STG Review #3: Transformer (Arcade)

[Sturmvogel Prime]

Let's go back to the 80's where the arcades are on it's gold age, there's a lot of cool shmups like Galaga or Defender, but Sega brought another shmup to the arcade, and that's Transformer.
This game will be familiar for you if you had a Master System, if you said "This is Transbot, so what's the deal with this game?" you're wrong, this conversion of the console game has some improvements if we compare it with Transbot.


Gameplay: 7/10
The game is an horizontal shmup where you blow asteroids, missiles, other robots.
The transformation doesn't depend of the weapon that you get, 'cos here you can transform at any time pressing one the second button. you have a Straight Shot for Vehicle mode and a Spread Shot for Robot mode, basic but effective. The power-up system was changed too, you have to kill enemies for fill the bar (like in E.D.F. Earth Defense Force) but if you die, you had to re-fill it all again, making it difficult.
Your speed changes depending on which mode you're playing.
Sometimes a bomb appears on the screen, and if you destroy it, it kills all the enemies on screen.
Another thing that was improved is the stages, now they have a normal length, and they're splitted in two parts: Surface and Tunnel, the tunnel stage has obstacles like blocks, closing doors, cannons on ceilings and more, both parts of the stage has their bosses.
The only thing i complain is being unable to continue when you lose all your lives.


Graphics: 6/10
In the middle 80's you can't expect a lot of colors on screen, but it has a nice coloring, good for a 512 color pallette, the backgrounds are more colorful and detailed that the Master System game, you can see how your ship transforms from jet to robot


Music & Sound: 7/10
The music was also improved, there's more ''songs'' in the game, the music sounds like a Master System game, it's not bad, but at least it's not repetitive like in TransBot and i really like that because it was frustrating to deal with costant looping song like 10 minutes.


Final Comments:
Well, after playing this game you'll ask this "Why this game is called Transformer, and doesn't have references to the Autobots?", well, the game's original name is Astro Flash, so the reason of the name change for the US version was for make a cash in the Transformers, this game was released in 1986, the same year as Transformers The Movie, but the game doesn't have anything to do with Transformers.

Out of that, it was a nice old-school game, Transform and give a try.

Transformer Final Score: 6.5/10