXED AND REMIXED II - (Raiden III x Mikado Maniax)
LI: ALLUMER'S TOON SQUADRON - (Arcade Archives: Zing Zing Zip)
LII: GO STRIKE! - (Arcade Archives: Strike Gunner S.T.G)
LIII: A THING CALLED TUNA SASIMI - (Arcade Archives: Darius II)
LIV: RAIDER ZONE: YOU KNOW, IT IS WHAT IT IS - (Arcade Archives: Raiders5)
LV: COMET OF DESTRUCTION - (Arcade Archives: Halley's Comet)

After Taito's Darius II, Konami's Guttang Gottong/Loco-Motion and Allumer's crappy Blandia, Hamster returned to their usual Namco releases (better having a Namco game than another mediocre Allumer title, I guess).
This time, they release another of the highly requested titles of the company: Namco Archives, I mean, Arcade Archives: Burning Force.

According to the United Galaxy Space Force plotline, the game is about the final exam on the "Top of the Space" course at the University of GAIA. Your objective is to help the young cadet Hiromi Tengenji to pass the 5 days of the exam and the final day in a real combat situation to fulfill her drafting in the UGSF.




Before Wave Race, there was Burning Force.

Each day is divided in areas. The first two areas are ground based combat in the Sign Duck as an "Airbike". At first, it looks like a clone of Sega's Space Harrier since it involves third person-view shooting, but things are gonna be a little different this time 'cos you're limited to move left or right like Cabal and the base levels of Contra. Like in IREM's Tropical Angel, there's jump pads that will allow you to jump in order to reach items placed on high altitude rings, while you don't get rewarded with points for jumping, it is the item what it counts. One of the most useful items is the Wide Range Shot, which allows you to fire an horizontal stream of 6 bullets, making your Sign Duck able to hit enemies while staying safe for a few pixels of distance. Like After Burner and Galaxy Force, you are given missiles as your special weapon. But you can't go around spending them like crazy as if you're playing After Burner where the big missile counted as 10 individual shots. Here in Burning Force, 1 Missile is 1 missile shot. Depending on which missile type you acquired, the effect will vary. For instance the Homing Missiles (white missiles, "H" icon) fires 5 missiles per shot that intercepts random targets, while the Mega Missiles (red missiles, "M" icon) launches a single missile that scatters a series of spinning explosions that inflict great damages to anything that gets on its way. While being limited to only left and right in terms of movement, you still have one more thing at your disposal: Speed Control. You can increase and decrease your speed by pressing Up or Down on the control stick, unlike Thunder Blade and After Burner where you had a flight control throttle to do so. Getting used to this is important since speed seems to be related with the frequency of enemies appearing on screen, and obviously, a slow paced driving will make things easier, but "the house" (Namco) knows you might try to pull that stunt and took measures. If you're gonna play Burning Force, you're playing with house rules. Your After Burner methods are off. The reason? The game is time based like Super Hang-On, so you're gonna be on a hurry. This is not a problem considering you can fight your way by driving at mid-speed, but if you clear the level in a fast time, you'll get a good bonus score. While you can die by a single hit, if you crash with a pole or a stone pillar, you'll bounce back, giving you some room for error, but this also might be the free shot for your enemies as you're temporally stunned. During the ground phases you'll be stucked in more enemy dodging situations rather than full offensive as the game will throw you more air-based enemies than ground ones and if you don't have the Homing Missiles you'll have no other choice but to avoid them mastering the speed controls.




You're now on full control. Full flight control.

Area 3 (and the Final Day) is where you'll engage the real boss of the stage, and this is where the gameplay and the controls resembles Space Harrier, Thunder Blade and After Burner much better and more accurately because the Sign Duck is fitted to be used as the "Airplane" and you can finally move up and down freely. But unlike the last two, you can't increase or decrease your speed. While this makes the gameplay more like Space Harrier, the difficulty might be high as the game spams you with enemies and there's no way to evade with speed controls. Thus, you can't go slower to face the less number of enemies possible. Like the Sign Duck "Airbike" levels, you lose a life by taking a single hit.




It's all about rewards!
Good Luck and Have Fun!

