Mercenary Force (1990)

 

For some reason, Meldac decided the mercenaries needed to look like firefighters.

In the early 80's, as Atari VCS/2600 units were flying off store shelves, a lot of companies jumped on the video game publishing bandwagon. The glut of terrible software in 1982 and early 1983 created a situation where too much supply met waning demand, and the North American video game market bubble burst. In reviving the market during the mid-late 80's, Nintendo was careful to try and exercise better control over publishers, to ensure that the software met at least some bare minimum standard before it could be licensed for the console. While the rest of the world had no such "crash" regarding video game sales and their viability as a vertical market, a lot of Japanese companies tried their hand at video game publishing, to expand their portfolio. Some flirted with the idea briefly, others went all in, and managed to create another business line for themselves.

Meldac was sort of an example of the former, entering the video game market in 1990, and exiting promptly by 1994. The company was also a music publishing outfit, and when they decided to get out of the business of video games, they stuck to music publishing, and have since worked with a number of notable artists. They published a small handful of video games via their North American division. Of those titles, one is a more mainstream title, that being US Championship V'Ball in 1989 on the NES. Their other notable NES game is the rather odd shooter Zombie Nation, which is getting a revival shortly, thanks to Japanese publisher City Connection. They also published a pair of Game Boy titles, one of them being the very unique Mercenary Force, which was developed by Lenar and Live Planning.

This is how you do a title screen! Show me ninjas, samurai, 

and monsters, and I'll press Start on that screen quickly.

The game has the usual setup, with a twist: instead of a ragtag group of mercenaries going off to fight aliens or military, your Shogun-era fighters must confront the myriad foes controlled by the "Dark Lord" to fend off their advance upon the Japanese countryside. Apparently, famine, plagues, and pestilence are not good things. Shogun Tokugawa has a vision of mighty warriors rising up against the evil, which is where you come in. You'll select from a batch of 5 mercenaries to team up and take on the minions of darkness, and rid the land of their foul presence. You can select up to 4 of these fighters to join your squad.

At its core, this is a side scrolling shoot-em-up, but with people walking along the ground, instead of flying, or piloting some kind of craft. Each mercenary has its own attack style, whether that's forward firing, in a diagonal fashion, or vertical fire. Depending on how you approach a level, and where you feel you need coverage, will determine which mercs you choose, and in what order. Do you opt for a lot of forward firing team members, to create a powerful frontal assault? Or do you mix and match, so you can have a wide ranging attack? In this game, the choice is yours, and it's a big part of what sets this game apart from other shooters.

Choose your team members wisely - you have 5 choices,

but only 4 openings, and a limited amount of Yen to spend.

One of the interesting mechanics in the game is the ability to set up your team into 1 of 4 different formations. There's the Formation of the Wind, which is a loose cluster of people that will make up a diamond shape when you have a full team. Formation of the Forest is similar, but a tighter formation, with more of a square shape, and your mercs closer together. Formation of the Fire creates a bit of a straight line on the horizontal, with the 2 members in the back stacked together, so your formation resembles a flame. Formation of the Mountain puts your team into a vertical line, so you all walk along in a straight line and attack uniformly, but have a lot of exposure to enemy fire. Which formation you use most frequently will depend on your play style somewhat, but generally speaking, you'll want to find a way to balance exposure to enemy attacks, while maximizing your attack power, so a combo of formation choice, along with fighters chosen and their order will help you determine that.

As you fight enemies, they'll drop 10 Yen coins you can collect. These don't stay on screen very long, so you need to be quick about grabbing them. This is a risk/reward scenario of course, because enemy waves often come together in groups, so as soon as you take out a small batch of foes, there's likely to be another just behind it. Merely touching an enemy means the team member who gets hit will take damage, and lose a "strength" point for each contact. Likewise, getting hit by enemy projectiles will cause you to lose a point for each hit sustained. Obviously, care must be taken to balance how aggressive you are with collecting coins, and how many hits you take, so you're not damaging yourself more than you can mitigate later.

Formation of the Wind gives you a balance of power and

size, but it does spread you out enough to make you more

susceptible to enemy attacks than tighter formations.

