Time goes on, video game consoles come and go, and many games for those consoles become all but forgotten, but what about entire consoles that suffer the same fate? Today, I beat a game for one of those consoles that time forgot:

Note: I know I foreshadowed a different game in my last post. I’m still playing that game; it’s just that I play my portable backlog separately because, well, it’s portable. I’ll also foreshadow my portable backlog separately as soon as I beat a couple more games from it (I made the mistake of trying to play a bunch of games at once).

Anyway, this game is an on-rails shooter. You play as a fighter jet constantly flying forward. On top of your normal gun, you start each level with a limited number of guided missiles (around 40). If a lock-on cursor appears on an enemy, your missiles will fly toward said enemy if launched; if a missile is launched when no lock-on icon is present, it will fly off in whatever direction you’re facing. Each stage has invisible borders on the top and bottom, and if you reach those edges, the game won’t let you move any further in that direction (some levels let you fly higher than others, and the game never lets you fly into the ground). However, you can move left or right as much as you want, but of course, the stages are only so wide, so if you reach those edges, you’ll loop to the other side of the stage. Each stage assigns you a mission at the beginning (usually to kill a certain type of enemy, though the game never tells you how many you need to kill), and it shows some workers refueling your plane and restocking its missiles before showing you take off. If you don’t complete the mission by the time you reach the end of the stage, the stage will loop and send you back to the beginning of the mission area (don’t worry, the mission areas are quite small). Of course, being a game from 1989, the scenery is simplistic enough that you won’t notice the stage looping at first (I never noticed it until half-way through the game).

In fact, simplistic is the best way to describe this game. Even by 1989 standards, this doesn’t have much variety. Basically, there are two types of enemies: planes, which will fly towards you, moving up and down and all around, and ground units, which don’t move at all (although some enemy planes will be rebels and fly from behind you toward the horizon). The enemies share the same method of attacking you: launch guided missiles (you hear a “beebeep” noise for every enemy missile launched). If the enemy isn’t launching guided missiles, it’s not attacking you at all and isn’t a threat. Aside from those missiles, the only other threat is the scenery, as it’s possible to crash your jet into trees or mountains. And that’s it; that’s the whole game. There’s not even any in-game story: it begins with your first mission, and it ends with text that says “YOU COMPLETED THE FINAL MISSION.”

You might be wondering how the game implements a difficulty curve when it doesn’t have much to work with. Simple: the rate at which enemies fire guided missiles increases, eventually reaching a point where I’m pretty sure the rate they fire missiles is faster than the rate the game will let you shoot them down. Plus, missiles generate a smoke trial, and whenever a missile is destroyed, it creates an explosion, and both of those serve to block other incoming missiles from your view, making the game seem a bit unfair at times. On top of this, the later stages like to put your targets right behind scenery, meaning you have to perform a risky dive, just barely missing the mountain in order to shoot down your targets and complete the mission. Lastly, I should mention that the game is rather inconsistent regarding what happens when you die. Most of the time, the camera will hang where you died as you watch the rest of the missiles fly by before the game puts you right back in that spot, flying forward with no loss in momentum (and sometimes, right into another missile). Other times, the game will decide to bring you all the way back to the beginning of the stage, even showing the people refuel and restock your plane (except now you have less lives), and what’s worse is that this can happen right after a death that resulted in an immediate respawn! What determines which respawn the player gets? I don’t know.

I do have a few positives to mention. First, the graphics are quite impressive for the time. The game manages to have smooth scaling and a mode-7-esque background on a portable 8-bit system in 1989. If the game is remembered for anything, that’s it (though it should be noted that the Lynx supports sprite-scaling natively). The opening animation is also really great. It starts off with the company name, “EPYX,” before zooming in on the “P,” at which point the rest of the name disappears and the “P” slides off screen to the left, followed by “RESENTS,” then the title of the game comes spinning toward the screen as lightning flashes. The title then fades out, and the programmer’s name fades in with another lightning flash, and the same happens with the name of the game’s graphic designer. The sequence is also accompanied by a really energetic and surprisingly lengthy song, especially when its length is compared to other 8-bit tracks. Most 8-bit songs play for less than a minute before looping, but this song plays for nearly three minutes before looping, barely repeating any bars in the process. My only issue with the song is that it’s held back by the Lynx’s sound chip; someone needs to make a cover of the song using real instruments (or at least authentic-sounding synth)! Seriously, listen to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YULRVSAL-u0

There are a couple other things I’d like to mention. In the eighth mission, you have to fly over a city without being detected. I only ever got detected when I intentionally flew lower than my starting position, so this part didn’t add much in the way of variety. However, during this part, enemy planes will still fly at you, with them and the mountains firing missiles in random directions since the enemy knows you’re coming, but they don’t know exactly where you are. I thought that was a neat detail. In the ninth and final stage (did I mention the game only has nine stages?), there are friendly tanks scattered throughout the stage (you know they’re friendly because they’re blue, just like your jet) that you have to avoid shooting. Shoot one, and they’ll shoot missiles at you; don’t shoot them and the stage is easier than the previous four, and it isn’t that hard to avoid shooting them.

Overall, this game is hard to recommend. I’ve heard this is one of the better games for the Lynx, and if that’s true, things aren’t looking too good for it’s library of games. If you don’t have a Lynx, obviously I wouldn’t recommend getting one just for this game, but if you already own a Lynx and don’t have this game, I say check it out if you can get it for, like, one dollar (maybe two).