スターソルジャー・バニシングアース
Star Soldier Vanishing Earth
Contents
1.Introduction
2.Story
3.Controls and Techniques
4.Walkthrough
5.Scoring
1.Introduction
Released on the 10th of July 1998 in Japan, this is a continuation of the
Soldier Blade series by Hudson. SETA also ported the game to the Aleck 64 arcade
machine in November of the same year. The Soldier Blade series began in 1986
when he first game was released on the MSX and NES. In this game, the aspect of
changing your main weapon via power ups was removed. Instead the game focuses on
the Rolling mechanic, by which you can reflect back enemy bullets similar to
Psyvariar. The most recent title in the series was released in 2013 for IOS
devices.
This game also features a “caravan” or time trial mode that Hudson shmuprs were
known for. These are the 2 minute mode and 5 minute mode. Hudson often used such
modes for its yearly national competitions. The aim is to get the highest score
possible in the amount of time given. Naturally this means the game was planned
for tight scoring, although it’s scoring mechanics seem very basic and poor,
even compared to other shmups released in the same period.
This game went down like a lead balloon in both Japan and America. So Hudson did
not bother releasing the game in Europe. It is poorly remembered in Japan as it
has no Wikipedia page. Perhaps the poor reception was the high price tag of
6,800 yen for what was essentially a 3D remake of a PC Engine game. It seems
like Hudson reused their 3D engine from Bomberman, because the texture work and
3D modeling seems very similar. Much of the art is muddy brown, black and grey
which really livens up the experience. The years have not been kind to early 3D
games, but Star Soldier looked dull even when it was new. If anything, these
early 3D games have showed us the true artistry of the amazing sprite work of
the SNES era. When those first crappy pencil space ships appear on the title
screen you know you are in for a turd of a game.
The shabby quality of this title is even more surprising when you compare it to
Dazaemon 3D, shmup making tool kit that was released for the N64 by Athena a few
weeks before this game. In Dazaemon there are two example games that you can
play and look at in order to learn how to build your own shmups with the
software. Both of them are more enjoyable and better made than Star Soldier.
One of the games is called SOLID GEAR and is clearly a re-creation of Taito’s
fantastic “multi height lock-on laser” shmup, Raystorm. The stage design, art,
music, gameplay complexity, enemy and bullet patterns, cutscenes, texture art
and 3D modeling are all so much better in this small example game that it really
puts Hudson’s poor effort to shame. In SOLID GEAR the perspective switches every
level from horizontal, to vertical to diagonal, meaning that all the scenery and
models had to be designed to look good form every angle. Star Soldier just
sticks to vertical all the way through. That’s not even mentioning the
difficulty of designing two different simultaneous enemy patterns which the
“multi-height lock-on laser” gameplay requires. When you consider the fact that
SOLID GEAR had to be condensed to make space for the shmup making software and
the users own games and the fact that it had to be easy to take apart and
understand but still impressive you can see what an excellent game it is. It is
only a small part of the shmup creation tool it is trying to show off, and it
still plays and looks better than Star Soldier.
Nintendo Power gave the game 7.2/10, stating "This game is as simple as it gets.
If you can see it on the screen, you can shoot it, or it can shoot you. Blast,
dodge, collect power-ups. That's it.” Which says everything about the reviewing
standards of Nintendo Power, that even after bashing the game they still gave it
7 out of 10. The British publication, N64 Magazine was much harsher giving the
game 62% and describing it as unimaginative, short and formulaic.
When you beat the game in normal mode, Enemy List mode will be unlocked. You can
look at all the models and animations of every enemy in the game there. A level
select menu will also be unlocked. Use it to practice Master difficulty levels.
It is also possible to unlock these modes if you have a Hudson brand N64
controller. Plug it in and set it to HU mode, the title screen will change and
the two modes will unlock automatically.
If you beat Master Mode the firepower of your main weapon will be upgraded. A
pretty useless bonus seeing as the game is already over at that point.
2.Story
Here is the story as written in the manual.
In the year 2092AD, the human race faced a threat to its very existence, at the
hands of the beings known only as the Zeograd.
But even in the face of the overwhelming Zeograd forces, Earth's defenders, the
SIA (Special Interception Airforce) did not consider surrender. Launching a
counterattack, they dispatched their finest unit, the F92 Soldier Blade, to the
front lines. After punching its way through to the enemy base of operations, the
F92 Soldier Blade succeeded in defeating the leader of the Zeograd forces, the
Duoss Core 3.3C - but not without a price. The F92 Soldier Blade was nearly
destroyed and rendered inoperable in the fight. However, the SIA retrieved the
F92 Soldier Blade's black box and returned with it to Earth. in order to study
the combat data recorded there.
Peace returned once more to the Earth...
However, even though the Duoss Core 3.3C and its army had been defeated, the
threat from the Zeograd was far from over... Indeed, an awful truth lay
concealed within the black box: the Zeograd were not simply an alien race - they
were a society of highly advanced sentient machines!
Preparing for another attack by the Zeograd, the SIA used the data recovered
from the F92 Soldier Blade battle records to build three new fighters, dubbed
the F98 Series.
