July 1, 1991
Game details:
1-2 Players
Standard controller
VGA box
The following game was not officially released for Sega Dreamcast. It is emulated using NEO4ALL RC-3 developed by chui. This is an evaluation of the emulation of the game as well as the game itself.
Using Team RDC's release you can play this game as though it is a commercial game with only a brief loading screen.
Emulation
I regret to inform (you'll find out why) everyone that this game seems to be emulated completely perfectly. I didn't come across any issues.
Gameplay
I would just like everyone who has seen This Is Spinal Tap to know that my ideal review of this game would be two words, and those two words would be Shit Pilots. This game is absolutely terrible. If you've ever wanted to play a shmup that isn't quite a bullet hell game but just sucks too bad to really be anything, this is it. It's a sluggish, lazy game. Before I played this game, I wondered why I had never seen it in an MVS before. Now I know. I'm not going to lie, I almost quit this game and said it doesn't deserve a repack with a review and everything. In a typical shmup your ship will be agile and avoid bullets easily, you'll collect some pretty awesome weapon power ups, and your bombs are quickly disposed to save your ass. Not here. You'll do your best to avoid any sort of conflict because your ship has all the speed of Christopher Reeve (post-accident) in a full-on sprint. Now you're thinking "maybe I'll get some cool power ups since my mobility is non-existent." You might, but you won't stay alive long enough to gather more than one or two power ups, so who knows. As for the bombs, they won't be saving anyone's ass. You can drop bombs and then sit in the explosion for as long as it lasts and shoot out of it to prolong your life. Bullets won't get in to hit you. This doesn't expand your average life any more though, because after 3 bombs you'll have to fly out and get killed to get some more.
This is a terrible game for many reasons, and the difficulty only makes it more frustrating. I'm not a stranger to shmups but judging from my continues in this game, it would've been a more profitable endeavor to just buy the arcade cab instead of try to finish it while at the arcade. Further disappointment comes from the game's length. GameFAQs assures me there's ten stages, but it felt like around 50.
Storyline
I'd sure love to know what the storyline is. Why does such a shitty game have such a cool name? This is like if you took Titanic and named it Fight Club.
Graphics
No redemption here, folks. These are horrible as well. The levels seem to have different scale, but tanks are always the same size. There will be planes on the ground that seem to be a few times your size (some of the bosses are massive planes, but these grounded ones are just ridiculous). There's no interesting details, and the backgrounds are incredibly bland and uninteresting.
Sound
This was probably the best aspect of the game for me; for some it will probably be the final damning fact, though. The sound has this cool sort of Sega Genesis sound to it. I enjoyed it because it made me nostalgic. This game sucks, and so did many other early 90s shmups. Every so often though, when the music would cut through the horrible sound effects, I felt like this was probably a very exciting game for someone to have bought back in the day. It's everything that's wrong with 90s games; it has a cool name that's unrelated to the game, it plays like shit, and it's terrible. Fast forward to 2011 though, and the sound can't save this mess, even if it triggers some nostalgia.
Conclusion
Shit Pilots
1/10
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