After clearing the boss level, you'll be send to a bonus area where the objective is to get all the bonus spheres you can. These spheres can grant you 10, 100 and 1,000 points. Throughout your little Easter Egg Hunt of a stage there will be blue and red spheres waiting to push you back or destroy your plane, but you can destroy those spheres with your shots and missiles. If you get all the bonus spheres at the end of the level, you'll be getting the "Perfect Bonus" which starts from 10,000 points and increases as long as you get another perfect one at the next 4th Area (10,000 > 20,000 > 30,000 > 40,000 > 50,000, a total of 150,000 for all perfect bonuses). Racking bonus points is a must, especially for those who want to obtain the majority of 1ups from this game, since the game gets tough in the concept of continuing the game. While losing a life respawns you right where you left off like Space Harrier, things are different when you continue. To begin with, you are sent back to the beginning of the stage which is the hardest part of the game since it requires memorization and that would be troublesome for those who are new to this game. Like Dangerous Seed, you can select the stages you've cleared once you've decided to continue the game, but that won't help much, considering Stage 2-2 ramps the difficulty quite high for average gamers.




This boss is "Dancin' in the Laser Light".

For some reason, Burning Force didn't had international releases (not even Atari Games who distributed other System II titles like Assault) and worse, it didn't had too much home ports. Being the Sega Genesis the lone console to get a port of the game. Strangefully enough, it was developed by Nova (Battle City for Gameboy) rather than Namco itself, and just like what we've saw on Raiden Trad for the SNES, the conversion heavily differs from the arcade. While Nova made a fair rendition of the game, it butchers a lot of things since System II was obviously way ahead of the Genesis capabilities (and its "Arcade Graphics and Sound" ad blurb). Starting off with the limitation of the backgrounds. Rather than have unique scenes, these were reduced to simple palette swaps of the first area and lacked of the fast changing colors and sprite scaling effects. While being audiovisually inferior to the arcade, the Genesis version made a little rebalance on the difficulty by giving the player 3 Hit Points before losing a life, and reducing the amount of enemies on screen, making things a little more easier. In that time of consoles striving for arcade accuracy, one question prevails: ¿Why Namco chose Sega over Nintendo? Who knows. Probably since the Genesis version was released in 1990, 1 year before the Super Nintendo's release date. But still, Burning Force deserved a release on the more capable SNES just like Cosmo Gang The Video did proving the almost arcade perfect potential of the console. Speaking of Nintendo, Burning Force was released on a Nintendo console as part the Wii Virtual Console's library, being the first Arcade Perfect port of the game. Curiously, for a Namco classic, it wasn't released on their Namco Museum compilations, leaving it almost forgotten to the sands of time sharing the same fate as Fighter & Attacker and Ridge Racer as the company switched to Ace Combat, The Idolmaster and Deadstorm Pirates. It was until October 26th when Hamster released the game on Arcade Archives, and what a decision turned out to be since this was among the "Requested Namco Trinity" along with Phelios and Cosmo Gang The Video as the most requested Namco games to be released. Yeah, more reasons to ditch the Genesis and the Super Nintendo altogether since the PS4 and Switch versions of Phelios, Cosmo Gang The Video and Burning Force are the genuine arcade games with all the incredible visuals and sounds. One of the major benefits of the Arcade Archives port along with the trophies, extra modes and auto-fire settings is the Save State function, which will really come in handy due to the difficulty curve that ramps up from 2nd Day-Area 2.




Day Three takes place on Planet Disco.

