Soldier Blade: One of the Best Video Games Ever Made

It's been awhile since I made a post like this, but it's about due. In the spirit of Brand Zero, I'm going to go old school and talk about a dead series that no one will ever revive due to the genre being abandoned long ago. At the same time, I hope to show just what we miss out when destroying the foundation from underneath your feet.

This post is about a little game named Soldier Blade, a forgotten classic on a now forgotten system. This is in a climate where classic gaming is currently being whitewashed away by certain AAA companies attempting to reframe the 32-bit generation as the first console generation. No doubt if Nintendo weren't still around they would do it successfully and certain gamers would allow them to do it.

But I digress.

The reason I've chosen Soldier Blade is because it is one of the best shmups ever made, but explaining why is a bit tough due to the genre's heavy use of gameplay to leverage itself over flash and presentation. To understand these days why the genre was beloved you have to wipe gimmicky "Bullet Hell" games from your head and put your mindset back to when games began and the genre's beginnings. Because shooters have fallen quite a bit from where they began and are near extinct these days.

As an action game, few are as tight, as responsive, or as colorful as this one is. There's a reason it still remains a favorite of genre fans of this near-30-year-old-game to this day. And that's unlikely to ever change.

Soldier Blade came more or less at the peak of the genre, in the early 90s, before video games abandoned their roots in arcade challenge and goals for cinematic experiences. It is pure gameplay, meant for that rental store, or that dying breed of gamer who needs to master levels and accumulate high scores. You have to go back to a certain time and a specific mindset. You have remember when games were about gaming first above presentation or flash. In many ways this game represents its era on top of also being excellent in its own right.

Soldier Blade was released in 1992 for the popular PC Engine in Japan, and the nearly forgotten TurboGrafx-16 in the West. Despite how it might look and sound, it was not released for the CD attachment games such as Ys were given. This was done on the original hardware before any revisions. It's a bit hard to imagine, but the TG16 was a much better and impressive system than gamers were lead to believe.

The game was also the last in a series that ended on this system. Well, it was technically the last. There were other games, but they were more remix than sequel. Before we go on, let me talk about the Star Soldier series a bit.

Star Soldier was a competent shooter that came out back in the mid-'80s on the MSX and the NES. It was Hudson's attempt to try to take on the almighty Compile, creator of classics such as The Guardian Legend, GunNac, Blazing Lazers, Musha, Spriggan, and Zanac x Zanac. If you don't those then you really, really, should. At the time they were one of the kings of the genre, up there with Capcom, Konami, and IREM.

But Hudson was more of a platformer-type developer at the time with Adventure Island, Bonk, and even Bomberman under their belts. Shooters weren't their thing, despite the genre being so big at the time. So their first two attempts with Star Soldier and a few years later with Super Star Solider, were merely decent.

They did offer a Caravan feature for their games, as score hunting was big back in the Golden Age of gaming. In case you don't know what a Caravan Mode is, I should explain. In an exclusive level, the player has 2 or 5 minutes (depending on the mode selected) to attack enemies, gain power-ups, and defeat bosses, to rack up the highest score possible. As can be deducted, such a mode can be addictive among a group of gamers. There is also a score attack mode on top of the time limit ones which adds yet another layer of replayability. And this doesn't even have anything to do with the main game.

However, in 1991, they finally nailed it with the Japan-exclusive (and mis-titled) third entry Final Soldier. A game that understood shmups had appeal beyond shooting waves of erratic-patterned enemies with sparse or no background elements at all. They had finally made it up there with the best of the best. They realized the genre is about level design, creative art, and weapon management, just as much as pattern recognition and quick reflexes. This is, after all, a video game, and not just a pachinko machine.

But in 1992 they put out a game which pushed their system to the limits with Soldier Blade, technically the final game in the series. This is, in my humble opinion, one of the Top Ten best Shooters ever made.

I say it was technically the last in the series, because there was the also excellent Star Parodier released in the same year which was a (natch) parody of its own series. Plus there was an N64 game and Caravan-only Wii release years later, but none of these really were new entries that pushed the series forward. They were just basic shooter releases, not as in-depth as the proper games in the series were.

So what exactly makes Soldier Blade so good? If you just think of shoot 'em ups as mindless games of pattern recognition then you're missing the point (as well as describing every genre in a reductive way) though I think it is something that was lost when Bullet Hell became the standard. When people think Shoot 'em up today they typically don't think of games like Soldier Blade anymore, and that's a shame.

To begin with, the controls are rock solid. There's no slipperiness to be found. Should you die then you have no one else to blame but your own weakness. This is good because of the different enemy patterns and types that meld together which require good reaction time to deal with properly. The enemy patterns are never overwhelming and offer enough variety to keep you on your toes through the game's rather lengthy 7 stages and one Caravan stage. But that's only part of what makes Soldier Blade so good. The patterns and enemy design would be enough to make it top tier, but there's more beyond that.

One thing I don't like about Bullet Hell shooters is that they feel like they exchange level design difficulty with purely dodging enemy fire instead. It makes the games less visually interesting to play, and cuts down on immersion. You could make the aesthetic a blank white background and little would actually change.

