Sega’s fortunes finally changed, though, with the Sega Genesis: a 16-bit, next-gen console that, on its Japanese release in 1988, beat its old rival’s Super NES to the market by almost two years. Unlike the ageing NES, the Genesis could get closer than ever to the speed and vibrancy of Sega’s arcade machines – you only have to compare the NES port of Altered Beast to the one on the Genesis to see how great the technical leap was. Admittedly, the Genesis was never quite as popular in Japan as it was elsewhere, but that was partly because it had greater competition not only from Nintendo, but also systems like NEC’s PC Engine, an otherwise wonderful console that largely failed to catch fire outside its home country. All the same, you wouldn’t necessarily know that the Genesis was a smaller concern in Japan from looking at its library of games. The console had hundreds of titles programmed for it in Japan alone – some of them exclusive to that country. And among that library of games (which globally stretches to around 900 titles), you’ll find some flat-out classic shooters. Although the Genesis had its own hardware quirks, including a more muted color palette than the SNES, its superior CPU speed (7.67 MHz vs about 2.68 MHz, fact fans) made it ideal for the shoot ’em up genre. And boy did the Sega Genesis get a lot of shoot ’em ups.
Bullet Heaven
At the height of the Genesis’ popularity, the number of shooters available for the console – either available in officially or via grey import from Japan – evidently bewildered game journalists at the time. Writers would often grouse that one side-scrolling blaster was broadly the same as another. In their review of Darius II (also known as Sagaia), UK magazine Mean Machines wrote, “I can’t believe how many horizontally-scrolling shoot ’em ups are being released on the Genesis at the moment – it’s all getting a bit much…” The most obvious place to start is Lightening Force: Quest for the Darkstar(known as Thunder Force IV everywhere else in the world), a title released in 1992 by Technosoft. The studio was at the height of its creative powers at this point, having helped revolutionize the real-time strategy genre with the hybrid Herzog Zwei, widely credited with inspiring Command & Conquer, and creating a string of technically excellent shooters, including the Thunder Force games and the lesser-known Elemental Master. Lightening Force was easily the series’ pinnacle: a tough, satisfying blast that epitomized everything that was good about the genre at its best. The alien enemies attacked in novel yet fair patterns, appearing to swoop in from the middle distance as well as the sides of the screen. The scrolling backgrounds gave the illusion of progressing through a dangerous and futuristic landscape. The weapons struck that balance between satisfying power and tactical clarity – you don’t just snag all the power-ups and mash the fire button in this game. You have to constantly switch between weapons, selecting the correct one for each encounter.
Blast Processing
Looking at Lightening Force as a case study, it’s quite extraordinary to look back at how quickly the shooting game evolved from its roots in 1970s arcades. By the early ’80s, the plod-plod march of Space Invaders had given way to the lightning-fast, side-scrolling action of Defender and the more measured but no less tense tunnels of Konami’s Scramble (both 1981). From there, shooting games diverged along varying paths: horizontal shooters that built on the legacy of Space Invaders, Galaxian and Galaga (the latter being among the very first to introduce its own power-up system); side-scrolling shooters evolving from Defender and Scramble. (To this we could add top-down run-and-gunners like Commando, isometric scrolling shooters like Zaxxon, and so forth.) Within four years, Konami had taken Scramble and transformed it almost beyond recognition with Gradius; another Japanese company, Irem, took things even further with R-Type in 1987. By this point, the rules of a typical shoot ’em up were pretty much set: a lone player moved from left to right along a pre-set path, gunning down the enemies largely entering stage right. At the end of each stage, there would be some kind of gigantic enemy that would likely take multiple hits or some kind of special tactic to destroy. Destroy that enemy – or boss, or guardian – and it’s on to the next, more difficult stage. By the same token, the quirky, fiddly Super Fantasy Zone,which didn’t arrive in the U.S. until 2008,was the polar opposite of the Thunder Force series. The former looked like a cross between a kawaii Japanese anime and a 60s acid flashback; the latter are all hard surfaces and pounding synth-metal music. Ironically, the Thunder Force games were generally more forgiving – Super Fantasy Zone, despite its friendly face, has the teeth of a predator.
Sound and Fury
The 16-bit era also gave developers more leeway than ever to tailor their graphics and sound beyond the circles, blocks, and bleeps of, say, Namco’s Xevious from 1982 – and having been given this new box of tricks to play with, those developers duly went nuts. Less twisted, but no less captivating to look at, Steel Empire forged a steampunk landscape seemingly inspired by Studio Ghibli’s classic anime, Castle in the Sky. The usual array of chrome ships and glowing lasers seen in typical space shooters was here replaced by armored zeppelins and huge rumbling tanks. Its visuals alone were enough to justify its cult status, and Steel Empire was among the relatively small number of shooters that lingered on after the Genesis era ended. Ports later appeared on the Game Boy Advance and the 3DS in later years. Few – if any – Genesis shooters transformed the genre in the way that some of its most famous names did, but the best of them nevertheless came with their own cool ideas and gimmicks. Toaplan’s Zero Wing is best known these days for its “All your base…” meme, but get past that, and you’ll find a rock-solid space shooter with a clever mechanic: your ship is equipped with a beam that drags in enemies, which you could then use as a shield or as a projectile. Gaiares, actually released a year before Zero Wing, took this even further. Here, the player could use a Force-like drone to take the weapons systems from enemy ships, resulting in some varied and spectacular displays of laser power.
Shooters Forever
Shooters were ten-a-penny on the Genesis in the early ’90s, but today, they’re among the most avidly-collected genres on the system. This is partly because so many of them are so enjoyable – $50 for Lightening Force doesn’t seem an unreasonable amount to pay in 2018, given how good the game still looks and feels – but also because some are just so scarce. Take Eliminate Down, a space shooter that, at first glance, doesn’t look much different from most of the other titles mentioned already. But because it was only released in Japan and South Korea, by a relatively small publisher (Soft Vision) and in small numbers, it’s become something of a holy grail for collectors. A quick check on eBay will throw out prices of about $1,000 or more. Indeed, the market for some of the Genesis’ most sought-after shooters is now such that some small firms have started creating reproduction cartridges – A handy fallback if you don’t have hundreds of dollars lying around to drop on Eliminate Down or Gley Lancer, another unfathomably expensive game, though new collectors should be careful of buying counterfeit carts sold as the genuine article. It’s possible that we’re only a short time away from some kind of indie resurgence. Games like Braid and Super Meat Boy helped remind people of the brilliance of the traditional platformer. With games like Shovel Knight, Axiom Verge, and even Super Mario Odyssey paying homage to the genre’s ’80s roots, it’s a resurgence that’s ongoing today. Maybe there’s a developer out there with a satisfying, approachable new twist on the classic shooter – the horizontally or vertically-scrolling equivalent of a sleeper hit like Super Meat Boy. At any rate, the Sega Genesis remains one of the single greatest platforms for the 2D shooter. From Lightening Force to MUSHA, and Steel Empire to Raiden Trad, the sheer range of titles made for the 16-bit console remains extraordinary. Much has changed in the games industry over the past 25 or so years, but plug in one of these cartridges today, and the experience remains undimmed: self-contained, immediately graspable but often full of tactical nuances that only reveal themselves over time.
