Silver Surfer
System: NES
Release Date: November 1990
Developer: Software Creations
Publisher: Arcadia Systems
Genre: Shoot ‘em Up
The universe is in trouble of being invaded, save us Silver Surfer! The herald of Galactus stars in this shoot ‘em up in an attempt to save the universe from the Magik Domain. You must collect six pieces of a device that the creatures of the Magik Domain plan to use to tear a hole into our universe. You must go through six stages in order to stop their diabolic plans.
You begin by choosing one of five stages. The instruction manual highly suggests starting with Reptyl or Mephisto, and I concur. There are three sections of each stage that could be either horizontally scrolling or vertical scrolling. Both require you to press the A Button to fire your weapon. There’s no rapid fire option, but a turbo controller would be extremely nice for this game, as you need to be firing constantly.
Killing specific enemies will drop powerups. The F icon powers up your gun five different times. The little white ball is an orb, which is your option. Horizontal stages allow one orb, while vertical stages allow two. You can change the direction they fire with a tab of the B Button. You’ll spend 90% of gameplay or more with the orbs firing forward. There were only a couple times backward, down, or to the sides were useful. You can also collect the occasional screen clearing bomb with the B icon. These aren’t super useful on bosses, but I was happy to have them occasionally on the stages.
Each stage is extremely unforgiving. Until you learn what’s coming your way, you’ll constantly see the Silver Surfer crying on his surfboard. You start with five lives, but they chip down quickly. When you die, you lose your powerups, which is a death sentence in this game. The plus is that once you memorize everything, the levels aren’t that terrible. The worst thing at that point will be fighting your hit box against the edges of the level.
Surprisingly, the bosses are incredibly easy. If you make it to them, blowing them away happens before you realize it. The final boss confused me. The picture looked like Mr. Sinister, but it was a giant purple thingy. He was a pushover. As long as you’re good at avoiding giant slow bullets, you can beat this one and feel pretty good about yourself.
Graphics: 2.0
There are some neat accent pieces, but the graphics aren’t anything special.
Sound: 3.0
The soundtrack is pretty rocking. I liked it a lot.
Gameplay: 2.0
Everything is run of the mill shoot ‘em up. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do either scrolling version well.
Difficulty: 1.0
You have to memorize everything because stuff will come out of nowhere at you or you’ll get pushed into a dead end.
Fun Factor: 1.5
It’s not a really fun game, but it isn’t an awful time.
Overall Rating: 1.9
Silver Surfer earns a C. It’s not a really great game. It’s not totally bad, but there’s a lot of BS deaths in your future if you give it a shot.