Legendary Wings (Arcade) review "Sore soaring"

Your expectations soar when catching sight of Legendary Wings. You don't see a spaceship or a fighter plane float across its screen, but a winged man clutching a gun. You haven't bothered to watch the demo screen long enough to understand the game's story premise, but you instantly think of Greek mythology and the late '60s sci-fi film “Barbarella.” If nothing else, this cabinet could serve as a nice break from the umpteenth iteration of World War II or an alien invasion—or aliens invading during World War II.

Sadly, though, Wings dashes your hopes in minutes...

Your voyage begins like so many others. You fly vertically while oddly shaped machinery cruises toward you, looking nothing like the kind of thing you would associate with Greek mythology or the fantasy genre. So basically Capcom just developed another space shooter and replaced the main vessel with an angel while sticking the occasional temple or statue in the environment. That's cool, I guess... Before long, one of the massive stone faces in the scenery swallows you and the game's perspective and mechanics shift.

You're no longer playing a shmup, now. You've gone underground and entered a side-scrolling platformer filled with winged serpents that spit fireballs, turtles that nudge you to the left, and additional killer gadgets. Well-placed shots dispatch pretty much anything in your path, provided you're able to acclimate to the game's wonky mechanics here to avoid projectiles. Your jump proves a bit weighty, but it's adequate enough to survive your opponents' fire and carry you over holes in the floor. After you get a rhythm down, you advance until you reach a bridge that collapses, thrusting you into a mid-boss encounter with another weird machine. What is this, a super computer? Man, I don't know; it's some wall-mounted mechanical thing that fires bullets, and you float through the air to avoid them while also blasting its obvious weak point. After a few successful shots, it explodes and you take the skies again...

The affair resumes, throwing more of the same ho-hum enemies in peculiar patterns. If you're lucky, you can drop a bomb on the ground to reveal one of the scant weapon upgrades the game offers or a passage to a bonus level where you collect money bags. You earn extra lives after you've scored enough points, and believe me, you'll need them.

After a while, you run afoul of a pair of tough flying enemies who team up with a couple of weaponized statues. This battle serves as yet another simple mid-boss encounter that you can easily survive if you're not careless. After you've taken that team out, you mosey onto the final foray: another side-scrolling segment. This time, though, the serpents take a bench while eye monsters slither onto the scene, lobbing fireballs awkward enough angles that you lose a life or two—perhaps even all of them.

Perseverance gets you through the shebang effectively enough, terminating in an another wall-mounted boss that croaks easily. You then glide off into the sunset and begin the whole experience anew.

Seriously, though, you really do begin anew. Over and over and over and over...

One thing kills Wings: repetitive content. Here, you have a game that oozes a little more imagination than your standard shoot 'em up, but then proceeds to lean hard on routine-driven stage design. When level two kicks up, it's the same old story. You battle tiny robots in a vertically scrolling scene, get swallowed by a statue, fight the exact same snake creatures you did earlier, fly again, take on the same mid-bosses, enter a familiar side-scrolling finale with the eye beasts, then war with the first boss again. Level three is the same, as is four, and so on. You go through this repetitive rigmarole until you've cleared the campaign, run out of quarters, or gone mad...

Each stage elevates its difficult rating slightly, with oodles of missiles and foes sailing toward you at awkward angles. You eventually struggle to account for everything headed your way, trying desperately to weave around bullets that give you only a tiny bit of breathing room. There's just one problem, though: your sprite is big and awkward, and the game's play control is a tad over-responsive. More often than not, you either over-correct or end up flapping into a corner without an exit because even the spacious gaps between opposing shots won't accommodate your ridiculous shape and unforgiving hit box.

Still, this is the kind of game you can get through if you stick to it and have a pocket full of quarters. Well, okay, several pockets full of quarters... However, you begin to question if it's really worth your spare change to get through more than three levels of this madness. The answer is, unfortunately, no...

Wings' familiarity grows tiresome before long. It offers no surprises, and its stages provide so few neat little touches that come with the genre that it's tough to get excited for any further material. The second level provides just enough of the right balance of elements that it should sate whatever shooter cravings you were having, but anything beyond that will only drive you insane. Segments become unreasonably overfull of foes and projectiles to be able to survive without pumping tons of quarters. Hell, even if you come to this party with piles of cash, there's no guarantee you'll make it to the end. Getting a “game over” sends you back to the beginning of the level you're on rather than respawning you where you died. If you croak late in the stage, then tough luck, kid. Get back to the front and start over. It's absolutely soul-crushing, especially when you account for how ridiculously cheap the campaign becomes.

The thing is little of the game's content justifies the troublesome challenge factor. Honestly, if you're going to break my face, then you betting bring your A-game when it comes to what's on offer. Don't hit me with the same stuff repeatedly, adding only more bullets and background statues. Give me shock, surprises, unique challenges, SOMETHING that stands out.

It's sad when I think back on it because Legendary Wings started off with a promise to present divergent concepts, gives us a few alterations to shake things up, but ultimately settles on the old arcade standard of sending you through countless waves of the same junk time and again. I commend Capcom for trying to think outside of the space-and-war box in regards to shooters, but the genre at the time needed more than just dudes with wings and under-utilized references to Greek culture.

Staff review by Joseph Shaffer (November 02, 2023) Rumor has it that Joe is not actually a man, but a machine that likes video games, horror movies, and long walks on the beach. His/Its first contribution to HonestGamers was a review of Breath of Fire III.