Along the way, you'll encounter shops in each town where you can power up a bit. You can buy Sushi, which restores a single strength point for each team member, Medicine, which restores 3 strength points for your leader, or Tea, which restores 3 strength points for all members. In a couple of the shops, you'll also have the opportunity to buy Scripture, which has a chance to upgrade your lead party member to a higher class. You'll also encounter a gambling game in stage 2, where you can take a chance and win a potential prize, to be revealed later in the game. There are a couple spots where you can enter a shrine, and be granted extra strength points for your team members to aid you on your journey. And once in the game, you'll encounter the Daibutsu, who you can pay to win a chance to resurrect a fallen warrior. The more you spend, the better your chance, though it's still a crapshoot, since you have to choose a tile after paying. If you have the Mystic in your party, your odds will improve.

Control in the game is basic, but adequate. The B button changes the formation of your party, and A is your attack button. A is also confirms your selection in the shops, and B will cancel out of a shop. As you move around the screen with the d-pad, your lead character will move fastest, and other characters will lag behind a bit, so be aware of that control quirk. Start pauses the game, and starts the next round, after you decide whether or not you want to add another party member to your team. If you press A+B together, you'll activate a transformation, where your lead party member will sacrifice themselves and become a "spirit warrior" version of themselves, which provides temporary invincibility, as well as other benefits, which vary by character, though the Servant has no such ability.

Tea is a great way to quickly boost your team's strength

points up to a high level, so you can take a lot of hits.

Graphically speaking, this is a fairly impressive game for its vintage. Your mercs are easy to identify, and enemy sprites are all fairly distinctive. Character designs on the selection screen are nice, and in game, scenery is generally well rendered. There are a couple places where it's not obvious what you're looking at, but overall, everything looks nice. The shops aren't something I would have expected to be a shop, and I sort of stumbled across them by accident, just by walking into one in the scenery. The shrines are more obvious, as is the Daibutsu. Occasionally, you'll get "stuck" on the scenery a bit, or one of your team members might, and their sprite might jitter a bit until clear of that obstacle, which is a funny consequence of the design. In general, this game looks pretty good throughout, even if the boss designs aren't quite as impressive as the drawings you see in the manual.

Audio is a place where the game falters, somewhat. Sound effects are fine, and get the job done. The music is also solid, with a neat opening tune, and a decent boss fight theme. The stage music is also good, but the problem is, there's not enough of it! There's one, and only one stage song that plays during the whole game. Why the development team felt they could get by with that one theme is beyond me, but as far as I'm concerned, it's a pretty big oversight. The music is good, and has that ancient Japanese kind of feel you want, to help with the atmosphere of the game. But it sure would have been nice if they had given us more music, even if it was just 2 or 3 tracks that would alternate between the game's 6 stages. It would have gone a long way to making the experience less irritating by game's end.

I'm not entirely sure what a Razor Rat is, but this is apparently it.

One of the things that I found while exploring this game, and while we collectively played it for the RF Generation Shmup Club (shameless plug), is that the methodology the game is going for isn't necessarily the best approach. You have 4 slots to hire mercenaries, and the game expects you to do so, given its design, but you're not require to. Rather, several of us found the most effective way to approach the game is a more minimalist take, where we hire a single Ninja, or perhaps a Ninja and a Monk, so that you have a smaller footprint, and thus, a smaller overall "hit box" for the enemies to exploit. It means you'll probably collect less money, because you'll have to be far more aggressive in taking out enemies in some spots, and way more conservative in others. As you go along, you may hire additional mercs to help, but until you get toward the end of the game, you really can do most, if not all, of the game with a single character. It makes the game feel a bit more like a traditional shmup, but of course, it takes away from the core mechanic that's at work here. Ultimately, the game can be taken on with a team and completed that way, but you'll have a fair bit of trial and error along the way, as you learn which party members serve you best, and which formation(s) will be your best options.

I do have a few minor gripes. First, the game's scoring seems fairly broken. You can have 2 runs where you do roughly the same things, and your scores between the 2 won't really line up. In conjunction with that, the only time you see your score is while you're playing, or briefly when you die. You get no score report at end game. Also, coins don't count toward your score, so if you're playing in a more aggressive manner, your only real reward for collecting Yen is having more at your disposal for hiring mercs or healing. Second, there are no end credits. You get a fun ending screen with animation, but nothing further. And you have to turn off your Game Boy and back on, if you want to play again. Third, there are a few tight areas where you're almost guaranteed to take damage. I realize the game is designed around having hit points, but it's not a welcome mechanic in the shmup world, generally speaking, and it can be a sign that some spots were not as well designed.

