Super Star Soldier

Playing Super Star Soldier is like trying to make your way through a heavy blizzard. So much stuff comes at you so fast that if you stand still too long, you'll be buried.

This fast-moving shooter has more objects moving on the screen at once than any other videogame we've seen. At times, the action gets so thick that it's difficult to locate your own ship on the crowded screen. Yet the animation never slows down or gets jerky, and the dozens of moving objects never flicker.

Although the action is incredibly complex, thegameitselfisnot. Super Star Soldier is an uncomplicated, vertically scrolling shooter in the tradition of Blazing Lazers. In fact, it could easily be mistaken for a souped-up sequel to Lazers.

As Starbuck, a crack fighter pilot, you control a highly maneuverable spaceship that can be guided anywhere on the screen (though the safest place is usually near the bottom center). Most of your battles are fought in outer space on a jet-black screen adorned with star fields and enemy bases, but some stages take place over planetary landscapes dotted with elaborate alien installations.

The rules are simple: Shoot everything that moves. But that's a tall order in this game, because just about everything moves. Even the backgrounds aren't benign. For example, sometimes when you're passing over an alien space station, a small section of the structure suddenly detaches and reveals itself to be a deadly gunship. And the alien bases are bristling with gun turrets.

Another impressive feature is the awesome array of weapons you can collect. By grabbing the different-colored power-up crystals left behind by vanquished aliens, you can get three-way, four-way, and six-way shots; lethal green lightning bolts; Ring Lasers that cut wide swaths through onrushing attackers; homing missiles that automatically seek out enemy targets; tiny escort ships that repel alien shots; giant tongues of flame that barbecue anything they touch; and Super Bombs that destroy everything on the screen.

If you bought your NEC TurboGrafx-16 on the promise of arcade-quality 16-bit graphics, Super Star Soldier is one game that definitely delivers.

Intergalactic warriors, rejoice! Billed as the se-quel to Blazing Lasers and roughly based on Star Soldier for the NES, Super Star Soldier will have you strapping on your helmet and blasting into orbit in seconds! This one player shoot-em-up features eight vertically scrolling stages of gorgeous graphics, non-stop interstellar space fighting, four different weapons, two defense systems, and numerous power-up possibilities. In fact, Super Star Soldier is crammed with the stuff dreams are made of for space jockeys, including options for a normal game or special 2-minute or 5-minute games where you go as far as you can and score as many points as possible. Once you become Starbuck and climb aboard New Caesar, the ultimate space ship, there's no turning back until you beat the Brains and save the galaxy once again.

Exploding from the stars comes this intense shooter sequel that shares a bit more in common with Blazing Lazers than its namesake.

This is not your first battle across the stars! Far from it, you have led a hundred missions into hostile territory defended by the most evil of life forms. Your battle skills have led to a classification of fighting machine reserved for a select few who exhibit the true talents of mass destruction. You are known as a Star Soldier.

In this sequel to the classic Nintendo title, NEC brings us 16-Bit shooting action of a caliber not seen since Blazing Lazers. While there are some similarities between the two games, Super Star Soldier provides you with a new selection of weapons systems, not to mention alien worlds to conquer!

The vertically-scrolling backgrounds serve as the battlefields for hundreds of alien war machines bent on the final annihilation of the human race. Only by determining the correct combinations of power-ups and defensive weaponry like options and missiles can the war be won. Breaking up the round-to-round action are Boss encounters with devices that make similar ships of destruction pale by comparison. Get set to battle screens full of alien armadas and the mother ships which dispatch them.

Can you break through the enemy defenses and eliminate the opposing forces once and for all? With all the power you need at your fingertips, the true strength of your Super Star Soldier abilities will be put to their limits in an environment that you may have visited before...but never remembered being this hostile!