Star Soldier is essentially an improved (mostly) version of Star Force and further develops the bonus concepts of that game. My interest in this game was spurred by the appearance that Star Prince on Retro Game Challenge for DS is a copy of it; I discovered that I still like Star Prince a great deal and the later games are much better.
I don't have the FC version, so I had to gain impressions through emulation. It seems very hard to correct mistakes (like going under terrain) in this version, and even with autofire I often leave the bonus Zs hidden.
The first version I played was the MSX BeeCard version. This is the picture from the auction, and this is almost identical to the setup I'm using, with the difference that whoever owned that computer was a newb and took off the cool gold "F1-XDJ" sticker." Identical machine though. A bigger / better picture of the Star Soldier BeeCard package is here; it's almost exactly the size of a slim DVD case, just a little shorter. The outer case is made of a very fragile floppy plastic; it's amazing that any of these can survive (especially as in that picture shown).
Since it's marked for MSX...not MSX2+, and not even MSX2, I had a bit of a rude surprise when I took out Space Manbow and put this game in. The background scrolling is very, very choppy, and the faces don't animate. Of course, I was willing to accept it since this was the first version I played.
This felt more than made up for by the MSX2+ F1-XDJ's built in autofire slider, which coupled with the speed of the bullets and number of bullets onscreen kept up a high rate of fire for use with the five-direction shot. On my second play I was up to 470K, and despite the background waving back and forth like a flag wrapped around a drunk, it felt kinda playable.
Next, I tried out the Super Famicom version in the Caravan Shooting Collection. Due to the Tecmo connection I feared it could suck, given my recent experience emulating Ninja Gaiden Trilogy with its weird sound choices and missing parallax (not as bad as people say, but definitely not perfect). The included version of Star Soldier seems better, actually, than the FC version; there's multiple levels of stars going by all the time, and the sound seems spot-on. It's clumsy to play with a standard SNES controller and no autofire, but with a better one this could be fun.
The Caravan Shooting Collection isn't perfect. First off, the remade version of Star Soldier is the normal one; that's fine, except there's no two- or five-minute modes that I can see. I noticed a spot in Hector '87 (Starship Hector) where a large enemy caused slightly smaller enemy sprites to nearly disappear behind it, which isn't good.
What I learned:
-If it says MSX, it means "1984 graphics;"
-"Rapid Fire" competitions are no fun, but I can tap those buttons 1/3 as fast as the emulator (FCE Ultra emulator: 300 max, me, 105, twice), and that shooting watch sure looks cool;
-Flying under the fucking scenery when you're firing at the Zs is failure, this has got to be on the list of top ten worst design choices ever.
There are at least three "retro" versions of Star Soldier:
Star Soldier (NES / FC) "original"
Caravan Shooting Collection (SFC) 1995
Star Soldier (MSX BeeCard) 1987
I leave you with some ancient wisdom:
So while Star Parodier just as good as any of the other games, like a drunken house guest that never leaves, isn't nearly as funny as it thinks it is.
-Kurt Kalata
