Three great horizontal Shmups in one affordable collection.
As with many of these ININ Games published collections the ports are handled by Ratalaika Games and they have done a great job as per usual. This collection of retro shmups features three titles with the Steel Empire games having the option to play both the English and Japanese releases.
included games: –
Over Horizon
The Steel Empire (Mega Drive)
Steel Empire (GBA)
The Steel Empire (Mega Drive) Japanese
Steel Empire (GBA) Japanese
Over Horizon
Over Horizon is the star of the show here on this collection and I would say it’s worth considering buying for this title alone.
Being inspired by games such as Gradius and R-Type, Over Horizon is a shooter that somehow managed to pass me by over the years which is such as shame as it could quite possibly be one of my favourite NES games after spending a short time with it for this review.
In Over Horizon, you can shoot both left and right as you work your way through each varied level making your way to the boss of each area. As you can imagine with the shooting mechanics, enemies come from both behind and in front of your ship making positioning even more important than usual for a shmup,
To help you achieve victory, there are three powerups to collect each with three levels of power You can also choose your ship’s speed which can be handy for navigating particularly tough areas although I found the default speed to be just fine during my playthroughs.
Levels are distinctly varied and have puzzle-like elements and gimmicks to them. Often these puzzles are taught to the player very naturally, such as the third level that has ice blocks you can move by shooting them. This mechanic is introduced very early in the level with minimal obstacles around allowing for some natural practice before later making you have to move through tightly cramped areas while having to shoot blocks out of your path.
The boss enemies are a lot of fun usually filling a massive portion of the screen and remind me a lot of the kind of bosses you would face at an end of an R-Type level
obstacles around allowing for some natural practice before later making you have to move through tightly cramped areas while having to shoot blocks out of your path.
The boss enemies are a lot of fun usually filling a massive portion of the screen and remind me a lot of the kind of bosses you would face at the end of an R-Type level.
The fantastic music was scored by Masaharu Iwata composer of Fantasy Zone, Dungeon Kid and later even a lot of Squaresoft games such as Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII. In terms of shooters, Iwata-san composed music for the likes of Magical Chase, Armed Police Batrider, Mushihimesama and DoDonPachi DaiOuJou so you can be assured that the soundtrack is awesome.
Over Horizon does suffer slightly from the dreaded Gradius syndrome where after death you start back with your default weapons, which can be quite jarring after breezing through a few levels with a full stack of options and homing weapons. The ‘simple’ solution to this is to not get hit at all and I have to admit, I did start whole runs again if, by the second stage, I wasn’t fully powered up or got hit losing my precious upgrades
The Steel Empire (MD)
The Steel Empire has a strong steam punk style aesthetic with great music and fantastic parallax scrolling backgrounds.
The Steel Empire still retains the ability to fire both in front and behind your aircraft but replaces the classic ‘one hit kill’ with a vitality meter meaning you can eat a few more bullets before your demise.
Speaking of aircraft, there are two ships to choose from each with different stats. The Striker is a small, yet agile biplane and the Zep-01 is a slower-moving zeppelin that is a little bit robust and better ability to deal damage to ground targets. You can mix and match between these during the beginning of each level letting you choose a a slightly different playstyle depending on what enemies you are up against.
Powerups and health pickups are plentiful across the game often coming into play just as you need them and powerups follow a more linear progression system with each powerup increasing your ability to deal damage instead of the choice of three different shot types from Over Horizon.
Unlike Over Horizon, you can quickly reclaim all your powerups after death making The Steel Empire a much more forgiving experience than its predecessor.
Steel Empire’s large bosses are a highlight and many of them have one of my favourite features in a shmup, destructable parts. As you carve away, a boss’s health armour will be ripped and peeled off due to your shots. It’s very satisfying. Bosses don’t die in massive over-the-top explosions, they tend to be more realistic and a bit more of a whimper. In an interview with Shmuplations the developer Yoshinori Satake explained that explosions were kept to a minimum as they were already pushing the amount of graphical memory they had available for the Sega Mega Drive original.. Just a cool little bit of trivia for you there.
Steel Empire (GBA)
Steel Empire is a squished-down version of the Mega Drive original ported across the GBA in 2005 by Starfish Inc. The team responsible for the port are mainly former HOT-B so you could argue that the port was handled by the original development team.
It’s a really good port, although a few little cutbacks had to be made due to the smaller screen size on the GBA. A lot of parallax effects are missing and there are a few other visual downgrades here and there but overall, it’s a great port and still plays fantastic.
It’s essentially the same game as the Mega Drive / Genesis version although a few of the bosses have slightly different attack patterns and some of the level layouts are very slightly tweaked. It was actually quite a lot of fun going back and forth between the Mega Drive original and GBA versions to spot the tiny differences.
One thing to mention however is you cannot quickly reclaim your powerups and upgrades here in Steel Empire which can make it seem a little more challenging at times in comparison to the Mega Drive version.
Upon starting each title you’ll be asked to choose between Standard Mode and Challenge Mode with the challenge mode essentially being the original game as is standard mode including extra features such as cheats, save states and the ability to rewind gameplay after any mistakes. This is great for people who want to play as the original developer intended (Challenge mode) while not being too brutally difficult for newcomers to the genre.
Being a Ratalaika-developed port, you can expect all the great extras they usually throw in such as CRT filters, shaders, Scalines, Cheats, save states and wallpapers etc (Although, they only seem to have included one wallpaper in this collection as far as I can tell?).
In terms of performance, each game ran great although there was a few technical issues that could be worked on. My main gripe is there was no indication you could switch games by holding down the plus and minus buttons on the Switch Pro Controller, this should have been a little clearer, it’s a small annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless.
Another small issue I encountered was a glitch. I had an error while changing ships in The Steel Empire (MD) where the button mapping got itself confused. I switched from the Striker to the Zep-01 and suddenly I couldn’t fire forwards with that button acting as an additional pause button. As you can imagine, this made the game nearly impossible to play. A quick reset and the game functioned normally. This also only happened once and I played the collection for over 10 hours.
I was also quite intrigued to see references to emulators such as MGBA and SameBoy in the games licenses section which I’m guessing Ratalaika used to aid with the emulation of the titles here.
Conclusion
Over Horizon x Steel Empire is a collection that I didn’t know I needed until I spent time playing through it. It’s great! Personally, Over Horizon is my favourite game on the collection but The Steel Empire games are no slouch also. I do wish this collection included perhaps one or two more titles to round it out, but for the price it’s being sold at, it’s a steal. Go grab a copy, especially if you are a shmup lover, you owe it to yourself to play these games.
8
Nintendo Switch review code kindly provided by PR Hound for review.
Over Horizon x Steel Empire Gameplay