U.N. Defense Force: Earth Joker
U.N. Defense Force: Earth Joker
The year is 2036. The Earth has been invaded by the hostile Slytow. As one of a select team, it is your task to take back the Earth! Many have tried and failed, but having secured the Atlantic Ocean as a base of operations in 2034, we feel confident that you can accomplish your mission. Ever since they invaded us back in 2025, we’ve been fighting a losing battle. With your help, we’ll turn the tide!
Developed by Visco Games in 1993, Earth Joker is a vertical shmup with some rather clever ideas. There’s a coherant story, played through the intro, and small cut-scenes. Each player can choose one of four characters, without duplication. Each ship has a charge shot, a main shot, and a recharging bomb. There are also sub-weapons that can be changed out via pickups. These include homing missiles, dumbfire missles, grenades, and side-firing missiles.
Each main weapon can be upgraded up to 5x, while sub-weapons cannot be upgraded at all. The charge shot, while powerful, has a more important feature: It cancels any “regular” shots it comes in contact with. This lets you clear some breathing room, and is a great way of dealing with boss bullet spam. The bombs are single-use, and recharge in about 15 seconds. They don’t seem to be very powerful, but can be used for screen clearing.
The four ships are unique. The first two ships seem to use bullets, while the last two use lasers.
- Ship 1: Narrow cone of fire, narrow charge shot.
- Ship 2: Wide cone of fire, spreading out to almost 45°, with an equally wide charge shot.
- Ship 3: Midway between the first two ships in terms of firing angle, her charge beam is a powerful laser.
- Ship 4: By moving up and down the screen, his cone of fire can be narrowed or widened, and his charge shot is fairly wide.
Each level begins with a short briefing and a cut-scene that zooms into the actual action. It’s a pretty cool effect. The game is definitely good looking, with multiple layers of parallax, and has you flying in and out of cloudbanks – sometimes obscuring the screen for a couple of seconds. Thankfully, it seems to avoid killing you when it does this, but it certainly heightens the tension. The sprites are all very well drawn, and follow a consistant theme. There are other nice effects, like flying over a damaged aircraft carrier, and having its turrets take out a couple of attackers before you do.
The sound design is pretty good, with decent mixing on the bullets and explosions. The background music is fairly mellow, at least in the first level. It’s not terribly memorable, though.
The game is a decent challenge, relying on aimed bullets rather than bullet spam, but it will crowd you into a corner if it can. Overall, U.N. Defense Force: Earth Joker is a good, solid shmup which doesn’t cheap-shot the player, although it can and will surprise you.