It can be easy to get a party member or two caught on

something in the stage, which makes it harder to avoid

enemy projectiles, particularly in the later stages.

One interesting thing of note is that the game has multiple endings. If you beat the game with one or more party members, you'll get the "standard" ending, congratulating you for vanquishing the evil from the land. If you use the level select cheat that you can activate, and beat the game, you will see a variation of that ending with goofy looking monsters and animals in place of the humans in the end screen. And if you can complete the final boss fight with a Mystic in your party, you'll get the best ending, which sees you and your mercenary friends walking off into the sunset to revel in your victory. It's a nice detail, and just enough of a differentiator to give the game a little extra replay value.

All in all, despite my qualms with a few design choices, this is a solid title. It's probably not going to be your favorite shooter, nor do I expect it would even be your favorite shmup on the Game Boy. But it's good enough to be well worth a look. It has enough unique stuff going on, and enough that sets it apart from other games to stand on its own. I definitely had fun with this game, and could see myself fire it up again from time to time, for a quick play session. It works well enough on the hardware, and especially if you have a Game Boy Pocket, the ghosting isn't too bad, because of the relatively slow pace and slow scrolling through each level. This isn't terribly expensive right now either, so it's worth the asking price as of this writing. Recommended.

As an aside, I recently covered this game on my podcast as well, in case you haven't seen or heard. It's called Shoot the Core-cast, and we cover a different shmup each month. If you like shooting games, come check us out, and let us know what you think of the podcast. We'd really appreciate any feedback you could provide. Oh, and if you enjoy playing shooters, join up at RF Generation, and come jump into a play-through with us! We try to host a variety of shooters, so hopefully we'll find one you like, and you can participate with us. Thanks!

Nemesis (1990)

Box art shamelessly stolen from GameFAQS.

Shoot-em-up box art was always pretty "metal" during the 1980's

and early 90's, but even this cool art pales in comparison to the

Japanese box, which parallels the original Gradius arcade flyers.

Scrolling shoot-em-up games are one of my favorite classic game genres.  I already established this, in my review of Solar Striker, but because it's been a while since I posted that review, I wanted to make it abundantly clear.  I'm not always very good at them, but I have fun trying.  Though I occasionally go into fits of gamer rage because I die at the exact same spot 12 times in a row, it's the idea of inching your way through a furious gauntlet of incoming enemy waves, laser fire, and shrapnel, that fascinates me to this day.  One of the shmups that defined the genre was Konami's arcade classic, Gradius, referred to as Nemesis, outside of Japan.

I'm not entirely sure what's happening here.  Is the Moia head looking at

the dinosaur bones, satisfied from a meal, or wishing they still had meat

on them, so it could partake? Either way, it looks quite menacing in pixels.

Gradius was a break-through in a number of ways.  It took the basic, side-scrolling shooter formula that Konami had previously pioneered with Scramble, and instead of the constant struggle for fuel, replaced that with an intricate upgrade system.  If also made things far more detailed and interesting, with markedly improved graphics, catchy and memorable music, and an interesting concept of "shoot the core" with the bosses.  This helped solidify the idea of end bosses having weak points, so that you couldn't just shoot them anywhere to deal damage.  All of these elements were instrumental to the genre as it developed, and became mainstays, not only in the later Gradius games, but in shooter games on the whole.

The ACTUAL title screen looks far less menacing. But it still has the

awesome logo design, which remains a staple throughout the series.

Nemesis, Konami's first shmup entry into the Game Boy library, by way of their Ultra Games imprint, is a fine shooter that, while borrowing its namesake from the worldwide arcade and Japanese MSX releases, doesn't quite match the arcade game in terms of design.  Nemesis on the Game Boy takes elements of the original arcade game's design, and implements them here, but there's original content as well, making for a bit of a mashup, of sorts.  Rather than a straight arcade conversion, you get something that feels familiar, but with enough original material added so it also feels fresh and new.  And compared to the previously mentioned Game Boy shmup outing, Nemesis is the Cadillac to Solar Striker's family station wagon.

Like Konami's other early Game Boy entries, they wisely choose to

include a level select, as well as  giving players the option to change

the button config, toggle auto-fire, choose the difficulty level, and

grant themselves extra lives.  This makes the game much more

suited for quick sessions on the handheld Game Boy hardware.