The year is 2098. and the Zeograd have launched their second attack on the human
race...Can the SIA stop them once again?
3.Controls and Techniques
You can choose between using the D Pad or the 3D stick to move your ship in the
options menu. I highly recommend that you play this game with the D Pad as it is
very hard to do precise micro dodges or tap dodging with the 3D Stick. It also
allows you to press both the L and R Triggers easily. Compared to the D Pad on
the PS1, the N64 D Pad leaves a lot to be desired. It’s too tall so it takes too
long for inputs to register, but its far better than the 3D Stick for shmups.
A Button – Auto fire your main weapon
B Button – Use a Type 2 bomb, a screen clearing bomb.
C Up – Turn the hud on or off
C Down – Change ship speed and shoot backwards
R Trigger – Automatic Rolling (if the option is selected)
L Trigger – Use your Type 1 bomb, usually a large frontal laser.
Z Trigger – The same as L if you are using the 3D Stick controls.
Start Button – Pause
Techniques
Rolling
Rolling briefly makes you invincible and also reflects any bullets back at the
enemies. You can use this to destroy enemies with their own bullets. This makes
the game feel like an early Psyvariar.
You can roll to reflect bullets by rocking the D pad or 3D stick left and right.
You can also automatic rolling and roll with the R button but this means you
have to wait 0.6 seconds between rolls. This means you will sometimes not be
able to roll in time to avoid fire. On the other-hand inputting the roll command
on the D Pad and 3D Stick is difficult and will mess up your movement. So I
recommend using automatic rolling and rolling early and wisely. To use automatic
rolling you need to enable it in the options menu.
Fire Backwards
When you press down C to change your ship speed you will also shoot backwards
for a brief moment.
Gameplay Basics
There are three difficulty settings, Beginner Regular and Master.They change the
game in the following ways
Beginner – Starts the game with 9 lives and 3 bombs. 1UP every 3 million points.
Regular – Starts the game with 2 lives and 3 bombs. 1UP every 6 million points.
Master – Starts the game with 2 lives and 3 bombs. 1UP every 9 million points.
Beginner is so easy that a 3 year old could finish this game, which probably the
intended audience for the mode, your little brother or sister.
There are three ships to choose from. They differ in movement speed and shot
power as shown on the ship selection screen. Their bomb types are also
different. I personally like Lathyrus. I will note their bomb types below.
F98 Venidium - Type 1 A frontal missile attack. Type 2 A fire bomb attack.
F 98 Lathyrus - Type 1 A large blue beam attack. Type 2 A blue laser burst.
F 98 Wisteria – Type 1 A small green beam attack. Type 2 A green electric burst.
The top right of the screen displays the following; your lives, your bombs and
your current shot power. In this game bombs are called ExARMS. But that is a
stupid name, so I will call them bombs in this guide. For some reason you can
only carry 3 at a time. Similarly, you can only have up to nine extra lives.
In the top left the hit combo is displayed. It begins counting down again 0.8
seconds after an enemy ship is destroyed. Below that is your “rapid fire bar”
which shows how many shots you are firing. At max you can fire 30 shots per
second. I do not know why Hudson choose to display this information. Perhaps it
is to make the hud look busy and cool, or perhaps it is so you can practice your
16 shot technique, ala Takahashi Meijin.
Your ship speed is also shown in the top left. It only has three speeds, low,
mid, and high.
Power Ups and Items
Yellow crystal – Powers up your shot. You can power it up 12 times. If you die
you will lose 3 levels of power.
Green thing – An extra bomb. If you die you will respawn with one bomb.
4.Walkthrough
In the Japanese version the levels were given names in kanji but also an English
translation. These translations were fixed when the game was released in
America. I’ll use the original level names here. Interestingly all of the text
and voice acting in the Japanese version of the game is in English, presumably
because it looks and sounds cool to a Japanese audience.
Mission 1 鳴動 Rumbling
July 10th 2098
Realistic Simulation space in Abraham 2 Freighter
Boss - Duoss Core ver 3.3C
A robot computer virus which had been hiding in the simulation for 6 years.
This level is really not difficult, just work on building your score so you can
get extra levels later and watch out for the missiles the Boss aims at you.
Mission 2 浸蝕 Corrosion
July 12th 2098
A marine plant in Earth's Pacific Ocean
Boss - Death Integrate – A plane
Near the end of the stage there are 5 towers of girders. Shoot them all down,
but save the middle one for last. If you do this you will be able to play a
secret mission next.
This is another easy stage you can just play for score. Be careful when the boss
starts backing up to box you against the edge of screen. It also has a twin beam
attack that you need to be careful of.
Special Mission 1 - Destruction
July 13th 2098
Earth Space Port
Boss - Banded Hell
Mission 3 襲来 Invaded
July 14th 2098
Mars Outpost Base
Boss - Dark Force – A tank
This is where the game starts getting difficult. From this level onwards some
ships will fire donut looking projectiles which are very hard to see. Make sure
you destroy them quickly or use your roll to push the donuts back at them.
In the area where a group of green enemies and one single red enemy appears, if
you only destroy the red enemy you will be able to play a secret mission next.
