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TranceJunkie's Air Fortress (NES)
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| [January 18, 2007 07:39:23 PM]
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I recently obtained a good emulator for the NES, RockNESX, and was browsing the list of games. Most of them were terrible and I was rather disappointed at the lack of any good titles. However, I finally stumbled upon Air Fortress, a title developed in 1987 by HAL Laboratories Inc. in Japan and localized by HAL America Inc. for it's 1989 release. HAL Laboratories is probably most famous for their development of the Super Smash Bros series of games for Nintendo. This is a gem of a game not only because of its controls are much tighter than one would expect from other NES titles but also the original take the game has on the played out side scrolling shooter.
Air Fortress takes the idea of a side scrolling shooter and combines it with some aspects of an adventure game. As you enter the fortress, you must first fly to the docking bay of the fortress. This section plays out exactly as you would expect. Hal Bailman is on his flying speed bike and can only shoot forward as a selection of enemies attack him. As he makes his way to the docking bay, he collects Energy tokens and Bomb tokens. Collecting as many of these as possible determines how difficult the next section will be.
Once inside the fortress, Hal Bailman exits his speed cycle and the player may now navigate through series of room via his jet pack. Now the player may shoot either left and right and the enemies each have a unique way to beat them. This allow the game the incorporate some limited puzzles in the game. The energy also serves as a timer, as Hal Bailman looses energy as he is exposed to an unsealed room. Therefore there is also an added speed element to the game as you will loose health the longer you are in any one room. Ones energy, minus the damage taken by enemies is restored when transitioning from room to room. This combination of shooter adventure and puzzle game is what makes this game so much fun. I think it is the link between the first stage, the “charge stage” and the “battle stage.” With these two stages there is always room for improvement because there are some difficult Energy tokens to get and the more health one reserves for the battle stage the easier it is.
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TranceJunkie's Air Fortress (NES)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Wednesday 17 January, 2007
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