For example, in Soldier Blade you have to weave in between nigh-indestructible fleets, meteor showers, tight structures, and large enemies in between their fire. In other words, the level design and the enemies work together against you to emphasize that feeling of lone soldier against the world. It's more than just dodging bullets. In this way it's not unlike a vertical Contra or Metal Slug game without a jump button.

In Bullet Hell shooters there isn't really any level design beyond dimmed backgrounds (so you can see the bullets) and waves of one or two colors to keep track of from enemies that might as well be floating guns. The levels are also much shorter to compensate for this repetitive experience. It's not as interesting a formula as the classic shooters had, and it may be why they became niche almost immediately after they began.

Soldier Blade isn't like that, and, in my opinion, neither are the best games in the genre. It's a classic shmup through and through that relies on every part of the genre to be great. This is what allows it to stand the test of time.

Every level of the game tells a story that could be its own tale in a Fred Saberhagen collection. It does this without cutscenes or dialogue boxes. Events happen around the player and in the background to show a new scenario in the alien attack on every level that is as cool to see as it is to play. You get the impression that you've been thrown right into the middle of a larger story. As an example, I suggest watching the video below.

Operation 4 (Ignore the sound issues, the game doesn't have those)

That's about this time I realized Soldier Blade was something special. And this is but one of the levels in the game.

Another thing you might have noticed in the video is the lack of one-hit deaths at certain points. This is because of how the power-up system works. This is a bit different than previous games in the series, and might be my favorite of any shooter short of a Compile joint. Though I bet even they wish they could have made a system this clear and sharp.

Your guns start at the base level, then rise with every pick-up to three levels with a max of 3. Every time you're hit it lowers your power back to zero and then a quick death with the next hit. At the same time, collecting a power up also gives you aspecial screen-clearing weapon that changes depending on the color you stack. Certain levels and enemies are easier to take down depending on which power-up you wield, so choose what works for you in every given scenario. This means there is a lot more strategy to tackling levels than you would think for a shmup.

You also have a tiny mecha buddy following you around every level. It shadows your movement and copies your weapons. At the same time it is also invincible, so if you play smart you can use it to block bullets from the enemy. Aim it right and you can be an unstoppable force.

There is a lot here for such a simple system. Every trip through the game is a different experience due to this.

It also means multiple ways of racking up that high score to beat your buddies in Caravan mode. This adds much replay value for both modes, and a good crutch for new players to learn the game at the same time. It is an ingenious touch to game that was already one of the best games on its system.

The soundtrack is . . . well, you can hear it for yourself above. It's upbeat, fast-paced, and intense, the exact sort of thing you want to hear when shooting alien scum. The TG16 sound-chip was one of the best even at the time, and this game shows it off. Even for a shoot 'em up soundtrack in the Golden Age of the genre it is genius.

As you can surmise, there isn't one piece of this game that isn't the best of its genre. I could go on, but why bother?

I think by now you're beginning to see just what makes Soldier Blade such a classic, and why after 30 years it still is thought highly by those who still remember what a good genre the shoot 'em up is. Long before cinematic experiences turned shooters into joyless, plodding, D-grade movies, it was about gameplay first and aesthetic built on that. Here you can go on a journey to save the world from the alien menace, and look stylish doing it.

What more could you ask for?

But watching videos only gives part of the experience. This is a game that should be played. Unfortunately, much like the genre itself, it has mostly been forgotten thanks to revisionism. The arcade roots of gaming have been severed and have left the medium floundering in its futile attempt to be terrible movies instead.

Soldier Blade is also not that easy to get a hold of. The original TurboGrafx version is expensive, as is the system it came on, and it has only been re-released on the Wii and Wii-U Virtual Console as well as the PS3 store digitally. It should be more easily available, but it's just not, like most of the genre isn't. And the devaluing of the shoot 'em up genre over the years by difficulty-hating game journalists hasn't helped it stay visible. Over the years they've done more damage to classic gaming than anyone else.

If it isn't one complaining about a game with incredible replay value costing more the $5 while praising $60 one-time movie experiences as A-okay, they are reviewing these games from a modern perspective and harping on complaints no one involved with the creation of said game could know at the time. That isn't how reviewing classic material should work.

All I'm saying is, don't trust game journalists to review classic games. They aren't equipped for it, at all. They also don't want gaming to be like this anymore, which is why the medium has been allowed to fall so far from where it began.

Unfortunately, classics in gaming tend to fly under the radar all the time due to such behavior. Shmups have suffered the worst from this revisionism due to the medium's hatred of its arcade origin points. Shoot 'em ups are as arcade as you can get: unforgiving, fast, and yet gives the player multiple ways to assess any of the challenges it offers without hand-holding. It is pure video gaming, and that isn't allowed anymore.

In Current Year, we expect differently. Old thing bad!

But that's it for that.

I'm just going to leave you with this. Soldier Blade is one of the best video games, not just shooters, ever made. It does everything games were made to do, and it is stylish and inventive when doing so. You can't ask for more. This is what you play video games for.

Hopefully, that should be enough to tell you that this is a game well worth seeking out. Video games rarely get more fun than Soldier Blade, even to this day.

And that's why it's a classic.

I'm working on fun stories of my own. Gemini Warrior is pure adventure, and that's just the way I like it. I'm sure you do, too!

Find it Here!