FOR MY ALLY IS THE (FINAL STAR) FORCE
An Arcade Shooter like no other!
From the squadron that brought you "Ninja Gaiden", "Tecmo Bowl" and "Dead or Alive".
Tecmo's back on Arcade Archives. The "100% Games" guys are back with a great surprise.
The "Raiden Clone" Final Star Force.
Familiar arcade formula, with a new twist.
Raiden and its many, many clones. Like I said on my review of Rezon, when small developers wants to do a quick profit, they follow one principle: "Send in the Clones". In this case, it wasn't a small developer or an obscure company who made a Raiden clone. ¿Who? Tecmo, formerly Tehkan, now Koei-Tecmo. The same Tecmo that published Seibu Kaihatsu's Raiden in Japan and published NMK's Raiden clone Thunder Dragon made a "Raiden Clone" of their own.
Final Star Force breaks the traditional basic vertical shmup formula of Star Force of taking down swirling enemies and blowing up "B-Panels" and letter-tagged cores and now adapts into modern shooting following both Seibu Kaihatsu and Toaplan's steps. This means less slow pace and more speed and bullets on-screen, and "Difficult Challenge" is what Tecmo is good at (both Arcade and NES Ninja Gaiden games).
Here comes the "Missile Slamfest".
With the outdated rules of Star Force shelved and discarded the RPG elements from the Famicom exclusive Super Star Force, Final Star Force decide to go all-Raiden with the weapon systems, so before starting the game, let's take a look to the Blue and Red Nova's arsenal.
TWIN VULCAN: Your ship's default weapon, the traditional twin shot from Star Force. Fires two bullets in a straight forward direction. Its special weapon is a bomb with a mid-to-small blast radius. Here's the catch: This is a basic weapon and it remains the same regardles of the power level reached and lacks of sub-weapon backup requiring to be switched for any of the Pulsators as soon as "Immediately".
THUNDER LASER (A-PULSATOR): Fires a straight laser shot that increases its strength and width on each level up. It is backed up with the Homing missile that chases enemies. Its special weapon is the Spark Bomb that unleashes fast running energy balls that pummel anything in sight.
WIDE SHOT (B-PULSATOR): Fires a frontal bullet with four angled shots in a very wide 5 way spread fire, requiring some aim to fully exploit its potential. Its sub-weapon is the Missile, which is the standard full-forward-but strong projectile like the "M" in Raiden. Its bomb is the Missile Bomb which unleashes a volley of 20 large fast flying missiles that ran over any hostile in sight.
SPRAY GUN (C-PULSATOR): This weapon fires a curtain of bullets that increases its row of shots on each level, making this a more "Basic" spread shot. The Synch-Fire is this Pulsator's sub-weapon, firing a small laser bullet that locks on an enemy. For its bomb, it utilizes the Triple Bomb, which unleashes three large flames in front and on each side of the ship, being the mid ranged blast of the game.
Level 4 is more than enough to get rid of the boss.
Koei-Tecmo's latest slogan/motto is "Level Up Your Happiness". Looks like decades before that, Final Star Force followed that principle. ¿How? By leveling up your ship automatically. This is how it works. As soon as you are in the game, a gauge will fill with time, once it fills it will reset but your power level will rise by 1. Grabbing a Pulsator of the same letter will add 1 Bomb or give you 2000 points if you already have 5 Bombs in your stock. This play mechanic is what makes Final Star Force different from other Raiden clones and what's more helpful: If you die, your power level is bounced a few levels back rather than start all over from level 1, giving you a great chance at recovering and surviving. If you lost all your lives and decided to continue, the game will send you back with the score you had instead of resetting it to zero or send you to the name entry and then resetting like Raiden did. While Raiden had bonus features like the Miclus, Fairies and the score giving spare bombs and picked Medals, Final Star Force lacks of them, which is a stab to the full potential of being a more complete Raiden clone. Anyone who played Raiden will remember they had to tap the fire button non-stop for fast firing, Final Star Force provides auto-fire to a certain extent. While the firing rate for the B and C Pulsators is somewhat slow and the A type requires to hold the fire button, there's a couple of reasons why of this rate dilemma. First, you can increase the B/C rate by tapping the button for an almost-turbo like firing which is extremely useful, but here comes the "Second" point: Great drop of frameskip. Having a lot of bullets can indeed slowdown the game and even interfere with the enemy performance like the bosses (Stage 2's firethrower tanks), kinda ruining the intense combat experience this game was trying to bring, which at the same time newcomers can exploit for survive. It seems like the action was way too much for this game to hold that needs to slowdown in order to keep the show going.
Those turrets are relentless.
If you don't take'em down, they will keep firing until you're dead.
Remember when I said Tecmo's good at difficult challenges? There's plenty of examples in Final Star Force. The most common will be having enemies and bosses coming from behind resulting in potential cheap deaths due to the surprise/ambush element. There's also the relentless turrets that won't stop firing at you just because you're out of their frontal sight. ¿Thinking on dodging them? Not this time kid. It's take them down or get killed. That also explains why your power drops a few levels if you lose a life. So you will be considering to burn one or two bombs to avoid these surprise attacks.
