Sprite scaling games are one of my guilty pleasures. Sega was the king at them, but other developers tried their hand and left big marks on the industry. Taito, for example, had a hit with a little arcade release known as Night Striker. This was a 3D sprite scaling shooter and while it saw release on a multitude of platforms the only one powerful enough at the time was the Sega CD. So that’s where they put it, but it was left in Japan and never localized. Today I’m taking a look at this import only title. Is Night Striker worth picking up on the Mega CD? Keep reading to find out.
Night Striker takes place in a futuristic version of Earth with technology much greater than our own. The story is explained briefly in the introductory sequence; a group of terrorists are attacking the city. A doctor and his daughter have been kidnapped by said organization, and it’s up to the protagonist of this game to rescue them. He isn’t coming to the fight empty handed – he’s piloting a flying car called the Night Striker. It can shoot laser bursts, thankfully. This lone car sets out onto the city to set things right, and that’s precisely where you come in.
This game is a 3D shooter with sprite based graphics, and you view the action from behind your car. Think Space Harrier combined with OutRun. No, I didn’t include the latter just because it’s a car. That’s in there because of the way the game branches out in its level design. In Night Striker you always start at the same stage but at the end of each one you can choose to go either left or right. An on-screen display will tell you the name of both paths. The levels are basically strung together like an upside down pyramid. There are a total of 21 stages and because of how the game is set up you’ll need to play through at least six times to see them all.
The main quest, once through, takes just a few minutes to complete so I’m definitely not going to say that this one has a lot of content to it. The different paths do offer more than a change of scenery which is nice though. They feature different enemies, formations, patterns, and even environmental hazards. It’s great that they’re for more than just show; it really feels like Night Striker has a lot of different gameplay scenarios to offer. I found myself compelled to play through multiple times to see all of the content Night Striker has within it’s world.
Gameplay is very simple. There are no power-ups, there are no regenerative items; it’s just you against the onslaught of foes constantly flying in. You have two different attack buttons; one is a standard circular shot and the other is the same thing but holding it down allows for rapid fire. There’s no ammunition counter or anything of the sort. This means you’ll want to go with rapid fire, and only rapid fire. I suppose the game could have used a little more depth but for what it has to offer it’s fine. The game is fun but mastery relies entirely on reflexes and memorization.
Your ship (or car, I suppose) can take multiple hits because it has shields. The amount of protection you have is displayed numerically at the bottom of the screen, and every time you take a hit you lose one shield rating. When you’re down to just two the game throws a warning your way, and when you run out your car can take only one more hit before you lose a life. Thankfully Night Striker offers you multiple lives, and you can return to the action right where you left off. There is only one way to restore your shield and that’s by completing a stage. When you’re done the game restores some of your protection based on how well you performed.
Night Striker is a very simplistic game with a cool futuristic motif, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. As far as shooters go this one is very addictive. The controls work extremely well as your ship moves intuitively and the rapid fire option is a god-send. The enemy patterns vary just enough that Night Striker never overstays its welcome. The environmental hazards also help to keep the experience fresh from start to finish. Few games made me want to play through multiple times just to see what’s in the other paths so much as this one has.
The first time I played Night Strike I thought something was wrong with my eyesight. The game is heavily pixelated to the point where you’re not quite sure what you’re looking at half the time. Everything except your ship looks like a blurry mess to be honest. I had to go look up footage of the arcade version to see how it fares, and there’s no comparison. The Mega CD just wasn’t up to the task. It’s far from unplayable though. The scrolling works decently, and Night Striker really benefits from having mostly dark backgrounds. I like the dark and foreboding art style, but the graphics are a bit rough. The soundtrack fares better with redbook audio and a few great dark techno tracks. They’re actually pretty good and manage to take advantage of the hardware pretty well.
Before playing this version I had never actually heard of Night Striker. Despite the graphical limitations I’m now a pretty big fan of it. This is something that might have benefited more from mode 7 graphics instead of the Mega CD’s scrolling abilities, but then again, we wouldn’t have the redbook audio. I’m very happy that this version exists and I’m surprised it was never localized considering arcade ports were something the add-on platform was lacking in. Night Striker is a really cool game that I found pretty addictive. It’s certainly worth importing, but if the graphics are a big deal to you, then you’re better off getting the Saturn version with much better visuals.
