A lot of video game players are spoiled today, with the many different choices of video game shooters that are available. But back in the early 1980's, with the Internet still years away, and no Nintendo Power available yet; people had to often find out the hard way, whether a game was good or not, by playing it. Either in arcades or on whatever system had the game that interested them. What made a game good, especially in arcades, was by how often it kept people coming back to put quarters into it. In order to be a good space shooting game, it helped to have something different to stand out from the rest of the competitors. Well, Namco thought about it, and thought the obvious next step in making a shooting game, was putting targets in the air AND on the ground, both at the SAME time! Now, the neat innovation behind this thought, was that this was a pretty good first attempt at trying to get people to think with a three dimensional space in mind. Targets on the ground can ONLY be hit by bombs, and targets in the air can only be hit by blaster fire! When the game got ported to the NES, Namco did a pretty good job of replicating the Arcade experience for Nintendo's 8-bit powerhouse! Sometimes, it's really AMAZING how many enemies can show up on the screen at the same time! I feel like THIS is the video game the Nintendo Switch's NES Virtual Console and Rewind Service was made for, as that will save you from HUNDREDS of cheap death's that occur because you misjudge the speed an enemy fighter or enemy blaster fire is coming towards you! The graphics, controls, sound, and difficulty are all pretty good. Arguably, the only real weak spot of this game is its rather repetitious chip-tune music that keeps repeating itself on a 15 second loop. One other problem that this game has, is that it didn't seem to be designed to actually HAVE an end! I played the game for a combination of over 4 hours, and scored over 3,000,000 points, but if this game HAS an ending, I couldn't find it. While this game is certainly primitive by today's more high caliber standards, if you want to see where a good number of modern day shooters got their inspiration from, this is definitely a game to test out, and try to challenge yourself to beat your own high score! Enough said, true believers!
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