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Systems > Super Nintendo > S > Space Megaforce > Staff Review

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Review by Felix Arabia
December 01, 2007

Barring Axelay (which is a crap title), Space Megaforce would be at the very bottom of the Super Nintendo’s shooter library. This is no small feat since the SNES has more than its fair share of garbage games. Just look at some of its offerings. We have classic offerings in the Gradius, R-Type, and Darius franchises, plodding obsoletes that weren’t even good by generous early 90’s standards. Then there are pitiful outings like Phalanx – the first level looks like the inside of an unflushed toilet – and the aforementioned Axelay, which is bad enough to get mentioned twice already. The amount of lackluster SNES shmups is horrifying. Compile, the usually genius company behind SM, should have been the one beacon of light in this otherwise dark library. They made the great M.U.S.H.A. on SEGA’s 16-bit Genesis. And before they did that, they were producing numerous quality titles on the Turbo. Spriggan and Gunhed – both excellent shooters. Hell, Compile was even pretty good at making puzzle games (Puyo Puyo) and RPGs (Madou Monogatari).

But you wouldn’t know that if you just played Space Megaforce on the SNES.

You would assume that every Compile title is a plodding, uninspired trek through tedious levels festering with deadly power-ups and boring spacecraft. These power-ups, consisting of meandering volts of electricity and dispersing beams of plasma, just to describe a few, are incapable of protecting your pitiful ship even if you manage to fully power their gauges. Not even missiles or multiples will do the trick. No, the one weapon that will save your ship from an onslaught of banal hunks of metal is actually a series of green spinning orbs that disintegrate most enemies and projectiles on impact.

If you fully power these babies up, you’re golden.

You’ll soar past the Nazca ruins that comprise the first level, bashing away at numerous stationary gun turrets and enemy bogeys while knocking out behemoth battle cruisers, too. You’ll even blitz your way through the Mode 7 fiestas filled with size-shifting space stations, expanding planets, and groovy nebulae. You’ll leave your controller, make a ham sandwich, come back fifteen minutes later, and everything will still be fine.

But if you errantly acquire any other power-up, you’re screwed.

Because then the numerous enemy fighters will dispatch you with their searing bullets, overwhelm your puny blasters with their thickly armored shells, and dwindle your extra lives stock down to nothing. All in a matter of minutes.

Chances are that tranquil piano jazz plays in the background while this happens.

This is supposed to be a showcase of hellish space battles, and yet most every level’s tune sounds completely out of place. The music is poor in quality anyway, but bouncy arpeggios certainly aren’t the best compliments to the carnage. It’s even funny that a lot of hullabaloo was made about this one segment during the second level where the spinning space station shouts out in a muffled plea, “Gimme a break, will ya!” I don’t see why this is so important, especially since it’s not even the first instance of voiced script in a Nintendo game. Case in point, Special Cybernetic Attack Team, or SCAT, (a most awful acronym) used clearer voiced monologue, and that game came out on the NES one whole year before SM did!

People must see that Space Megaforce is not particularly innovative, nor is it special. It is long, overly and inexplicably long. It is divided into twelve levels of tedium that rely on irrational length and graphical gimmickry to replace excitement and surprise. Even the at times shocking Mode 7 effects, like the pulsating green nebula,, are rendered useless by a later level’s inclusion of a pulsating canyon riverbed. It’s almost like Compile used Mode 7 only for the sake of using Mode 7.

They simply abandoned the magic that caused Seirei Senshi Spriggan and M.U.S.H.A. to be such exemplary titles. Compile bowed down to insidious forces! And it made their game worse.

Space Megaforce would still have lacked credibility without the Mode 7 shenanigans. It still would have been a challenge to clear even with a bevy of useful power-ups. It still would have sucked since the levels are so long and boring, but all that extra stuff just brings SM down that much more. Genjuro and Sportsman were right. SM isn’t a great game; it’s not even a mediocre game. It’s the absolute worst experience Compile has ever offered.

But it’s still better than Axelay.

Rating
2	Megaf***ed.
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Game Profile & Content

Staff Score (Avg): 6.0 User Score (Avg): 7.7 Press Score (Avg): N/A
Reviews: 5 Guides: 0 Cheats: 0 Ratings: 7	High Scores: 0 Screenshots: 0 Videos: 0

Title: Space Megaforce
Genre: Scrolling Shooter (Vertical)
Publisher: Toho
Developer: Compile
Release Date: October, 1992
ESRB: N/A

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