As your ship darts and weaves through armadas and tunnels it is thrilling. Going along for a ride as you manipulate its targeting reticle does not sound very thrilling but Starblade does its best to make it exciting.Īs an experience Starblade is exceptional. The game comprises three missions, destroying the super weapon Red Eye, its reactor named Octopus, and the enemy fortress Iceberg. As the gunner in a two man ship named the FX-01 Geosword you control the cross hairs of the ship’s laser cannons to destroy enemies while your pilot handles navigation. Starblade is a first person rail shooter. It isn’t perfect but is better than it has any right to be. It creates a look that captures the spirit and look of the arcade game while taking the system’s limitation in to account. The enemy ships are the biggest change from the arcade here they are wireframe models while in the arcade they were flat shade polygons. The background elements are pre-calculated and streamed off the disc while the enemies are rendered in real time. Instead it uses a hybrid approach like Silpheed. This is not a straight port of the arcade the system is not strong enough for that. Porting Starblade to the Sega CD was a challenge. But a good port of a mediocre game is still a mediocre game. The Sega CD version is a pretty good port. Outside of its unique cabinet Starblade was a shallow game and at home its shallowness is exposed. But such experiences are best left in the arcade.
It was extremely cool and lent to the atmosphere of the game. Starblade featured a pod you sat in that reflected the screen to give the illusion of space. Games like Darius with its triple monitor setup or G-Loc with its rotating cabinet were an experience. Another reason I miss the arcade is because of the deluxe cabinet experience. Obviously that can never happen again but it was pretty cool at the time. The experience of playing a game in the arcade that was technically miles ahead of what you had at home was incredible. Developer: Namco Publisher: Namco Released: 1994 Genre: Rail Shooter
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