Battle Squadron
System: Genesis
Release Date: December 1990
Developer: Innerprise Software
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Genre: Shoot ‘em Up
More aliens need to be blasted to kingdom come in Battle Squadron! A couple space commanders have been taken hostage by some adversarial forces. The Barrax Empire is looking to attack Earth and destroy everyone, but you have to be the one to save the day once again. Head to the planet Terrainia and make your way through 3 cores to defeat your enemies and proclaim victory.
Only three main levels plus the looping overworld stand in your way to victory. But it won’t be easy, because this is a true bullet hell. You can even set the maximum number of bullets and their speed in the options menu. I doubt there is a comfortable combination. Shooting your weapons is handled by the A or C Buttons, while dropping a Nova bomb can be accomplished with the B Button. These are useful because they destroy all the bullets on screen, but you don’t really get enough of them to keep you safe.
By destroying a gun ship, an X Crystal is dropped. It moves left and right on screen, changing colors as it changes directions. The colors signify a different weapon you can switch to or upgrade five times. Blue is an Anti-Matter Particle Beam, which shoots straight ahead and backward. Red is the Magnetic Torps, which are a weak spread shot. The Orange Magma Wave shoots out forward and to the sides. The Green Emerald Laser is the strongest of the weapons, but doesn’t spread very much.
When you get hit by a bullet or an enemy, and you will get hit by them. A lot. You come back minus an upgrade to your weapon and an unsportsmanlike short window of invincibility. You need to get back on track to clear a path for yourself immediately or it’s game over. Even if you think you’re doing well, there are graphics on the top layer that will make it so you can’t see anything. This is an extremely cheap and maddening way to elongate a game. I time traveled my way along because my patience was not having this. I made it to the end of the second core when the game froze up after killing the boss. Without being able to move back to the overworld, I called it quits.
Graphics: 2.5
There’s a lot going on and nothing looks bad. No slowdown was noticed, but that probably would have been helpful.
Sound: 2.5
The music is decent enough and I wasn’t overly annoyed by the weapon firing sounds.
Gameplay: 1.5
The weapons aren’t very satisfying, they shoot way too slowly for the amount of enemies present, and your ship moves like molasses.
Difficulty: 0.5
A cardinal sin of obscuring the play field is overused. Enemies will hide in there and shoot bullets you never have a chance of seeing, which is BS.
Fun Factor: 1.0
I was hoping to enjoy a good shoot ‘em up, but I didn’t get my wish here.
Overall Rating: 1.6
Battle Squadron earns a C-. This game coasts to a below average game on the graphics and sound, but fails where it really matters.