-PC Steam Version-

A solid vertical shoot em up with good graphics for the time, six different planes to use, and eight stages with a bit of randomness on the order you can play the first four in and with what bosses and sub bosses can appear on later stages. Each plane has a unique shot type, bomb types, and as they power up they have different subweapons that you can charge up by holding shoot to activate a different temporary attack mode. Bosses often shift from their first mode into some type of mech for their final form. Playing through the game once begins a second more difficult run. No story other than your final score and completed runs altering an ending look at your pilot either in full uniform with no details known to detailing their name and having them in less clothing until they are topless (and covering themselves except for the one male pilot).

The stages don't do too much of interest with the environments. There are some ground targets and at one point effects of enemy planes coming through the clouds but nothing too interesting apart from good visuals. Enemy bullet patterns are often fair as is there spawn locations but certain attacks can cover such a wide area or come at you so much faster than normal enemy shots that you really have to know the game to be able to avoid what is coming at times, even more so in the slower planes. Enemy types themselves never do anything too interesting but there is just enough variety, though the mechs bosses transform into are never very visual interesting or too distinct from one another in style.

The PC version has the typically expected positive inclusions. You can remap the controls, you can make a button auto shoot when held down (so you still need a normal shot to activate your charge attack), you can choose between seven difficulty modes (though only 4 and up have the additional runs after a completion), you can give yourself nine lives instead of the usual three, and can add more or infinite continues (which become disabled when you access a 2nd or 3rd run in the same playthrough), there is a high score mode, co-op is supported, etc.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1787247721482764378

Strikers 1945 was (and kinda still is) my go-to "this arcade is cool if they have this game" game when I was in high school.

I didn't have too much experience playing shmups thanks to my parents never letting me play the cool "blow up a bunch of dudes in a plane while flashy stuff happens on the screen" games when we went to bowling alleys. They let me play the occasional beat-em-up when I got a chance, but for some reason or another shmups were always verboten when I was little. By the time I got a little older and was given more autonomy, arcades in the US were very obviously dying out, but I would still find the occasional game cabinet in movie theaters and pizza places. My local movie theater specifically had Strikers 1945 and I would go out of my way to play it a decent number of times before or after seeing a movie. I was never any good at it, but dodging projectiles for a few minutes and seeing the flashy bullet effects and explosions always gave me enough of a dopamine bump to give it another try whenever I found another cabinet of it somewhere. It was my go-to shmup.

Now that I'm much older and have played way more video games, I think it's safe to say that Strikers 1945 is best left in my nostalgia.

The gist of giant ships and planes transforming into machine gun-wielding mechs is cool as hell, but almost every other aspect of the game is either weak or forgettable.

The sound design across the board is just flat-out bad.

It's still fun, and it will always hold a special place in my heart as the first bullet-hell/shmup I actively remembered the name of, but after playing it comfortably in my living room via emulator with infinite coins instead of in a noisy, cramped, dimly-lit corner of a movie theater, I think it's safe to say that Strikers 1945 is just alright.

Don't ever ask me to 1cc a shmup by the way.

Never ask me that.

A perfectly average shmup from Psikyo, the leading purveyor of 6/10 arcade releases circa 1995. That's not to say that the game has no merits to speak of, it's just all very muted. Most representative of this is the (Spoilers?!) sci-fi twist, which starts novel, but becomes a bit played out by like stage 4.

An important notice for all Unit 731 deniers who may be reading this. Japanese nationalists beware! Do not , and I must repeat, DO NOT use the Zero. It moves at like half the speed of the other ships (at best lmao). The game is significantly more playable (and fun) with just about any other option.