For the uninitiated, the major draw of the series is the power-up system.  As you shoot down enemies, some of them will drop special icons that you pick up.  The first one you obtain will light up the first entry on a small bar at the bottom of the screen, allowing you to increase the speed of your ship.  If you elect to wait until you've collected more icons, each subsequent pickup will shift the selection on the bar over by 1 space, until you've reached the end, then it wraps back around.  In slot 2, you can add missiles to your ship's arsenal.  Slot 3 yields the "Double Shot", which upgrades your ship to not only shoot forward, but also a 2nd shot will fire upwards at a 45 degree angle.  Slot 4 gives you a power laser shot that fires directly ahead.  In slot 5, there's what's called an "Option" - this creates a small entity that follows your ship around and doubles your firepower.  In most Gradius games, you can add up to 3 or 4 of them.  Due to the obvious limitations of the Game Boy hardware, you can only add 2 in this game.  In the 6th and final slot, you can add a force field to the front of your ship, which is capable of absorbing some damage so your craft doesn't explode from contact with a single volley.  You can power up your speed multiple times, and your missiles twice, and in any order you like, so it's obvious to see that the way you approach the game can be entirely your own, and you can really experiment with the weapon load-out.

If you can get good enough to survive the initial onslaught of enemies,

it's pretty easy to get fully powered up during the first level of the game.

All this weaponry, and all these options (pun intended) available to you, don't necessarily mean you're going to walk through this game, however.  Nemesis is quite the challenge, for a handheld title, and if you're going to beat the 5 main stages, you'll need to hone your skills, sharpen your reflexes, and memorize some enemy patterns, placements, and attack vectors, in order to survive.  You'll also need to make sure you power up your ship as quickly as possible, as the waves of enemies are generally more than your tiny craft can handle with its default pea shooter and slow speed.  Thankfully, in addition to the power-up icons, you'll occasionally be granted a smart bomb icon instead, which will destroy all low-level enemies on screen at once, along with any bullets.  Be careful not to run into any scenery, however; the ground and other obstacles aren't just backgrounds - some of them are in the foreground with your ship and will destroy you in a single hit, even when you're equipped with the shield.

Like me, you'll probably be seeing this screen a lot at first.

A common strategy that I like to use for powering up goes as follows.  First, increase the speed of your ship by 1, so you can more easily dodge enemies and incoming fire, as well as more quickly grab additional power-up icons.  Second, activate your missiles, so you have additional fire to help ward off enemies.  Third, get yourself an Option, so you can double that firepower.  Fourth, grab the second option available to you.  Fifth is a toss-up between powering up your forward fire with the laser, activating the double shot, or adding the force field.  I usually opt for the laser or double shot, to more easily mow down enemies, then go for the shield later.  Lastly, once you're fully powered up, keep collecting power-up icons for points, but keep track of where your power-up bar is at.  If you can stop collecting after cycling through them once or twice, and leave it on the sixth entry, you can easily activate the force field again if you take too many hits and are left defenseless.

This is one of the more formidable enemies. It takes a lot of damage,

and the 3 pods it shoots out are impervious, so you have to dodge them.

Graphically, Nemesis is an impressive game.  Konami had excellent command of the Game Boy hardware early on, and after several years of programming for Nintendo's Famicom and NES hardware, were naturally adept at bringing this kind of 8-bit action to the small screen.  Some developers had a hard time adjusting for the scale of the small screen, but Konami's early efforts always seemed to strike that nice balance between good graphics, and proper scale and playability.  Your ship is large enough to see some detail, and look nice, but small enough so that it doesn't feel claustrophobic amongst the enemies, incoming fire, and stage layout and obstacles.  The enemies are mostly recognizable from other Gradius games, outside of a handful of original creations for this title, and are all well rendered.  Backgrounds are minimal, which works well, because it cuts down on the motion blur on the hardware.  Instead, most of the areas are given excellent graphics to show off the terrain and obstacles, and they all look really nice.  Animation is limited, but there are a couple spots that have what appears to be parallax scrolling, which was quite a feat on the system.

When you destroy a boss, it disappears in this really cool, satisfying "warp"

effect, where the sprite splits off into different lines, and the images diverge

in different directions. It's hard to explain, but it looks great on the hardware.

