Seirei Senshi Spriggan (Turbografx-CD) review "This game really should be a lot less obscure on these shores."

Over the years, Compile has become my "comfort food" when it comes to shooters. They don't tend to be the most difficult ones out there, making them enjoyable to play on those days when I find real life challenging enough and need my recreation time to feel like actual recreation. They're not only accessible, but a lot of fun. Fast action, power-ups that allow you to flood the screen with brightly-colored projectiles and large numbers of creatively-designed bosses can usually be found in their games.

Compile was one of the premier developers in this genre during the days of 8- and 16-bit systems, whether if be M.U.S.H.A. for the Genesis, Robo Aleste for that system's CD add-on and even the majestic "Zelda-meets-shooter" The Guardian Legend on the NES. They also made an appearance on the TurboGrafx-16 with Blazing Lazers — a game that fortunately played a lot better than it was spelled. When that system released its own CD add-on, Compile was there in 1991 with Seirei Senshi Spriggan.

This one possesses more of a medieval theme than the average shooter. The first stage has you flying over what seems to be a castle-like structure suspended in the clouds. After defeating a large statue attacking you with fireballs and its hands, you'll then find yourself flying over black space with presumably that castle suspended over it, going past many towers loaded with various guns — with the action culminating when a number of soldiers reach a spaceship and try to escape, shooting at you all the way.

I mean, when I say "more of a medieval theme", that's a relative term. The final two stages take place in outer space and I did type "spaceship" in that last paragraph. Spriggan doesn't try to reinvent the wheel or anything like that — it simply adds a few things to the formula in a game that's fast-paced enough that you'd probably have to be hitting pause to take notes as frequently as I was in order to actually be paying all that much attention to how medieval this game might be.

And if you're being super-invested in the setting, you probably aren't paying anywhere enough attention to this game's power-up system, which is one of the deeper and more enjoyable ones that I've experienced. Orbs of four different colors will regularly descend down the screen of this vertically-scrolling game and you can collect three at a time, with each subsequent one replacing the one you've held the longest.

What makes this interesting is that there are lots of color combinations you can possess, leading to many different forms of weaponry. Collect three of one color and you'll have one sort of power-up, but if you mix and match colors, you'll get mishmashes of each color's weapon. Far be it from me to spoil your playing experience by actually remembering what combinations give you what weapons, but there are a few that I found very useful — in particular, the combination of (I think) green and yellow, which allows you to cover virtually the entire screen with fast-moving and wide projectiles.

If you find a good load-out via experimentation, you'll find that this game is one of those where there are tough foes capable of quickly overwhelming you with their attacks, but on the other hand, you'll be such a potent force of nature that those guys won't be able to last long against your onslaught. Evade their attacks for a few seconds and you'll soon see them explode, granting you access to the next challenge.

If things get hairy, those power-ups can do more than merely bestowing many ways of shooting stuff. They also can serve as bombs, so you can expend one of them to give you a bit of breathing room against the fleet of small ships bedeviling you and then pick up another to maintain your allotment of three orbs. The game definitely encourages you to do this, as those orbs drop constantly. Even when fighting bosses, you can expect to see orbs dropping down the screen often enough to make using them as bombs a viable strategy. Oh, and for additional help, there is one particular power-up that not only vaporizes all foes on the screen, but also gives you a shield so you can absorb a hit. And let's face it, whenever you're playing a fast-paced game where one bullet equals death and the loss of all your power-ups, having any sort of margin for error is nice.



If there's a potential flaw to any of this, it's that all the potential ammo you'll be emitting can make it a bit tricky to see what's going on at times, but that only really bothered me once. The penultimate stage places you against a massive engine with three large thrusters that take turns flaring up and destroying any ships in the path of that flame. These thrusters signify they're about to go off shortly before they do, but if you're constantly shooting, you might not see the energy gathering around them. That boss gave me hell…

Fortunately, the rest of the game was pretty damn heavenly, even if I have no idea what was going on other than how I was collecting power-ups and shooting down all sorts of stuff. As the name Seirei Senshi Spriggan might hint at, this game was only released in Japan. And as the CD format might tell you, there are voiced cutscenes that will have no meaning to you unless you're either Japanese or bilingual. Amusingly, these even extend into the actual game, as shortly before battling that engine and its thrusters, you'll fly over a large computer screen, at which time everything will come to a halt as some dude talks at you for seemingly forever.

Yeah, I've had a long-standing love for Compile's brand of shooting action and Seirei Senshi Spriggan only added to it. Its creatively-designed power-up system grants players a large variety of ways to customize their ship's assault and the game's seven stages are a lot of fun to play through. Add in the rockin' soundtrack one should expect from a CD game and this is one of those shooters that it's easy to get lost in as you move around the screen and shoot your way through all sorts of enemy vessels. High quality is high quality and, once again, Compile proves it's high quality.

Community review by overdrive (March 31, 2023) Rob Hamilton is the official drunken master of review writing for Honestgamers.