Graphically, if you've played other Namco System II-based games, you'll definitely know what to expect: Fast paced, smoothly animated interfaces with changing colors giving the full effect of looking at active machinery and fancy visual effects, and this work very well on the "Interface" HUD where your score and indicators are placed. The score fonts are now rendered with a gradient "metallic" effect giving them a three-dimensional aspect combined with the shadow effect of a font layer below them. While Space Harrier used a checkerboard floor for the ground movement, Burning Force uses a "wave" effect for the majority of the terrains (Sea, forest and desert). Along with the Space Harrier influenced ground animation, Burning Force utilizes parallax-scrolling on the backgrounds rendered as digitized scenery, increasing the feel of having the perspective in full motion as you move across the screen. The digitized imagery might look blurry or overpixelated and imperfect unlike Midway's N.A.R.C. which was released 1 year before this game, but we're talking the late 80's when digitzed graphics were an experimental concept in gaming, and this was clearly Namco's first steps on that concept. Namco doesn't disappoint in the sound department as we have an action paced soundtrack with the clarity of a redbook/CD game following and ambient-action mix that gives the rhythm and pace the game needs. Although it changes the style on Day 3 for a Michael Jackson-esque pace that I swear Namco borrowed influences of "Wanna be startin' somethin'" and "Bad", retaking the previous style in Day 3 and the later stages of the game. I won't get tired to say it, but the Namco System II hardware was capable of great quality music that was basically unrivaled. Being the Neo-Geo the closest thing to it.


BURNING CURIOSITIES



¿How does Egypt work on Strangereal?

- Along with Phelios and Cosmo Gang The Video, Burning Force was among the most requested Namco games by Arcade Archives fans.
- Burning Force was the 7th System II title released by Namco.
- The Arcade Archives release of the game is the third home port of the game
- It is also the second arcade perfect port of the game.
- Hamster's website simply calls the Sign Duck as "AIRBIKE" and omits Hiromi's name simply calling her "Your Character".
- The manual calls the Wide Range Shot ("W" weapon) as "Spread Shot".
- The final 1up Bonus (1,200,000 points) can only be attained by finishing the game without dying once as spare lives become "Game Complete" bonus points.
- Within the Strangereal/United Galaxy Space Force timeline, Burning Force takes place in the year 2189.
- Since the game takes palace on Ace Combat's Strangereal, it is very likely Hiromi could be Osean or Usean.
- According to supplementary material, the Sign Duck costs $41,000 MSRP, the dollars of year 2100.
- In 2nd Day Area 1 "Sahara Sands" there's pyramids and a sphinx covered by a mountain. ¿How does Egyptian pyramids exists there?, This is another instance of clashes within the Strangereal setting of the UGSF since there's not a single mention of Egyptian-like cultures in Ace Combat/UGSF's alternate Earth.
- An explanation of this clash might be that the game was conceived as a sci-fi story taking place in our world, just like Galaga '88 and the NES package plot of Dig Dug II did.
- There's more to Burning Force than meets the eye as the game has secrets and unused things like translations and extra options.
- The soundtrack album Namco Game Sound Express Vol. 02 - Burning Force included both the original game music and compositions by Yoshinori Kawamoto.


TRIVIA FORCE: THE OTHER APPEARANCES OF HIROMI TENGENJI
Hiromi made a few more appearances in other games of the company.



They are a Burning Force against the Alien Sector.

- In the airship in-game advertisements of Mach Breakers.
- As the defensive half of the Nikotama Gals team in one of the World Stadium games.
- As one of the player party characters in Namco x Capcom, where she teams up with Tobi Masuyo from Baraduke/Alien Sector.
- In the sim-date Namco High as one of the 18 dateable characters.


SEGA REFERENCES



Get Ready.

- 4th Day Area 2's colors are reminiscent of those of Moot, the first level of Space Harrier.
- 5th Day Area 2 is a clear copy of level 6 "Olisis".
- 2nd Day Area 2's worm boss resembles a fusion between Squilla from Space Harrier and both Dylos and Mecadence from Space Harrier 3D
- 3rd Day is clearly a Space Harrier reference due to the checkerboard floor used in the whole areas the day takes place.
- The in-game HUD has a proximity light and alarm in the style of the missile warning lights of After Burner/After Burner II's cabinets.





It's good to see Ms. Tengenji in the Arcade Archives.

In the end, we have a combination between Space Harrier and Tropical Angel with fascinating System II's visual effects and dazzling sound that expert players will enjoy.
With Burning Force as part of the Arcade Archives, Hamster is running out of the Namco System II catalog. Which surely means one step closer to Fighter & Attacker and NebulasRay. Hope we can finally see those soon.




Looks like Namco knows how to do arcade magic since it got a good score on the Eda Scale.