In the audio department, Nemesis is the usual Konami par excellence.  Konami really knew how to get the most from 4 channels of sound, and they do a great job here, not only providing music that sounds good, and is fitting to the game, but is also catchy and interesting.  The first stage music recalls the original Gradius theme, and you also get some music later that is lifted from this game's forbear, but the other tunes on offer here are original compositions from 4 different composers: Shinya Sakamoto, Yuji Takenouchi, Tomoya Tomita, and the incomparable Michiru Yamane, who is much more well known for her work on the Castlevania series of games, most notably, the excellent soundtrack for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.  Sound effects are also generally good, with some interesting use of the Game Boy's noise channel for certain effects, which also utilizing one of the dedicated sound channels for a lot of the weapon and enemy explosion noises, without interrupting the music from the other 2 channels.  Overall, this is prime sound design, and a soundtrack that stands as one of the best on the system.

This bad boy starts off as 4 smaller balls, then merges into a single giant

ball of destruction, then splits off again into 4 smaller balls. If you're fast

enough, you can destroy all 4 smaller balls before it has a chance to

reform into the larger ball a second time, saving yourself some headache.

Nemesis, like its arcade forefather, also doesn't stop after the 5 levels you see in the initial configuration screen.  Instead, while completing those 5 levels will get you a credit roll and congratulatory screen, that's not technically the end of the game.  As soon as the credits are done, you're thrust back to the first stage again, with all your current arsenal intact, to face off with the enemy again, but this time, the stages are harder, enemies are faster and shoot more bullets at you, and the whole thing is more frantic.  Stages 1-5 are now labeled as 6-10, and as is the Gradius tradition, in order to say you've truly beaten the game, you need to complete it on the second loop.  However, after the second time through, the game doesn't end, you just get another credit roll, and then it's back to Stage 1 again to keep going.  For savvy players and score chasers, this will be a welcome feature, though one has to wonder if Konami considered this as necessary, given the pick-up-and-play nature of the Game Boy, which lent itself to shorter play sessions.

The stage 4 boss has a simple pattern, but don't let that fool you. It can

dish out a large number of bullets, and it's easy to get caught in the crossfire.

With all the good here, is there anything that brings this game down?  Not much.  As with many Game Boy titles, motion blur is a factor, but that's a hardware limitation.  Konami does their best to mitigate this with limited animation in the sprites, and it helps keep the flicker to a minimum, but it's still there in spots.  One of the later stages uses an awful lot of the darker shade for its foreground obstacle graphics, and while it looks nice and detailed, it could have used a touch more variety in the shading.  Occasionally the sound effects get to be slightly cacophonous, due to the sheer amount of enemies you'll be taking out, and while it doesn't drown out the music, it detracts from the overall presentation, if only slightly.  These gripes, however noticeable, are all relatively minor.

Congratulations! An end sequence with no Engrish!

At the end of the day, this is one of the finest examples of the horizontal scrolling shoot-em-up to be released for a handheld game system.  Only this game's sequel, Gradius: Interstellar Assault, the Japan-only Sagaia entry in the Darius series, and perhaps the colorful Gates of Zendocon on the Atari Lynx can possibly rival this title's sheer excellence and presentation.  It has the looks, it has the sound, and it has the tight gameplay that fans had come to expect from Konami by this point, and they delivered the goods.  It may seem inexplicable that such an action-oriented, twitch shoot-em-up could be released on Nintendo's monochrome handheld, but Konami did it, and this game stands as one of the best examples of the genre from 1990, and quite possibly, one of the best on the console itself.  Thankfully, because the game sold well, it's also very common, and inexpensive to pick up.  You should be able to score a copy for $6 - $8 or less.  It's worth every penny, especially if you're a fan of the genre.  Highly recommended.

SolarStriker (1990)

Image shamelessly linked from GameFAQs.
I love classic video game box art like this. It symbolizes
the imagination many artists put into the artwork. Imagination
that unfortunately, rarely ever captured the true look and
feel of the game. Still, it gave us hope of the contents within.

