Zero Wing

THE BAD:
Gets extremely hard later on
Bad trajectory adjustments when moving up or down

SUMMARY:
If you've heard of this game it's likely because of the famous "All your base are belong to us!" phrase that originated from this game due to Toaplan not being able to afford a decent translator. But in terms of gameplay the game wasn't actually anything that stunning.

It's a side-scrolling shoot 'em up, of which there were many during this time. And like so many of these games, you could have two pods (one above and one below) that would absorb most enemy fire as well as fire in tandem with the main spaceship. There are 3 different weapons you could have and 3 levels for each weapon. The red weapon fires simple bullets, they become more widespread as you increase the levels. The blue weapon is a straight laser beam that, if kills an enemy, will carry on through so long as there's still strength left in the weapon. Upgrading this made the lasers more powerful. The green weapon is a homing weapon which comes in very handy, the later levels of the weapon are just more powerful.

But you have another weapon, which is a tractor beam where you can pull in smaller enemies and then either fire them at other enemies or use it as a shield to protect yourself from attacks. You can pick up some of the medium size enemies but they will pull you down, which was a nice touch in my opinion. There are plenty of enemies and a variety of enemies as well. Over the 3 difficulties the enemies get progressively harder, usually by firing more shots at you. But as the game goes on and especially through the third time round, the game gets to a point where it's ridiculously hard. You can really struggle to get past certain points. More to the point, there's no reason to battle on, once you've beaten it, that's it, there's nothing spectacularly different to make you want to carry on except an ending that can only be described as bizarre.

But one of the most annoying things about this game was that when you moved up and down and the screen moved, the enemy fire also moved with the screen, so shots that you technically should have avoided actually hit you because the game couldn't handle the shots as a separate entity and it had to be integrated into the screen mechanics, so when the screen moves, the shots move. This is one big reason why Thunderforce III is superior to this game in my opinion, it doesn't suffer from this "moving fire".

Overall the game was actually nothing special to play, it's just because special because of the most famous catchphrase to ever come from a mistranslation. It's not a bad game, but don't think it's great just because of all your base...