The Super Spy Hunter has a super spy car. It's actually a well-armed car that can turn into a boat or a plane at opportune times. The action is fast vertical scrolling as the vehicle faces all manner of powerful vehicle threats from a well-funded terrorist enemy -- cars, trucks, helicopters, etc. Luckily, there are many powerups to collect along the way, both defensive and offensive.
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I wanted to love this game so much. I wanted to sing it praises.
Super Spy Hunter is a vehicular shmup with some really great weapons and upgrades as well as set pieces. Yes, indeed, this NES game has set pieces. It pushes the tech to the limit and is one of the games that makes you feel straight-up badass.
It's first stages are a joy, letting you adjust the speed to your liking so it almost feels like a modern character action game: you can move fast and look cool, or play slow, but look pretty bad.
It all falls apart in last 2 stages. While the penultimate stage offers a new cool gimmick, it overstays its welcome with both grueling boss and a long stage with the most boring background of them all. I can't overstate how gorgeous this game can be. I have no idea what trickery they use, but at times it feels like it uses SNES tricks as opposed to NES' hardware.
Before the final stage I wanted to commend this game for being a shmup that's accessible to new players: you have a healthbar, and the upgrade system is fairly generous. However, the final level features some jank, gotcha traps, and a boss gauntlet featuring final boss firing a one-hit KO beam with no warning.
God, I wanted to love this game, but its end is some grade A NES bullshit that feels like Gradius, and doesn't even feature anything as cool as the first few stages did.
Super Spy Hunter is a vehicular shmup with some really great weapons and upgrades as well as set pieces. Yes, indeed, this NES game has set pieces. It pushes the tech to the limit and is one of the games that makes you feel straight-up badass.
It's first stages are a joy, letting you adjust the speed to your liking so it almost feels like a modern character action game: you can move fast and look cool, or play slow, but look pretty bad.
It all falls apart in last 2 stages. While the penultimate stage offers a new cool gimmick, it overstays its welcome with both grueling boss and a long stage with the most boring background of them all. I can't overstate how gorgeous this game can be. I have no idea what trickery they use, but at times it feels like it uses SNES tricks as opposed to NES' hardware.
Before the final stage I wanted to commend this game for being a shmup that's accessible to new players: you have a healthbar, and the upgrade system is fairly generous. However, the final level features some jank, gotcha traps, and a boss gauntlet featuring final boss firing a one-hit KO beam with no warning.
God, I wanted to love this game, but its end is some grade A NES bullshit that feels like Gradius, and doesn't even feature anything as cool as the first few stages did.
Super Spy Hunter on the NES is a blast from the past! It's got that classic arcade feel with fast-paced driving, tons of explosions, and surprisingly catchy music. The different vehicle transformations add some cool variety, even if the controls can be a little stiff. It's tough and might frustrate some newcomers, but if you're up for an old-school challenge and love that retro arcade vibe, Super Spy Hunter delivers.
A Sunsoft shmup where you're a badass car shooting things? With the Sunsoft music that's a bonus what could possibly go wrong?
Well, it's a Momentum Shmup. For those unaware, a Momentum Shmup is a term I give to shmups where you are reset to base power when you die, despite the game feeling designed for you to be at full power at all times, but if you lose your momentum, the game becomes near impossible. It gets harder the further you go with the game throwing more and more insta-kills at you the further you get, some you're going so fast you may have no idea what killed you. It's neat you can go this fast and the game seems to encourage it, but since your speed is based on where you are on the screen it's hard to dodge vertically without tripping up your movement in the level.
The game slows down a ton the more things are on the screen. This seems intentional with letting you dodge it but then things become jarring with the fluctuation of both your speed of the car and the game's speed. This also factors into a very common cause of death, Jumps, where if you miss the landing you'll die and sometimes if you land there's another ramp right after in a different spot you have no way of knowing about beforehand and you'll miss that and die.
So yeah, it's alright you get to be a badass car it just has too many things that instantly kill you.
Well, it's a Momentum Shmup. For those unaware, a Momentum Shmup is a term I give to shmups where you are reset to base power when you die, despite the game feeling designed for you to be at full power at all times, but if you lose your momentum, the game becomes near impossible. It gets harder the further you go with the game throwing more and more insta-kills at you the further you get, some you're going so fast you may have no idea what killed you. It's neat you can go this fast and the game seems to encourage it, but since your speed is based on where you are on the screen it's hard to dodge vertically without tripping up your movement in the level.