One of the video game genres that I've been a big fan of over the last 20 years or so is shoot-em-ups.  No, I'm not talking about "shooters", those fast-paced, first-person games where you brandish a firearm of some sort and snipe guys at 300 feet, reveling in every headshot.  No, I'm talking about the scrolling shooter, one of the staples of what we now know as classic, or "retro" gaming.  You see, from the early-mid 1980's, until around the mid-late 1990's, the scrolling shooter genre evolved tremendously, from humble beginnings like 1942, Vulgus, Star Force, and the like, to highly sophisticated games with deep, complex scoring systems like Battle Garegga, Dodonpachi, Radiant Silvergun, and many more.  While I appreciate the complexity and replayability of games like that, give me a simple "shmup" (a term, coined by Zzap!64 Magazine) with twitchy game play, a simple control scheme, and solid action any day.  While there's room in my heart for "danmaku" games (aka bullet curtain, or "bullet hell" shooters), I generally prefer classic shoot-em-ups to their more grown-up descendants.

Someone needed to remind companies during the 80's
and early 90's that changing the logo design between the
box and the title screen caused confusion. Which logo
was the "official" one, and which was a design mistake?

Leave it to Nintendo to do things differently.  While we know in today's modern world that Nintendo prefers to go their own way and do their own thing, in the late 1980's and early 1990's, it was everyone else who was doing their own thing, while Nintendo were the stalwarts of the scene, at least in North America.  We didn't know any better until years later, when we found out about the Tengen stuff, companies only being allowed to publish so many games each year for the NES, having to buy cartridges and hardware from Nintendo, etc.  During that time, Nintendo was leading the charge, and everyone else was either following, or trying to differentiate themselves somehow to stand out.  From the N64 forward, however, we saw a much different Nintendo.  So to some fans in 1990, a vertical scrolling shoot-em-up might have seemed like it came out of left field from Nintendo.  Be that as it may, they made a solid game.

"Space...the final frontier."  Also, graphically kind of boring.

The setup for SolarStriker reads like any other bog standard shmup from that time period.  You're a lone spacecraft either tasked with a suicide mission to save civilization, or a loner bent on revenge and the destruction of an alien planet/race/culture/technology/etc.  It doesn't matter much, as there's no story in-game, and the back of the box doesn't exactly give you much of a reason for blasting alien baddies, anyway.  What does matter is that you've got 3 lives, an upgrade-able weapons system, and tons of alien craft and weaponry in your way before you reach the end of the game's 6 stages.  Throughout your journey, you'll collect power-ups, destroy flying ships, tanks and trucks, alien life forms, and large boss enemies to reach the final showdown.

I'm sure you'll become quite acquainted with this screen
as I did in my play through of the game. It gets annoying.

Thankfully, you can press Start to jump right back to the
title screen, and Start again to get back to the action.

Graphically, the game isn't too shabby for the Game Boy.  Your ship, while devoid of a "tilt" animation when you move left to right, is rendered nicely, and the backgrounds generally strike that balance between interesting and utilitarian, leaning more toward the latter in favor of the player's ability to see what's going on.  Enemies move in various patterns, and while some enemies rotate or change as they attack, others just move on the screen and their sprites are static; only their movement fluctuates.  Explosions are also decent, given the small screen size, but they don't distract from the action.  As a side note, this game was released early enough in the Game Boy's life cycle that it has a special palette programmed into the Super Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and Game Boy Player which reverses the "black and white" contrast, so that space looks like space with black space and white stars, and similar changes.  If you want the original experience, you'll need to play it on an original DMG or Game Boy Pocket unit, otherwise, you'll see the game much differently than R&D 1 had in mind.

I can only assume since we started in space, and this is
Stage 2, we're in the sky above the alien planet, raining
down destruction and chaos everywhere.  Neat.

The audio of the game is an area that I think was relatively strong, given the time of the game's release.There are only a handful of music tracks in the game.  The title screen has its own ominous theme, and then there are 3 tracks shared by the subsequent 6 stages, each track playing for 2 consecutive stages before the next theme is used.  There's a separate track for boss fights, and then of course, separate music for when you lose your last life, and for the game's ending.  All tracks are reasonably well composed, though I'll wager that most people will say the Stage 1/2 music is the best tune in the game, in part because it's super catchy, but also because that's the music they'll likely be hearing the most.  Sound effects are also decent, though very minimal, using white noise bits for explosions, sufficient beeping and noises for your craft firing, etc.  Most enemies don't make noise when they fire projectiles, so you don't get that extra warning - you'll have to be mindful of their incoming fire by sight only.

Stage 3 goes over some roadways, which look suspiciously
like our own on Earth.  Wait a minute, am I blowing away
aliens on Earth? Why didn't anyone tell me?

