#28 - Air Fortress

The majority of games on the Nintendo thrive on repetition. It makes sense. To cut costs on development, developers will utilize similar, if not the same, templates for each stage, while adding new enemies here and there or simply re-arranging the layout for each level; changing colors, slightly different backgrounds, etc. As children of the 80's and 90's, living in the age of the NES, this repetition was expected and allowed, as long as each successive level was fun. In the beginning, Air Fortress seems like it will be a fun game the whole way through. The more levels one plays, however, the more it feels like it's too much of the same.




Admittedly, the gameplay of Air Fortress was quite unique at the time, and still seems fairly unique today. The first half of each level starts out as a fairly standard shmup, and the second half is a platformer. It's a novel idea to combine these two fun genres, but neither genre is done very well. The shmup feels more like 'shmup-lite,' as enemies take their sweet time in attacking you and you never gain any real power-ups for those areas. The main purpose of these sections seem to be for you to collect energy for the platforming sections. As you complete the shooting portion, you dock your little ship and an adorable little spaceman comes out (Lolo, is that you?) and descends into - you got it - one of eight Air Fortresses. As for the platforming, it's definitely more fun, but it feel like it's lacking something. The energy you collected during the shooting portions is how much life you will have for that level. Energy goes down when you do anything, but unless you actually get hit by an enemy, it will go back up the second you touch down on the ground. There is no gravity in these sections, and the controls take a little getting used to. Instead of hitting 'A' repeatedly to propel yourself as one might expect to do, you have to press the directional pad in the order you want to go; 'A' is your gun and 'B' is for your bombs, which only seem of use when facing a boss.

Perhaps the problem with this game is that neither part of the game seems very imaginative. The shooter portion borderlines on boring, and the platformer needs a little something more than simply trying to stay alive while shooting things here and there. When you finally reach the "core" of the Fortress, all you have to do is shoot it. It doesn't fire back or try to protect itself. Perhaps this is more "realistic," but c'mon, couldn't bug-eyed aliens from Neptune be protecting these stations instead of big fireballs that just sit there and take abuse? Each of the eight stages have essentially the same template, and while the stages do get more difficult, they certainly lose their charm the further you venture into the game.

The rest of the game is serviceable: graphics, control, and music all do their job but nothing really stands out. It's not a terrible game, but if you find it for a couple bucks, it's probably worth a playthrough on a lazy Sunday.

C