U.N. Defense Force: Earth Joker

Twyst — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:21:19 +0000

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

Varia Metal

Twyst — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 23:10:18 +0000

Varia Metal

Varia Metal is a vertical, 2-player simultaneous shmup. You control one of two characters, Grey (p1) or Atuja (p2). Each ship has two weapons, a charge shot, and options/bombs (more on this in a bit). By pressing the Form Change button, the ship morphs into its alternate form, which lets it use the other weapon. Each form has a different charge shot, and the options/bombs behave differently. Every so often, a helper ship will approach from the rear, carrying an orb. Shoot the helper to make it drop the orb, which will upgrade your ship, or give you an option if you’re at full power.

Which brings us to the first of the game’s flaws: Using a bomb consumes an option. While you don’t always lose your options if you die, if you use them up, you won’t have any bombs until you fully power up your ship. It takes 5 orbs to fully upgrade. Now, you do drop orbs when you die, so you can power back up really fast – but you’ll never drop more than 5 of them. So using bombs at full power and then dying means you’re out of bombs.

Secondly, the two character’s ships have completely different weapons, and they’re pretty unbalanced. Changing forms takes about a second, and you’re unable to shoot while doing so. Also, to charge a weapon, you have to stop firing entirely for about 5 seconds – the charge attack is ONLY active when the gauge is 100% full.

Grey’s first form has a spread shot, with a laser charge beam. The option in this form doesn’t shoot, it just follows the ship and creates a spike. His second form is a “splitter cannon” – it breaks up when hitting enemies. The charge for this form is a circle of orbs that spiral out from his ship, and then home in if at max power. The option in this form orbits him, and shoots in the opposite direction of movement.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Atuja’s first form is also a spread shot, but it doesn’t shoot straight in front of her ship, but rather goes in a W shape – back and out, then up.

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U.N. Defense Force: Earth Joker

Varia Metal