Hector 87 has one of my favorite front cover of all time. The dystopian art is phenomenal and i would definitely love to have it as a poster framed on my wall.
This is a somewhat good horizontal shooter, but there's a extremely steep learning curve. The game is typical "Famicom Impossible", but at least you don't die in one hit (although it isn't far from it). You will have several chases in every stage to refill some lost health, but it comes with a price. By mashing on the missile button you have to hit a statue several times to make it drop some health and considering that the game doesn't have auto fire you will probably be tiered in your thumb at some point when you'r in desperate need for just that last piece of health and will probably die shortly after.
When it comes to the music in this game, Hudson Soft delivers. The whole soundtrack is amazing, full of atmosphere. The commercial for Hector 87 remade the "stage-1" song in that classical "80:s Japanese synthesizer sound".
Here have a listen:
Famicom Soundtrack:
Commercial:
As for the graphics, its your typical standard early Famicom graphics, nothing that special really. You can easily see what things are supposed to resemble. The thing that makes this game stand out a bit is that every other stage shifts and goes from the "over-the-top-view" to a "side-view" mode. This changes things upp a little and i always enjoyed the "side-view" mode more since i feel i have more control.
When it comes to controls i have some issues with this game. As mentioned before there is no auto fire which is somewhat okay since a lot of other early Famicom games didn't have that either, but here you don't get any power upp's which would perhaps relieve you from the constant button mashing like Gradius "laser" for instance. And the ship moves painfully slow as well, so you will subconsciously press the D-Pad harder and by that way be exhausted in your both thumbs before even reaching the 1:st boss. This is when having a "Hudson Stick" controller would help, but they are somewhat rare and expensive these days.
I guess that's all i can say for this game. If you happen to stumble across this, don't ignore it. This game changeless you on a both mental and physical way and for me its a must have, even though it kicks my ass constantly......
This is it for today.
Arashes Out!