The game slows down a ton the more things are on the screen. This seems intentional with letting you dodge it but then things become jarring with the fluctuation of both your speed of the car and the game's speed. This also factors into a very common cause of death, Jumps, where if you miss the landing you'll die and sometimes if you land there's another ramp right after in a different spot you have no way of knowing about beforehand and you'll miss that and die.
So yeah, it's alright you get to be a badass car it just has too many things that instantly kill you.
I'm kind of surprised nobody has reviewed this yet.
Super Spy Hunter is an overhead racing/shooting hybrid from Sunsoft- the same company that brought us the visually impressive Batman and Gremlins 2 NES games around the same time that this released. To be expected, the soundtrack packs that Sunsoft flair and there are some neat effects to represent scaling in one particular stage that has you jumping off ramps to land on tracks that are "lower".
Game play wise, it's kind of a mixed bag. Realizing that your overall speed is relative to your position on screen in the car segments (with the level scrolling faster the further up you are) takes a while to get used to, as does the way your "options" work. Generally, the game does a good job of warning you when there's a turn or when you might need to stop and slow down to traverse more challenging obstacles. For instance, on stage one, you'll need to stop in order to drive along a row of shifting semi-trucks to avoid falling to your death. Once you get used to it, however, the game is a fun ride.
That is, until its back half.
Like almost every other game with a short run time from this era, the game goes from being moderately challenging to unforgiving and in this case it's as soon as you reach stage 5. While it should have been the most exciting and interesting stage of the six seeing as you go from a boat to a car to a whole ass plane, it's an absolute nightmare to play. The boat section is littered with insta-kill bombs, the power-up trucks never seem to give you what you need no matter how careful you are, and the game's "I can't believe it's not Raiden" moment is virtually impossible without full power-ups. Since the game operates by shm'up logic, you lose them upon death (which comes quickly with the insta-kill stuff and clunky boat controls). This stage alone is reason enough to not want to revisit the game after beating it this weekend.
Stage 6, fortunately, returns to what the game does best with overhead car sections but it is still brutally difficult thanks to the addition of the worst trope ever- a boss rush. You need to kill three bosses in a row, and two of them have insta-kill lasers on top of being absolute bullet sponges even if you're fully powered up. If it weren't for the fact that the game has unlimited continues, it would be on the same level as Battletoads.
I'd say it's worth demoing just to see the cool gimmicks presented in stages 1 to 4 at the very least, but it's far from the best game Sunsoft put out on the NES. I think it would be the perfect project for a ROM hacker (balancing patch) or a potential remaster seeing as Sunsoft is looking to make a comeback with upcoming games like Ufouria 2.
Super Spy Hunter is an overhead racing/shooting hybrid from Sunsoft- the same company that brought us the visually impressive Batman and Gremlins 2 NES games around the same time that this released. To be expected, the soundtrack packs that Sunsoft flair and there are some neat effects to represent scaling in one particular stage that has you jumping off ramps to land on tracks that are "lower".
Game play wise, it's kind of a mixed bag. Realizing that your overall speed is relative to your position on screen in the car segments (with the level scrolling faster the further up you are) takes a while to get used to, as does the way your "options" work. Generally, the game does a good job of warning you when there's a turn or when you might need to stop and slow down to traverse more challenging obstacles. For instance, on stage one, you'll need to stop in order to drive along a row of shifting semi-trucks to avoid falling to your death. Once you get used to it, however, the game is a fun ride.
That is, until its back half.
Like almost every other game with a short run time from this era, the game goes from being moderately challenging to unforgiving and in this case it's as soon as you reach stage 5. While it should have been the most exciting and interesting stage of the six seeing as you go from a boat to a car to a whole ass plane, it's an absolute nightmare to play. The boat section is littered with insta-kill bombs, the power-up trucks never seem to give you what you need no matter how careful you are, and the game's "I can't believe it's not Raiden" moment is virtually impossible without full power-ups. Since the game operates by shm'up logic, you lose them upon death (which comes quickly with the insta-kill stuff and clunky boat controls). This stage alone is reason enough to not want to revisit the game after beating it this weekend.
Stage 6, fortunately, returns to what the game does best with overhead car sections but it is still brutally difficult thanks to the addition of the worst trope ever- a boss rush. You need to kill three bosses in a row, and two of them have insta-kill lasers on top of being absolute bullet sponges even if you're fully powered up. If it weren't for the fact that the game has unlimited continues, it would be on the same level as Battletoads.
I'd say it's worth demoing just to see the cool gimmicks presented in stages 1 to 4 at the very least, but it's far from the best game Sunsoft put out on the NES. I think it would be the perfect project for a ROM hacker (balancing patch) or a potential remaster seeing as Sunsoft is looking to make a comeback with upcoming games like Ufouria 2.