It's fun. I'm maybe a bit too used to the handling in the [hilariously cut-down] SG-1000/MSX version, as it's extremely hard to change directions here.
It takes ages to go from flying left to moving right at all. The game has fairly heavy inertia since the presentation tries very hard to make the game feel like an into-the-screen shooter even though 100% of the play mechanics are those of a vertical shoot-em-up. It fits and it works, the game is all about managing where you are relative to enemies that try to ram you instead of dealing with loads of bullets coming at you.
One thing I really don't like is how you need both shots from your standard gun to disappear to fire it again -- on the SG-1000 version, you can shoot again once one of your shots disappears. Here, you have to rely much more heavily on the machine gun, which has limited ammo that you get back from shooting enemies.
The difficulty seems terribly front-loaded too, most of my runs ended VERY early, and then after that, I'd cruise on for quite a while without too much trouble. The opening wave of enemies is definitely harder than anything after for quite some time.
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yet, I'm failing to draw any obvious lines between the who's-who-of-the-JAM that seem to have inspired it - I wonder if there was any staff crossover?
