Battle Wings

Battle Wings

released on Oct 01, 1984

Battle Wings

released on Oct 01, 1984

Battle Wings, known in Japan either as B-Wing (ビー・ウィング) or B-Wings (ビー・ウィングズ), is a vertically scrolling shooter first released as an arcade game by Data East in 1984. The game was ported by Data East to the Family Computer in 1986, and was Data East's very first home release for this platform. The game consists of 45 levels (30 in the Family Computer version), and no background story or plot is given. The player controls a ship called the FX-1, and collects power-up parts (called a "wing") to progress through the levels and ultimately defeat the Gobunasu armored mobile fortress in the final level. The game consists of two different top-view screen levels, where the player can press the second button to descend to the ground whenever they do not have a power-up. The player is unaffected by attacks from airborne units while they are playing on the ground level, but the ship is automatically brought back into the air after a certain period of time. The player can still be hit by attacks from ground units while they are on the ground level, and can also lose their ship by crashing into obstacles. The 8-way joystick controls the player's movements, and one button is used for shooting, and the other is used for descending to the ground (or un-equipping wings). The background image continues infinitely when the player scrolls in the horizontal directions. Completing the final level of the game causes the score counter to increase to 9,999,999 points, which the player can enter as their high score. The player can also score cheap points by equipping and un-equipping their power-up. Pressing the button twice while the un-equipping animation is occurring cause the player to gain 2,000 points. The player gains an extra life every 40,000 points, so it is possible to gain lives almost infinitely. If the player gains over 10,000,000 points in this way before completing the final level, the counter takes over 20 minutes to increase to 99,999,999 points.


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Feels like living in a microchip.

Fantastic visual fidelity mixed with smooth gameplay and a constant stream of enemies to deal with. Upgrades to your ship are pretty novel for the time as well. I wish there was a bit more variety in the visual themes, but overall a really solid shooter.

prob the very first game i finished, hammer was my favorite battle wing

Não sou fã de jogos de nave. O motivo: sou péssimo! B-Wings me atraiu por causa das trocas de asas e de tiros. Realmente é o melhor do jogo. A música da versão de Nintendinho também é muito boa e viciante (apesar de repetitiva). Foi um dos únicos jogos do estilo que eu cheguei no final (30 fases!).

Battle-Wing, also known as B-Wing, is a shockingly forward thinking vertical shooting game from 1984 with a lot of cool ideas; it plays like a game from five years later. The gimmick of the game is that you can equip your standard single-fire ship with external wings that attach to it; you have to shoot down the objects holding it, then fly through it to equip it, and it feels pretty good. Each wing looks slightly different, and has different firing types and directions--rockets, beams, different spread types. At a certain point, at the beginning of stages, you get to choose the first upgrade that you'll be able to obtain. The wing also acts as an extra hit point for your ship--if you get shot while having a wing equipped, one side will catch on fire, and it will be harder to control your flight as you drift left and right. You can then unequip the wing to return to normal, or wrestle with the controls so you can hold onto your upgrade a little bit longer.

There are also two planes at play--the higher, closer to the camera plane that you do most of your shooting on, and the lower, farther ground plane. You can press a button to dive down to the bottom at any moment, then after a moment your ship flies back up to the higher plane. You can use this to fly under groups of enemies, but you have to time it right so you don't smash into any of the buildings or other ships flying on the second plane. Some bosses have shield bars that prevent you from doing any damage to it, and you must fly underneath it, then come up into the area the shield is surrounding, before you can shoot its weak spot. The game has more than 40 levels, and they're pretty repetitive, but I was really surprised by the depth of this game. Feels like one of those games that should be talked about more.