For some dumb reason, Tecmo decided to shelve this game and forget about it instead of homeporting it to consoles and computers. Big mistake considering it was 1992, the dawn of the SNES and Sega Genesis, when the newer 16-Bit technology was ready to prove they had what it takes to bring arcade titles at home. I mean, if the SNES had Final Star Force, it would put Electro Brain's Raiden Trad to shame. I mean, the SNES had way a lot of potential, just take a look at Gradius III, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time and Street Fighter II The World Warrior if you want to know what I'm talking about. But not even the XBOX Tecmo Classic Arcade compilation bothered to include it. So we had to wait 33 years to finally have this thing at home as part of the Arcade Archives library, which brings us a solid, arcade perfect port up to the slowdowns. This port gives us the option of disable the slowdowns for a more solid gaming experience as it was originally intended to be, and also disabling the enemy speed and bomb deploying behavior of your ship for additional challenges. It is worth to mention that the Hi-Score and Caravan Modes are stuck on "Fast" enemy speed, so you should be ready to face unexpected changes from what you remember in your days at the arcade. While most Arcade Archives games carry both Japanese and English/Overseas release, Final Star Force is based on the Japanese version. The only difference between American and Japanese is the "Winners Don't Use Drugs" screen. UPDATE: While the original Star Force was Switch exclusive worldwide and the PS4 port Japan only, Final Star Force goes worldwide for both platforms. So this means Final Star Force for everyone (Thanks for the info, BIL).
*Insert Ace Combat 7 ISEV references here*
Graphically, looks quite decent and solid most of the times by relying on basic vertical scroll with greatly done backgrounds that covers from simple space things to mass in-Earth detailings (Stage 2 and its water effects for example) and even 3D perspectives (the tower near the end of Stage 2). There's a few times where the game relies on adding more than 1 layer to the background for a simple in-depth effect. The only thing that I miss is the Gemini Wing-esque color flashing effect which was amazing back then, instead we have a horrible red flashing effect when an enemy takes damage, and becomes visually annoying during a boss fight.
One thing we've got to admit is that the first Raiden games (1 to DX) while they were action packed and brilliantly detailed, they didn't had the punch of speed provided by fast scrolling backgrounds. Probably because they focused the "build emotion and excitement" on throwing enemies rather than speed. Final Star Force addressed that by relying on fast backgrounds on key moments of the stage, completing the already action packed gameplay. Stage 3 adds a rotating effect on the space elevator which was kinda interesting since it was rare to see 3D effects on 2D games (predating the first stage of R-Type III if my memory doesn't fail me).
BOOM! Here comes the BOOM!
Ready or not haha! How you like me now?
Everyone likes great blasts in shooting and Final Star Force don't disappoint by sending the boss to the junkyard, not with random placed explosions or a single large blast, but filling the screen with fast running explosions as if the game's gonna fucking blow you away, fulfilling the punch of speed and fast scrolling this game pulls.
Revisiting "The old neighborhood"
Final Star Force makes homage to the original game in the space stages by introducing the classic Space-Hi-Tech scenery with the 1992 graphics which were a novelty back then. It was a nostalgic detail that we were able to appreciate.
The soundtrack of this game is 90's "Get down 2 tha sound" hype. Being the standard theme an 90's electronic-funk with claps that add more rhythm to the calmed yet energetic beat. Type A Pulsator's theme is more of an upbeat adventure like pace that resembles a mix between action platformer and your traditional shmup. Type B's theme is more of a "tough" situation theme in the style of the street fighting of the 90's. Are tough enough for Final Star Force? Then get ready 'cos the game and the sound are gonna get rough and finally there's Type C Pulsator's theme which is an adventurous theme and sounds very similar to the A-Type Pulsator theme. The boss theme is also "on the groove" of the 90's early "Dance" era as it sounds catchy and rhythmic at the same time. The only problem with the game's music is the fact that everytime you die or pick a different Pulsator, the music will change. I mean, what was wrong with having each theme on each stage so we can enjoy the music? Also, it is more than clear that the sound driver used by Tecmo was getting outdated due to the somewhat muffled quality compared with other sound cards of the time (Namco System II and Sega System 16) which is a minor blow to Final Star Force, but a testimony that Tecmo managed to do more with less.
FINAL TRIVIA FORCE
So, Player 2 gets the girl, huh?
- Final Star Force was the last entry in the Star Force series.
- It was also the penultimate shmup from Tecmo, being Eight Forces the last.
- According to the Japanese arcade manual, the pilots are Joe Bluewalker (Blue Nova) and Amelia Airhart (Red Nova).
- The character names are a mix of pop-culture and real world. Joe Bluewalker obvioulsy being a pun on Luke Skywalker, the protagonist from Star Wars and Amelia Airhart nods Amelia Earhart, the famous female aviator pioneer.
- First time in the series where the ship pilots are given a name.
- In Aero Fighters, Tee-Bee's JAS-39 bomb "Grand Napalm" is somewhat similar to the Triple Bomb. Both are short ranged side-frontal bursting flames.
- For some reason, Tecmo (and Hamster's Arcade Archives manual) call the power ups as Pulsators, when the katakana calls them "Pulsers" (パーサー Pāsā) which is their correct name.
- The item carrier is called "Vendor" which sounds odd since the dropship doesn't sell the item and the game is not money-based.
- The Arcade Archives release is the first home port of the game.
- It is also the first Star Force game released worldwide on PlayStation 4 and 5.
Thank you Nina.
May the (Final Star) Force be with you.
The "Force" was strong with Tecmo and this game was obviously intended to be one of their finest along with Raiga: Strato Fighter which it does precisely that; a fairly great job despite being a clone of Raiden with slowdown issues, some cheap shots from behind and an interesting turn of mechanics to close the Star Force saga. Not to mention the fixes given by Hamster that improves the game as it should be.
Although is not as great as Raiga, I can definitely recommend this one for those who're still looking for more Raiden-styled action after Raiden Nova and Arcade Archives: Viper Phase 1.
¿When we're gonna get Arcade Archives: Raiden II, Hamster?
Final Star Force gets a 8/10 in the R-Scale
This game has enough "Force" to bring a positive result on the "Eda Scale".