It was a dark age for video games when the words ‘3D graphics’ referred to sprite scaling. Now it wasn’t all bad; arcade releases that used this technique were generally quite playable, but most developers were dead set on releasing these titles on home consoles. Unfortunately the hardware was nowhere near as capable in these systems, and this holds especially true for the 8-bit era. Sega was one of the most prolific arcade developers of this time, and their Master System console saw many of these early 3D releases. Space Harrier was one of their big titles, and the port was almost unplayable. Today I’m looking into a lesser known release called Galaxy Force to see if it too falls victim to the same nuances.
Galaxy Force is a 3D space shooter in which you pilot a futuristic ship across several different planets. Your enemy is the evil fourth empire. Why they have been named this I have no idea, but the point is that it’s your job to destroy their outposts which are spread across four different planets ultimately attacking their base head on. The game is played from a behind the ship view, and you can move up, down, left and right. Your ship is armed with two different weapons; you have a standard machine gun-like fire as well as a missile that locks on to approaching enemies. Your basic weapon is far more useful because the targets only stay highlighted for a brief amount of time, and though the missiles are more powerful it can be difficult to time your fire just right. Your ship is armed with a shield that depletes each time you are hit by an enemy or environmental hazard, and when it’s gone you can only take a few hits before losing a life. What’s cool is the fact that right from the start you can tackle the four primary stages in any order that you want.
Honestly this could have been a good game, but the Master System simply could not handle its graphics. It’s not a true 3D game, and uses sprite scaling to make enemies appear closer or farther away while the ground scrolls quickly to give the illusion of motion and speed. Unfortunately most of the enemies lack animation and their movement is rendered completely by the scaling. Their motions simply are not smooth, and they seem to warp across the screen, and simply change size. The illusion of 3D space simply does not work at all here. What surprised me is that even your ship animations are extremely choppy, and this makes Galaxy Force very difficult to play. It’s tough to judge where a simple tap of the directional pad will put you, and the input delay certainly doesn’t help with this problem. The developers didn’t keep this in mind, and opted to throw a significant number of enemies at you almost constantly. The play field quickly becomes a mess, and at times it’s a struggle to even figure out where your ship is at.
Unfortunately the game is also extremely repetitive. Though they feature different environmental hazards the enemies and attack patterns are mostly recycled. Instead of featuring new foes in the later stages there are simply more of them. To make matters even worse the final stretch of every level is a winding indoor corridor section that’s best likened to an obstacle course. There are generally few if any enemies in these sections, and your biggest foes are the two walls on each side. The display indicates when the corridor is arching left or right, but due to the choppy scaling this is the most frustrating part of the game. It’s entirely too difficult with the poor gameplay engine to accurately turn, and I found myself most frequently turning too hard and ramming into the opposite wall. I was really disappointed to see that there’s no boss fight waiting at the end of these sections, and at the end the level is complete with very little fanfare. There’s no diversity here, and not having end an end of stage baddie (there’s not even a final boss) is insulting.
In still screenshots this game actually looks very impressive by hardware standards. Each object features a large number of sprites, and the art style reeks of classic Sega. I really like how colorful everything is and it’s definitely beyond something the NES could have pulled off. Unfortunately the issues I mentioned earlier really hold this one back. I could almost forgive the choppy scaling if your ship animated smoothly, but that’s certainly not the case. To make matters worse gameplay suffers from even more slowdown when several enemies are on-screen at once. Don’t be lured in by the colorful visuals from any screenshots you see; this one is ugly as sin. The soundtrack however is really enjoyable. Each level has its own theme music, and I found all of it to be really well done. The sound effects on the other hand are a little scratchy sounding, and they tend to overshadow the lovely compositions. Unfortunately you’ll constantly be firing which makes this a constant issue. I wish there was a way to turn them off because they’re an ear sore.
Galaxy Force is a downright terrible arcade conversion. It had all the makings of a classic, but Sega really should have held off on this one until they released better home hardware. The only reason to pick this one up is purely for your own collection, but that’s just because of the fact that it hasn’t been released on any other home console (as far as I’m aware). Galaxy Force is a real stain on Sega’s library.
