YOU MUST LEARN THE WAYS OF THE (STAR) FORCE
Before the Koei fusion, before Tecmo was the "100% Games" company, before Tecmo ripped off Pokémon with Monster Rancher, before Ninja Gaiden, Dead or Alive or the Tecmo Bowl series, there was Tehkan. A small company which made spectacular debuts on the arcade scene with Swimmer, Guzzler and Senjyo, and it was on a roll since it took the shmup scene by surprise with Star Force.
Old, but still a classic.
At first, Star Force might look like "Xevious in Space" as the gameplay involves taking down both air and ground targets in a large combat zone, but unlike Xevious, the game only requires one thing to take ground targets: Your anti-air shots. So, there's not too much to say about basic game mechanics such as controls and weaponry. That's right, the game goes a little more easier on you with the rules concerning targets. While ground targets are harmless, the aerial enemies are the top priority since they can be dangerous despite their simplicity in combat formation. But what they lack on number, they compensate on speed. This includes their bullets. Fortunately, you have an upgrade called "Purser" which increases your fire rate acting as the autofire weapon of the game. Very basic stuff, but functional for its time.
Said this was going to be "kid stuff"?
Looks like you're about to regret those words.
Don't be fooled. There IS challenge from this game as soon as you reach the fourth level as the enemies will come in larger numbers and with moderated bullet speed reducing the room for error focusing the action on the stages more than the boss fight. Also, the enemy patterns are completely random making the game itself unpredictable for the players. This also affects the respawning, for example, if you died with a collision with the side-ramming enemies, after respawning you'll be facing the rhombus-type enemies that scatter in four bullets after exploding or swarmed by fast enemies, and to make things more difficult, the Parser is a quite rare item since it doesn't appear with frequency, leaving you with fast tapping the fire button in order to "replace" the Purser's auto-fire.
Seems like an easy target.
At the end of each area you will be facing a boss or "Target" which relies on support cannons on the sides rather than firing by itself. The idea is to take it down before it leaves the screen flying to the bottom of it. Sometimes it will initially move to the left and others to the right. But here's how it works: The boss direction is decided by the hundreds number of your score. This means if your score ends in odd numbers (100, 300, 500, 700, 900) the boss will move to the left, while even numbers (200, 400, 600, 800) will make it move to the right.
Found a hidden reward?
There's gonna be plenty of them, hot-shot.
The simplicity of gameplay is just a disguise for Star Force's true nature: It's an "Egg Hunt" of bonus features. Starting off with the "B" panels which are scattered across the stages. These are the "Main Targets" of the anti-ground attacks of the Final Star. Taking all of them down will grant you the "Perfect Bonus" of 10,000 points while missing one or more will deduce points from the total score. "H" panels are similar to the "B" ones, although you need to shoot to "uncover" them. The reward? 2,000 points for each "H" panel destroyed.
Death-defying stunts grant you special bonuses!
Along with the panels, there's also more cryptic hidden bonuses within the game. There's arrows that seems to be a key for a major bonus which require to take down a lot of them to obtain 80,000 points, that one is quite tricky due to the scrolling speed of the screen and the fact that they can take multiple hits before being destroyed. There's the Magikka panels which are question marked targets that after getting hit, they will flip a random face. While getting an angry face or tongue out doesn't grant you a bonus, getting a happy face (known as "Kera") will give you an extra life.
The final and most valuable hidden bonus of all is the "Cleopatra Bonus" which lies hidden in zone Lambda. In the surface there's a coelacanth fish depicted on the left side of the screen, move right and shoot quickly. It will make a yellow Cleopatra head-shaped panel to appear. Shoot and destroy it and Cleopatra will give you a staggering 1,000,000 points for destroying it.
The final question is "How long is this game?", Well, it is one of those games where the game loops forever, but actually it has unique levels, each one named after the greek alphabet:
ALPHA > BETA > GAMMA > DELTA > EPSILON > ZETA > ETA > THETA > IOTA > KAPPA > LAMBDA > MU > NU > XI > OMICRON > PI > RHO > SIGMA > TAU > UPSILON > PHI > CHI > PSI > OMEGA > INFINITY
I know what you're gonna say "INFINITY IS NOT A GREEK LETTER!", That's because Omega is the final zone of the game, and once you reach Infinity, the game will repeat that stage forever until you get finally killed and your lives ran out. A total of 25 levels waiting for your challenge and you can rest assure knowing that once you complete the first Infinity level you're the champ for this game no matter how many times this level repeats after clearing it.
Final Star's next challenge: A mission called "Homeporting".
With the surprising success, it was only a matter of time to bring the Final Star home. Being the Sega SG-1000 the first having a port. While it does its best on porting the graphics based on the computer's limitations, it is a mixed bag; while the ship and enemy movements are fluid and arcade-accurate, the background is chunky and sluggish. The MSX port also has the same problem, but it compensates the flaws of the Sega SG-1000 with a more arcade-accurate palette and a wider moving range acting like a semi-multiscreen.
The Nintendo Entertainment System port by Hudson Soft (Adventure Island series) is the most remembered version of the small bunch. Keeping faithfulness much better than the home computer versions in a balance of gameplay, graphics and sound based on the NES limitations. Despite being on a Nintendo console, the Famicom version and the NES have more differences with each other beyond the localization logos: First off is the sound board. In the Japanese version, only Square 1-2 (for the third chords) and the Triangle channel (for the bass) was used. The American Star Force version made improvements in that aspect by manipulating different sounds and took advantage of the Noise channel to add "drums" and creating new themes, such as the Game Over theme which is unexistant in the Famicom version. In graphic terms, the American version was more graphically accurate to the arcade version and reduced the amount of bugs and glitches from the Japanese Famicom, but increased the difficulty of the game by making the enemies faster than they should. Also, the European release adds a continue option after losing your lives.
