Power Strike II

Compile/Sega - Sega Master System - 1993

Reviewed by Alex Vormbrock (a.k.a. Herr Schatten).

I have to admid that I usually prefer horizontally scrolling shooters to vertically scrolling ones. Yet, there were a few of those that really got me hooked (namely 'Wings Of Death', 'Xenon 2' (Amiga) and 'Dragon Spirit' (PC Engine)). Power Strike for the Sega Master System was one of them, too, so I was really excited to hear about the sequel.

Due to the limitations of the hardware (excellent colour palette, but slow CPU) few shooters have been developed for the Master System. Interestingly, the best of them were all done by Compile: the glorious R-Type conversion, Power Strike (aka Aleste) and, of course, Power Strike II. The latter one was released in 1993. At that time, the Master System was practically already dead and gone, at least commercially. So whatever drove the guys from Compile into creating Power Strike II I cannot guess. But I'm glad they did. Unfortunately, because of its late release date (and because of the fact that this is the only Compile game that has only been released outside (!) of Japan), the cart is very rare and almost impossible to obtain. If you're lucky, it shows up on eBay. If that happens: grab it! Otherwise you're missing the best shooter for your Master System and one of the best vert scrollers in shmups history. And believe me: playing it on an emulator is just half the fun.

There were a few things I had to criticise about Power Strike, so I am glad to announce that they got them all fixed in the sequel. Sequel? Not ...quite. Power Strike was a conversion of the MSX game Aleste, but Power Strike II is not a conversion of Aleste 2. Instead, it takes quite a step aside from the storyline of the Aleste series. No evil computer and no mutated plants to fight here. The story is set in a parallel universe in the early 1930s. The Great Depression drove many people into poverty, so a lot of them had to turn to crime to survive. Powerful sky pirates control the skies around the coast of Italy. This is were we come into play. Our hero is a bounty hunter whose task is to hunt down the sky pirates. Now that's a neat new idea. Instead of saving the earth once again, we just go for a quick cash-in. Before each stage of the game we see a wanted poster with the picture of the sky pirate we're after. Strangely enough, most of the pirates resemble famous actors or musicians.

The graphics are simply the best ever seen on the Master System. They're nothing short of stunning. There's always tons of sprites on the screen and there's never any flicker or slowdown. The style of the graphics is a weird mixture of 1930s machinery and science fiction with a couple of Jules Verne references occasionally thrown in. All the enemies look incredibly cool, especially the huge bosses. Background pieces are beautifully painted and very detailed. And the intro and ending sequences look better than some I have seen on the Mega Drive.

The sound effects are very crisp. I especially love the metallic sound you can hear when hitting certain foes. The bosses go down in a spectacular thunderstorm. It's all really impressive. The music, on the other hand, is just above average. The tunes are not bad, but I liked the music of the first Power Strike game better.

But the most important thing is the gameplay. And Power Srike II doesn't fall short in any aspect of that. The weapon system is similar to other games of the Aleste series: Power up your main gun by collecting 'P' symbols and choose and build up one of seven different secondary weapons by picking up numbers 0 to 6. You can choose your default secondary weapon before the game starts. The secondary wepons are:

0 - No secondary weapon at all. This can be the weakest or the most powerful weapon of all, depending on how advanced your main gun is, because number 0 gives you very fast rapid fire. So, if your main gun is weak, number 0 is almost useless, but with a fully powered up main gun you can roast even bosses in seconds.

1 - Spread shot. This one is reasonably powerful even if not powered up much. I usually pick it as my default weapon, but exchange it for better equipment quite soon.

2 - Homing missiles. This is like a mixture of numbers 4 and 5. The missiles home in on the enemy to a certain degree and are very powerful. But if the power level of this weapon is low, you've got only few missiles and they are too slow to be very helpful.

3 - Burner. Depending on the power level of this weapon, you get up to two drones that act like the options in Gradius. Both the players ship and the drones shoot a beam of concentrated fire whose range is way too short to be of any use. Avoid like the plague.

4 - Homing plasma balls. Most of the time, this should be the weapon of your choice. The plasma balls home in on enemies. They move very fast. Unfortunately, they do not do much damage, but they are incredibly useful in areas where many weak foes are on the screen.

5 - Destroyer. Actually, these are normal missiles. It's the most powerful secondary weapon. If powered up to level six (which is the highest possible), almost the whole screen is filled with your own projectiles causing major havoc. Very cool.

6 - Napalm. Weapon number six is very hard to take control of. Your ship spits out a couple of plasma balls that circle around the creen, then disappear. If the power level is low, it's not very useful and you won't use it often during the game, but if powered up to at least level three, it can be used to wipe the screen clean of enemy bullets. This is the best way to survive the battles against the mid bosses of stages five and seven.

Each secondary weapon can be powered up six times. Both , the main and the secondary weapon are fired by pushing the same fire button. Holding the button down doesn't only give you rapid fire, it also charges up some kind of super blast which can be released on strong opponents or in dangerous situations by releasing the button. The second button can be used to adjust your speed or it can be configured to act as a pause button. This is a wonderful idea more Master System games should have adopted.
Additionally, you can collect up to two multiples, which then circle around your ship, protecting it from enemy fire and adding special abilities to your main gun. You can get yellow, blue or red multiples or use a combination of two of them. Depending on which drones you use, your main weapon gets stronger, fires more rapidly or spreads wider.

There is very little on the downside of this game: The player's ship moves just a little bit too fast for my taste and some of the enemy bullets are a bit small and hard to see. But apart from that, everything is near perfect. They even fixed the few flaws of the first Power Strike game: The extra symbols now float towards the BOTTOM of the screen, there's real bosses and all secondary weapons last infinitely. Additionally, when losing a life, you don't lose all your power ups at once, you only lose half of them, so you are left with a decent chance to survive.

To make it short: Power Strike II is the best shmup for the Sega Master System, if not of the entire 8-bit era. It looks and plays better than many 16-bit games. It's technically perfect and quite unique in design. Personally, I even like it a tiny bit better than Aleste 2. So go and get it - you won't regret it.