Destroying all the red enemies is quite difficult
The boss also has a tricky final attack, it shoots “giant black holes” in groups
of 3 which cover the screen. You can macro dodge most of them, but sometimes you
will need to roll through them. Make sure you begin rolling early so that your
invincibility frames have time to take effect.
Special Mission 2 - Scars
July 15th 2098
Reef Area Asteroid Field
Boss - Dogue Veyhaven (Serial no 9023)
Mission 4 追撃 Pursuit
July 16th 2098
A mining resource site on Mars
Boss – Intruder – A gunship
As in mission 3, in the area where a group of green enemies and one single red
enemy appears, if you only destroy the red enemy you will be able to play a
secret mission next. Destroying all the red enemies is quite difficult
Special mission 3 - Reminiscence
July 17th 2098
Another dimension
Mini Boss - Star Brain MK3 – A gunship
Main Boss - Big Star Brain Maxima – A tank
According to the title, this stage has many references to the older games in the
Soldier Blade series. Both Lazaro and Delilah appear in this stage. Lazaro is a
giant face made of 4 tiles, beat it before it joins together. Delilah is the
pair of eyes, destroy both of them at the same time.
Mission 5 戦慄 Terrible
July 18th 2098
Near Jupiter
Boss – Folken – A robot with a long “cockpit”
Clearly Hudson’s English dictionary was failing them at this point. The Japanese
word that they used means “to shudder or tremble in fear” but instead they
accidently ended up reviewing their own game.
Mission 6 牙城 Stronghold
20th July 2098
Fortress Cathedral orbiting Jupiter
Mini Boss - Devain Device – A sentry gun
Main Boss - Duoss Core ver 9.8 – Another bloody robot
Be careful near the end of the stage as two green laser satelites will suddenly
appear and fire their beams directly down the middle of the screen. This happens
just before the boss and was clearly intended to rob you of your powerups and
bombs just before the final fight. They appear and fire so fast that it’s
impossible to dodge or kill them, so you need to get out of the way beforehand.
Mission 7 地球 The Earth
July 22nd 2098
In orbit around Earth
Boss - Duoss Core Complete
You’ve finally made it to the last secret mission, it’s simply a boss fight
against the Duoss Core floating above the Earth. Once you destroy it’s first
robotic form, only it’s skeleton will remain. It will try to attack with it’s
large claw.
Once it’s skeleton is destroyed the purple Duoss Core will be released. You now
only have 2 minutes to destroy the core and save the Earth. The remaining time
is shown at the top of the screen. Clearly Hudson and been playing Radiant
Silvergun and just decided to copy the ending. This is the hardest part of the
game. If you have any bombs left, go crazy. Good luck.
5.Scoring
I know there’s at least one person out there who might be interested in playing
for score so I’ll explain a few things here.
Your score is calculated at the end of the stage in the following way
Ships remaining – The number of extra lives X 50,000
ExARMS remaining – The number of bombs X 100,000
Rolling Bonus – The number of reflected shots X 10,000
Attack Bonus – The number of times you hit a ship X 1,000
Enemy Hit Bonus -The number of ships you destroyed X 1,000
Boss Hit Bonus – The number of boss parts you destroyed X 1,000
Time Remaining – The number of seconds left X 100,000
The Time Remaining Bonus only applies to Mission 7 and the caravan modes.
From this you can see that the game encourages you to use rolling attacks rather
than bombs to destroy enemies. Additionally, you should be milking all of the
bosses for points by destroying all of their parts without dying.
When you land 100 hits on enemy ships the combo meter will start. The maximum
number of hits you can land in a combo is 20,000. As soon as a single shot
misses the combo meter will reset to zero. So in order to combo a whole stage,
you need to know when to start shooting and where to move your ship in order to
keep a combo going. You basically need to memorize where enemy waves will appear
and build a strategy for each level. You need to milk some enemies for hits and
kill them later after destroying weak enemies first. You also need to consider
which ship suits your play style better as some are faster than others but some
have a wider spread on their main weapon than others.
If you pick up another bomb when you already have 3 you will get 10,000 points
instead.
If you pick up another yellow power crystal when you are already at max power
(level 12) you will get 10,000 points instead.
In the time trial modes there are hidden characters called Zegs. If you find all
15 of them you will get a score bonus at the end of the game.
If you destroy the four pieces of Lazaro before they join together to make a
face you will get an 800,000 point bonus. If you fail to do this, Lazaro is only
worth 5,000 points.
If you destroy both of Delilah’s eyes at the same time you will get an 80,000
point bonus. If you destroy them separately they are only worth 1,000 points.
6.Ending
If you are unable to destroy the Duoss core before the countdown ends it will
unleash its purple wrath onto the world and the following text will be shown.
Though one star loses its light
Others will continue
To shine in the universe
If I could be reborn
I would live to bask
In the blue light
Of a certain star
If you destroy the core in time however your pilot will fly back to their yellow
ship and blast off again. Then the following text will appear.
I send my tears
Of unfulfilled dreams
To all the people who live,
For the sacrifice of living
In the void between
The past and the future
Of this vast universe.
