NES Review - Starship Hector

Starship Hector is an early entry in the Star Soldier series. It is one of the first games to have a built in Caravan mode which is what put it on my radar. For the uninitiated a Caravan Shooting competition was a phenomenon in the mid 1980s through the early 1990s where Hudson Soft loaded vans full of TVs, Famicoms, their newest shooting games and judges and traveled the country side putting on competitions. The competitions focus on quick two and five minute modes. In the early competitions judges used stop watches to time the participants. Eventually the games started including Caravan Modes so that you could play for the allotted time and your score would appear on screen for the judge to make note of your score. This caravan mode is what put the game on my radar, along with being under $10, and along the way I had the idea to run a caravan hi score competition for my new retro style website.

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This has now become the shooter game I have spent the most time with. The bite size two minute runs and focusing on finding all of the scoring techniques for the first stage have really caught hold of my attention. I can only imagine what it was like in the past in the heat of battle with kids lined up around Famicoms making notes on others sessions, sharing tips and trying to outdo each other. First I was playing with turbo on after nuking my forearm in my initial runs through the 2 minute mode. Then people started submitting scores without turbo so I felt the need to actually hone my skills and summon the fierce fighting spirit of Takahashii Meijin and at least make an attempt to put up an honest to goodness hard fought score.

The 5 minute mode skips the horizontal scrolling levels and jumps from stage one to stage after finishing the first stage. This is a much harder challenge. The difficulty in this game really ramps up fast and furious after the first level. I might make an attempt to put some time into this mode but honestly it was wrecking me when I did try it for the first time.

The normal game is brutal. After spending so much time getting to know the first level in the 2 and 5 minute caravan modes I decided to make an attempt to go through the full game. Oh man. What an immediate spike in difficulty. Towards the 75% mark of the first stage I noticed some new enemies in the full version. The new enemies didn’t spike the difficulty but it was a difference and I wonder what other differences there are. Unfortunately I am not skilled enough to blow through this game. Then getting into the second stage you switch to a horizontal scrolling mode and the difficulty really ramps up. I haven't spent a ton of time trying yet but holy cow I have not even made it close to the end of the second stage. It is sad how quickly this title filtered me.

The graphics and presentation are solid. You can tell what's on the ground and needs to be bombed and what's in the air that needs to be shot down. A unique aspect of this title is the alternating between vertical scrolling and horizontal scrolling each stage. I'm not sure any other shooters do this. The game is very responsive and the controls are tight and I never felt like I died because the game cheated me. It's just a very highly difficult game with a ton of frantic enemies blasting a lot of projectiles. There can be some slowdown from time to time when there are a ton of enemies and projectiles but this is fairly common in a game on the NES with this much going on at once.

All that being said about this titles tremendous difficulty, I really had a great time with this shooter. Honestly this may be the most fun I have had with a shooter. Usually I get filtered by the difficulty and requirement for skill and reflexes and just drop this type of game. But with this caravan mode I have found a way to have a tremendous amount of fun with this affordable NES title. Starting the challenge and getting my online friends to post scores and compete for hi scores has also been an amazing new way to play and has really opened the door for me to enjoy this type of game without getting super frustrated. Maybe it will grow into a deeper appreciation for the genre and maybe I can develop those skills and reflexes needed to make some headway into shooters.

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