ATTACK ON BOSCONIAN
After the surprise of Allumer's Mad Shark and Konami's Dark Adventure, Hamster returned to its old ways: The Namco obsession. Yeah, I call it like that since with their constant releases of Namco titles and the occasional "Bandai Namco Month" of 4 games in a row, they're almost done with the 1980-1987 lineup.
However, this time "The house of Ace Combat, The Idolmaster and Time Crisis" brought us a quite requested 80's shooter to Hamster's Namco Archives, er, Arcade Archives: Bosconian: Star Destroyer.
Starfighter deployed during "Operation Base Runner"
The result: 8 Bosconian bases destroyed by 1 UGSF Osean pilot.
While Bosconian looks like your average vertical shooter, you'll notice a great difference from any other 1979-1980's shmup you've played. As soon as it begins you'll notice that you are no longer a fixed position of the screen with limited horizontal movement like Space Invaders, Galaxian or King & Balloon. Instead you're now on a multi-screen large AO (Area of Operation). While your ship is in a fixed position on the center, is the screen that moves based on the direction your ship is talking. Rather than just traditional shooting, it features a brand new element of exploration where you have to navigate your way across the stage in order to find the enemy bases and destroy them. Also, you can "loop" the area by "leaving" from a direction and reappering on the other "East->West" for example, saving you precious time. Even for a all-in-space combat area, there's still a few obstacles to deal with like mines and asteroids which can be taken down with a single shot. Normally, any other shmup will grant you a basic frontal shot, but not in this game. Instead you have a twin shot which allows you to fire from the front and from behind. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I guess this is the first time in gaming where the concept of a "Back shot" was introduced, predating Gradius II's Tail Gun. In Bosconian's case, this weapon will be extremely useful as you can take the enemy bases and the enemies down without facing them frontally, giving you the upper hand in your mission. Free movement is not the only liberty given to the player. How you take down the "Orbitals" (Bosconian bases) is another freedom of choice given to the player. Being the "Take down all 6 spheres that comprise them" the most obvious, you can also test your luck and go for a direct hit on the center of the base. This gives you more points than destroying the base part by part.
Clearing each level without losing a single life will award you a No-Miss bonus which increases the points and the multiplier as you keep clearing levels unharmed in a row.
Surprise attacks come in 5-ship groups.
For an exploration based game, the enemy has a few more surprises waiting for you beyond armed bases, mines and asteroids. The most common threat you'll be facing will be the Formation Attacks. These are five ship waves flying in a random formation with a leader missile (Command Ship) in the middle. There's four formations: Line (vertical), "Diagonal Cross" formation, Vic formation and the "Cross" formation. Taking down the leader is another score mechanic, as the leader worths twice the regular score than the standard enemy (I-Type = 100, P-Type = 120 and E-Type = 140). Taking down the leader will also make the formation to retreat and stop following you, but killing all the ships in the formation grants you 1000-1500 bonus points.
Spy Ship's favorite routine: The "I'm telling!" Runoff Strategy.
Despite being a lone ship, taking down the Spy Ship is a top priority, because once it runs off, the game will immediately change the condition to "Condition Red", sending more enemies against you until you destroy the remaining bases and clear the level or you get killed. Taking more time than the required to clear the stage will also trigger the Condition Red status. Curiously, the Spy Ship has a mysterious value, implying random points, but most of the times I always get 200 points from it.
16 Seconds are what it takes to spend a buck in more quarters.
Another innovation was the continue feature. Yeah, this was the very first game to include a "Continue" option once you're out of lives. Rather than the traditional 10 seconds, Bosconian gives you 16, which was enough time to go to the arcade counter, get more quarters (or tokens) and go back to the game rather than starting all over again.
