A vertical scrolling shooter game and it's simplicity works well for the platform.
You know the drill here - move and dodge incoming enemies and bullets while fighting back with your own weapons to defeat the enemies. You've got your usual power ups that can power up your laser by splitting it into 3 directions or gain an AI ship partner and it delivers a solid shooter experience.
It does have a trick up it's sleeve though - you can hop down to a lower layer by pressing A which is a pretty unique and cool way to make use of the 3D effect.
Hopping between layers, blasting enemies and picking up power ups - it's a solid and satisfying experience through it's 5 levels. Bosses make good use of the layer hopping, chasing you down as you dodge attacks.
There's not much else to say about this one, it's a good scrolling shooter with a fun gimmick and sometimes that's all you need for a fun experience
You know the drill here - move and dodge incoming enemies and bullets while fighting back with your own weapons to defeat the enemies. You've got your usual power ups that can power up your laser by splitting it into 3 directions or gain an AI ship partner and it delivers a solid shooter experience.
It does have a trick up it's sleeve though - you can hop down to a lower layer by pressing A which is a pretty unique and cool way to make use of the 3D effect.
Hopping between layers, blasting enemies and picking up power ups - it's a solid and satisfying experience through it's 5 levels. Bosses make good use of the layer hopping, chasing you down as you dodge attacks.
There's not much else to say about this one, it's a good scrolling shooter with a fun gimmick and sometimes that's all you need for a fun experience
Virtual Boy Complete - Game #17
Vertical Force is just kind of a normal game. It's hard to talk about a game with basically nothing special to it, it's a vertical shooter, you collect overwriting powerups that increase your power or range, and there's a plane swapping gimmick where you can go up or down.
The plane swapping gimmick is cool on paper, but in practice just serves as more an unreliable dodge button, since half of the time only one half is inhabited by enemies. There are cool things done with it, like whirlpools that take you to the bottom layer on a sand level and the game opening by letting you choose between a powerful or wide gun, but the "meh" outweighs the good to this, and there's also a bit of outright bad design to this - there are walls littered throughout these stages, often times these can be passed over from above but not from the bottom - however, these are often placed quite awkwardly - at one point I got crushed into the bottom of the screen by going into a set of two walls, without knowing there was another wall at the top. The most egregious was in the sand level, where there's floor on the upper layer held up by columns on the bottom layer - the columns did not fill out the whole layer, so I believed that going under would be a place to shield from bombs - however, I took damage even though I did not touch the columns, yet still went through, and then recieved an extra point of damage once my I-frames were over. These bad design elements were relatively few from what I played, but still are egregious enough to drop it a bit.
Another thing I need to mention are the mini-ships. There's a power-up that summons a tiny little ship controlled by the CPU and assists you. This thing is overpowered as hell and breaks the game in half. I don't believe it's any weaker than you, but it's certainly faster in both shooting and movement, it's certainly less durable but that barely changes anything.
Vertical Force is just kind of a normal game. It's hard to talk about a game with basically nothing special to it, it's a vertical shooter, you collect overwriting powerups that increase your power or range, and there's a plane swapping gimmick where you can go up or down.
The plane swapping gimmick is cool on paper, but in practice just serves as more an unreliable dodge button, since half of the time only one half is inhabited by enemies. There are cool things done with it, like whirlpools that take you to the bottom layer on a sand level and the game opening by letting you choose between a powerful or wide gun, but the "meh" outweighs the good to this, and there's also a bit of outright bad design to this - there are walls littered throughout these stages, often times these can be passed over from above but not from the bottom - however, these are often placed quite awkwardly - at one point I got crushed into the bottom of the screen by going into a set of two walls, without knowing there was another wall at the top. The most egregious was in the sand level, where there's floor on the upper layer held up by columns on the bottom layer - the columns did not fill out the whole layer, so I believed that going under would be a place to shield from bombs - however, I took damage even though I did not touch the columns, yet still went through, and then recieved an extra point of damage once my I-frames were over. These bad design elements were relatively few from what I played, but still are egregious enough to drop it a bit.
Another thing I need to mention are the mini-ships. There's a power-up that summons a tiny little ship controlled by the CPU and assists you. This thing is overpowered as hell and breaks the game in half. I don't believe it's any weaker than you, but it's certainly faster in both shooting and movement, it's certainly less durable but that barely changes anything.
Being able to shift between two altitudes seemed like a gimmick at first but it ended up making dodging bullets really fun. It's just a shame that the 3D effect being kinda crummy and having one single color for the entire screen ends up making seeing a lot more difficult than it should.
I was planning on finishing it but the emulator keeps crashing so I'll take it as a sign from god to stop playing.
I was planning on finishing it but the emulator keeps crashing so I'll take it as a sign from god to stop playing.
Interesting arcade shooter: The ability to move up and down with the top-down perspective adds an interesting level of depth for an arcade shooter.
Basic 2D game but the big twist is you can change layers up and down to attack the enemies. It's okay I had a hard time swapping up and down to hit different enemies. I don't think I will be coming back but it was playable.
This console either have the worst shit you’ve ever played or the most “Whatever” shit you’ve ever played, sometimes it’s also Wario Land.
In this game’s case it’s just whatever, a fine and basic shooter with the gimmick of using the background and foreground to fight and avoid enemies, it’s nothing special and probably has been done before and after, and surely better, and most likely not in black and red.
The colour issue, again. The colours really hurts the game because even if the game has a 3D effect it’s still a bit hard to differentiate the background and foreground since when you only work with red and slightly dark red it’s a hard to tell where is what.
The game is pretty easy and only has 5 stages and each stage has a mini boss (which are all the exact same in each stage) but also serves as checkpoint if you die, you also get unlimited continues.
The game also ends telling you to try normal mode which is why the game felt pretty easy and I don’t care if I unlock a secret final stage or whatever, what I played was enough and it’s just a basic shmup stuck on the Virtual Boy even though it just could’ve been another forgettable SNES shmup, but it’s funnier when you are the only shmup of a platform so I can’t blame them.
In this game’s case it’s just whatever, a fine and basic shooter with the gimmick of using the background and foreground to fight and avoid enemies, it’s nothing special and probably has been done before and after, and surely better, and most likely not in black and red.
The colour issue, again. The colours really hurts the game because even if the game has a 3D effect it’s still a bit hard to differentiate the background and foreground since when you only work with red and slightly dark red it’s a hard to tell where is what.
The game is pretty easy and only has 5 stages and each stage has a mini boss (which are all the exact same in each stage) but also serves as checkpoint if you die, you also get unlimited continues.
The game also ends telling you to try normal mode which is why the game felt pretty easy and I don’t care if I unlock a secret final stage or whatever, what I played was enough and it’s just a basic shmup stuck on the Virtual Boy even though it just could’ve been another forgettable SNES shmup, but it’s funnier when you are the only shmup of a platform so I can’t blame them.
Wayyy too much happening. Imagine laying in bed with a VB headset propped onto your eye sockets and trying to parse this.