Game play is pretty standard.  You can move the ship up, down, left, and right on the screen, and have no real restrictions as to where you can go within the game's field of vision.  The actual stage width is greater than what you can see on screen, so as you move the space ship left and right, the screen scrolls slightly to display the rest of the area you have to fly in.  It feels natural, and didn't distract me when playing like in some games.  The difficulty is pretty standard throughout the first 3 stages, increasing relatively gradually, though the bosses for the 1st 3 areas are quite easy.  Things get very hairy starting with Stage 4, however, as the difficulty ramps up quite a bit.  In particular, the Stage 4 boss rains down a lot of fire on your ship, making it quite tough to get in a few hits here and there.  The Stage 5 boss is only slightly less forgiving, having a more predictable pattern.  From Stage 4 through 6, there are mini-bosses, and there's a small mini-boss rush at the end of Stage 6 before the final boss.  Strangely, though the final boss throws a lot at you, it feels like a less complicated battle than the 2 preceding boss fights, so it comes off as a bit of a relief in comparison.

Stage 4 adds the first mini-boss, this big fella here. You
have to destroy the shielded units around him to get to
the actual core of the unit itself, not unlike another famous
series of shmups where you have to "Shoot the core!"

This is a shooter based on the template laid down by a number of arcade and early console titles that came before it, and in some ways, served as a template for all shoot-em-ups subsequently released for this platform.  There's not a 2nd loop for "New Game Plus" mode, and there's not even a high score table.  You just fly, maneuver, and shoot through 6 stages, and that's all there is.  It's not a particularly long game, though the stages themselves are sufficiently long before the boss encounters.  Yes, the game comes off as a pretty no-frills affair, but for a portable title, that's pretty much all you need.  It's a solid game with tight game play.

This is the Stage 4 boss, just before it starts shooting a
metric ton of bullets at me. This was long before the term
"bullet hell" was coined, but that's not far off the mark here.

If I had to level some complaints against SolarStriker, I would say the game's major difficulty spike after Stage 3 would be one.  The game just doesn't feel that hard through the first 3 levels, once you memorize enemy wave patterns.  Starting with Stage 4, however, things become much more manic.  You start to encounter fast moving enemies that can only be destroyed at the highest level of ship fire, and even then, only if you're at the bottom of the screen firing at them constantly until they're nearly on top of you.  The enemy bullet timing and patterns are kind of goofy as well.  Sometimes it feels like they're targeting you, while other times, it seems like they're just shooting a bullet, hoping to hit something.  In later levels, when half the enemies start shooting directional lasers that always shoot straight down, it becomes less twitch-reflex dodging, and more risk/reward, where you decide whether or not you want to risk potentially being taken out by a laser, versus the points you'll earn for destroying that enemy or group.  It's a little unbalanced in that sense, and is a bit too obvious in the game's setup.  I also would have liked the other 2 stage tunes to be a bit more memorable, or better yet, have dedicated music for each of the 6 stages.

Oh look, a stage that looks like highly advanced
technology and stuff - that's not a trope at all, is it?

Despite these less than perfect design choices, SolarStriker remains a highly playable, and reasonably enjoyable game.  It's a solid shmup that benefits from some good graphic design choices to make the game easy to see and play on the original hardware, despite the Game Boy DMG's tendency toward motion blur.  The music and sound, despite the sparse nature of it, is fitting to the game, and you'll likely find yourself whistling or humming the Stage 1/2 song at some point.  Just don't throw your Game Boy against the wall when you die on the Stage 4 boss the 12th time.  I'll give this 2 thumbs up for shooter and arcade game fans, and a casual recommendation to anyone else.  It's a very common game, and I picked up a copy for $4.  If you can't find it that cheap, it might be worth paying a little more for, but I wouldn't go out of your way to acquire it, because it's so common in the wild.

The final stage looks vaguely like you're inside some giant
alien being, not unlike Life Force/Salamander or Abadox. The
final boss appears to be the creature's heart that you have
to destroy. Why it shoots bullets at you is anyone's guess.

Yeah, we kind of figured that part out with the preceding
cut scene, but thanks for telling us anyway.

"Finally, I can dock my ship and go meet up
with that cute engineer from Section 3!"

This is my SolarStriker cart. It appears that perhaps my
cart fought in the conflict with the aliens alongside the
space ship you pilot in game...