Like Pac-Man, Galaga and Galaxian, Bosconian was among the Namco titles distributed by Midway where the game was practically the same, just replacing Namco's copyright and logo with "1981 MIDWAY MFG. CO." released on the traditional cabinet format along with the table-styled cocktail model. Despite its Japan-only popularity and its innovating gameplay features, it wasn't as successful in the USA. ¿The result? It didn't had console releases, being limited to be ported to Japan-exclusive computers like the Sord M5, MSX and Sharp's X1 and X68000. While the Sord, MSX and X1 did their best on replicating the arcade faithfulness with their limitations, the X68000 takes liberties with the graphics making them look like an "Arrangement" of some sorts with an original background music by Yuzo Koshiro (Streets of Rage, Sol Cresta) that sounds more like Konami's Gradius than a Namco shmup. It also had the option of playing the regular game start tune and remain silent just like the arcade game. Since it wasn't ported to the NES like Pac-Man, Xevious or the Dig Dug games, Bosconian had to wait to get its worldwide release as part of Namco Museum Vol.1 in 1995 for the PlayStation and as part of Namco Museum 50th Anniversary on 2005 for XBOX, PS2 and Gamecube. On August 24th 2023, Hamster released this game as part of Arcade Archives where you can select between the "Old" and "New" versions all of them based on the Japanese Namco ROM, but like I said before, this was one of those instances where the localization only removed Namco's copyright and replaced it with Midway's. While the Arcade Archives manual doesn't tell the differences between the Old and New versions, let me tell ya' the differences between them.
- The map layouts are different.
- The old version had limited fire rate and required constant button tapping, while the new version has a fast fire rate and auto-fire by holding the fire button.
- The new version introduced a No-Miss bonus if you cleared the level without dying.
- Like in Pac-Man and Dig Dug, the old version of game ended after reaching level 256, the new loops forever.
Graphically, it has much more detailing than Galaga as we have the enemy ships moving in a more curved trajectory, as their sprites "adapt" to the angle of their flight path, while your ship has the basic 8 angles. But the enemy station are who takes the sprite-work by surprise as (for the time being) it was quite well detailed and with a very "molecular" inspired design with the spherical structures being connected by tubes. Your ship is basically a redesigned Galaga fighter as it borrows the same colors with the exception of the blue, which was replaced with gray. Speaking of Galaga, the Ei, also known as Midori returns in this game as the Spy Ship.
While King & Balloon was the first Namco title with voice samples, it was on Bosconian where the feature was exploited in a greater scale. As you start the game, you'll be hearing a voice shouting "Blast off!", common enemies will be notified saying "Alarm! Alarm!", incoming formations will be confirmed as "Battle Stations", everytime the Spy Ship appears you'll be hearing "Spy Ship Sighted!" and when it escapes or you spent too much time in a single stage an alarm sound will be blaring followed by "Condition Red!". Midway advertised this feature as "Vocalized Command System". Unlike Game Plan's King & Balloon, Midway kept the japanese accent of the voices, resulting in some misheard words "Blast, oh!", "Alive! Alive!" (or "I Lied").
TRIVIONIAN
As classic as your Transformers posters.
- First Arcade and videogame overall to introduce the continue function.
- Midway advertised the continue function as "Special Play Option".
- The game won the 1983 "Best Science-Fiction/Fantasy Coin-up Game" Arcade Award beating both Atari's Gravitar and Sega's Zaxxon.
- First entry of the Bosconian series, followed by Blast Off and the PC Engine exclusive Final Blaster.
- The "Go for the Space Record Now" was later used in Dig Dug as "Go for the World Record Now".
- In case you are wondering who the "Space Record" of Bosconian belongs to, Ken McLeod holds the official record for this game with 2,913,150 points on February 24, 1983 (Physical Cabinet) while Chris Clemente broke that record in 2022 with a final score of 3,120,050 points although he used the MAME emulator.
- In the Strangereal/United Galaxy Space Force timeline, Bosconian takes place on the year 2281.
- While Namco calls the I, P and E-Types as "Missiles", only the E-Type is the one which really resembles a missile.
- The poster art was done by Shusei Nagaoka, who also worked with Jefferson Starship, The Sylvers and Earth, Wind & Fire.
- The Enemy Bases reappeared on Galaga '88 and Blast Off.
- Along with Pac-Man, Galaga, Pole Position, Rally X, New Rally X and Toy Pop, the release of Bosconian on Arcade Archives completes the list that comprised Namco Museum Vol. 1.
- The exploration-based game mechanic was later exploited by Tecno Soft in the first two games of the Thunder Force series.
Just another retro shmup to play and review.
Bosconian is a revolutionary game that made a "Before and After" in terms of vertical shooting with the exploration concept which redefined the limits of traditional shooting, along with the full exploitation of the voice samples, making this game an unique vintage shooting experience.
The "Eda Scale" is on the positives once again.