Developer(s): Minakuchi Engineering; Nintendo R&D1
Publisher: Nintendo
Released: 1990
Region: USA
Solar Striker is a fairly basic vertically-scrolling shoot ’em up from Nintendo, but boy does it look cool on the Game Boy Color, which has a custom palette turning the background into the black of space. This is a technically impressive game for the handheld with smooth sprite movements, no flicker or slowdown, and varied backgrounds that don’t distract from the action. As cool as all that is, its simplicity keeps it from being truly memorable.
Both the B and A button shoot (and thankfully you can just hold either button down to autofire, which I wish every shmup had) and your power-ups, the lifeblood of any shmup, are fairly limited. Several times each level a slow-moving enemy ship drops a power-up icon, and collecting it upgrades your fire (though you need two icons for an upgrade after the first one) until it reaches level four. Your shot definitely looks different, and it takes down enemies faster (though very, very few outside of bosses need more than one hit anyway), but it doesn’t do anything cool, like have any spread or homing capabilities. You also never get a shield or screen-clearing bomb. You just shoot straight ahead at whatever’s in front of you.
There are six stages, and you start with two lives in reserve and no continues. You earn an extra life every 50,000 points and dying only sets your weapon back one level instead of a full reset. The game is fairly easy until the fourth boss, which is where they start playing around with bullet hell. There’s apparently a place you can shoot at the boss where you’re safe from its fire but it’s so pixel-perfect I was never able to do it. It’s such an annoying encounter that the one FAQ on the game even suggests using your extra lives just to ram it like you’re in an old-timey naval battle.
I wasn’t counting but I’d say it probably took me around 10-12 play sessions before I beat the game, with the biggest thing I learned being how to anticipate enemy waves (usually there’s a stream of them on one side, then a stream on the opposite side, then alternately out of both sides) and keep the overall number on the screen from getting out of control. It also helps that you get more points in later levels and can earn a decent number of extra lives, keeping the difficulty curve more reasonable. Solar Striker is a decent playthrough but unless you’re fixated on the Game Boy (like I apparently am) there are plenty of more interesting and vibrant shmups out there.
Dante Plays Old Games 