On the other side, the Sharp X68000 version by Dempa (After Burner II, Gradius II: Gofer no Yabou) released as part of the Video Game Anthology series by Micomsoft is the first "Arcade Perfect" port of the game as it faithfully recreates the gameplay, graphics, sound and speed from the original game, even adding the "1 COIN 1 PLAY" from the arcade's Attract Mode. The game was also ported on the Super Nintendo as part of Hudson Soft's Caravan Shooting Collection where it was included with Star Soldier and Hector '87 (known here as Starship Hector). Unfortunately, it was a port of the Japanese Famicom version rather than the original arcade, so there's not too much to say about it. It was also ported on the Gameboy Advance as part of Hudson Best Collection Vol. 5, and just like the SNES Caravan Shooting Collection it was based on the Famicom version and it was bundled with Star Soldier and Starship Hector, and to make things worse, the graphics are slightly squished to fit the GBA's screen just like the port of Metroid included on Metroid Zero Mission.
Tecmo's vintage shmup got one final home port on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch as part of Hamster's Arcade Archives. Star Force only includes the Japanese Star Force version, ditching the American localizations by Coin-it Companies and Video Ware Inc. a year later. While Coin-it kept the Star Force name, Video Ware renamed it as Megaforce (not to be confused with the 1982 film Megaforce which failed miserably). According to Video Ware, Star Force/Megaforce was the kit guaranteed to make "megabucks" out of it with the cost of $795.00 ($2,393.69 in today's dollars). With only one "Original Mode", it was one of the first Arcade Archives titles to introduce the "Hi-Score" and "Caravan" modes which are the survival mode (although the Original Mode is the same "Few-lives, no continues") and the Star Soldier-esque 5 minute mode where the idea is to survive 5 minutes reaching the highest score possible without losing all lives. For some reason, while most Caravan Modes stops the game when time hits zero, in Star Force's case when time hits zero, the Game Over screen will appear and then the name entry before the menu screen appears. While it got released in Japan for the PlayStation 4 (now compatible with the PS5) with thropy support, it got a global release on the Nintendo Switch where the lack of trophies will disappoint most players. To me, this was a big disappointment and one of the strong reasons that kept me away from owning a Switch (thank Sega Ages: G-LOC Air Battle, Metroid Dread and Triggerheart Exelica for making me change my mind). I mean, after all those years of playing (and reviewing) for the thrill of getting trophies and achievements, it feels odd to go back to the classic "play and have fun". If PlayStation, XBOX and Steam achievements are drugs that hook us, then the Switch is the "Detox".
Vintage cosmic battle.
For a 1984 game, we can see how well Tecmo did its job with the graphic aspect as we have a nicely done star covered space to break the monotony of the black void, backed up with floating asteroids as the surface areas to explore and attack their ground targets. The Final Star ship looks nice and it is worth to mention the "recoil effect" of the guns when it fires.
The sound department we can talk about the fact that this game has music, while not as repetitive and annoying as Xevious, it has the issue of looping after a few seconds but it has like four tunes: Stage, Purser powered ship, mid-boss and boss. Not to mention the start up fanfare when you take off or respawn after losing a life and the stage clear theme which believe it or not, they became memorable tunes in our gaming lives.
STAR CURIOSITIES / TRIVIAFORCE
Looks like there's a detail that escaped present day Disney's copyright hammer.
- First entry of the Star Force series.
- Second Tekhan title in the Arcade Archives.
- Third home port of the game and second arcade perfect release.
- Lone title in the series with an alternate name for localization (Video Ware's Megaforce).
- It is also the only title in the series developed by Tecmo under the Tehkan name.
- Star Force was developed as a response to Senjyo's lack of popularity.
- Incredibly, Tecmo reutilized the same game board to save costs.
- According to the Tecmo Arcade Game Chronicle soundtrack, there was unused themes, even a Game Over tune which was utilized on the NES port.
- The NES version credits Tecmo as developer instead of Hudson.
- According to Keiji Yamagishi, the NES version was created separately at Tecmo, explaining the differences with Hudson's Famicom version.
- While the original story says that Gordess is a planet, the Arcade Archives version calls it a "Floating Continent".
- Also, Gordess is called "Gordeath".
- It is possible that "Purser" (パーサー Pāsā) is a mispell of "Pulser", this mistake was repeated on Final Star Force as "Pulsators".
- In zone Eta, there's a ground target shaped like Boba Fett's head and it was retained on the Arcade Archives release.
- One of the final stages of Final Star Force features the asteroid base from the original game.
- Sega's Astro Warrior and the Brazilian Sapo Xule: S.O.S. Lagoa Poluida by Tec Toy are Star Force clones.
- The utilization of greek alphabet for the scenes would be utilized on Taito's G-Darius.
- Speaking of Taito, do not confuse Tecmo's Star Force with Taito's Starforce.
- The concept of getting dangeorusly closer to the midboss in the 50,000 bonus technique was reutilized in a way by Psikyo in Strikers 1945 III/Strikers 1999 as the core-touching "Technical Bonus".
- The Famicom port of Star Force is commonly used on bootleg Famiclone consoles and multicart games as the many bundled games featured on multicarts along with Contra, Macross, Road Fighter, Exerion and Formation Z.
Thank you Nina.
May the (Star) Force be with you.
Star Force/Megaforce might look simplistic and outdated nowadays, but with the concept of hidden bonuses and the air-to-ground destruction mayhem included with the basic aerial combat made this game a surprisingly successful game, and its good to have it on the Arcade Archives along with its sequel Final Star Force.
This vintage classic gets 8 R-9's out of 10:
"Vintage Positive" result in the Eda Scale.