Psikyo Shooting Stars Alpha INFORMATION
SHOOTING STAR OR FALLING STAR?
» RELEASED:
OUT NOW
» PRICE:
£34.99 (£54.99 PHYSICAL)
» PUBLISHER:
NIS AMERICA
» DEVELOPER:
ZERODIV
» PLAYERS:
1-2
The Switch has proven to be something of a haven for shmup fans, and a number of fantastic shooters are currently available on the system. NIS America has certainly noticed this market and is releasing not one but two compilations dedicated to Psikyo’s classic arcade shooters. This isn’t the first retro compilation that NIS America has released on the Switch either, as it dropped SNK 40th Anniversary Collection in 2018. Unfortunately, while that was a sterling example of how to treat a bunch of classic games, Psikyo Shooting Stars Alpha proves to be a disappointing bedfellow.
That’s not to say the included games are poor. In fact, every single one of the six titles is worthy of your time, even Sol Divide – which is arguably the weakest game on offer – but as a celebration piece Shooting Stars Alpha is rather lacking. There are no history archives to look through, no posters or digital art books to gaze at, nothing at all apart from the six games themselves. So let us take this opportunity to go through each one of them.
The highlight of Alpha is easily Zero Gunner 2 – an exhilarating horizontal blaster which puts you in the cockpit of a high-tech helicopter. The control system admittedly takes a while to adjust to, but once you do you’ll be mowing down waves of enemies with ease and pulling apart the gigantic bosses that reside at the end of each stage. It’s fast and frantic and is the newest game on the compilation (it was originally ported from arcade to Dreamcast in 2001).
As we mentioned above, the weak link here is Sol Divide, a fantasy-fuelled blaster with smart prerendered visuals and a focus on melee combat that puts it somewhat at odds with the rest of the included games. The large oversized characters feel like they attract incoming bullets, but once you get used to their pace and the size of their hitboxes you’ll soon begin to appreciate just how far Psikyo attempted to push the conventional shmup envelope with this interesting oddity.
Far more enjoyable and a lot more accessible is Dragon Blaze, a charming
little vertical shoot-’em-up that also boasts a fantasy theme. It’s a lot more conventional than Sol Divide, though and has more in common with the other vertical shooters that share space on the collection. There are four different characters to master and the scoring system is solid, but won’t present many headaches if you’re a high score chaser.
Shooting Stars Alpha’s final three games are from the Strikers series and include Strikers 1945, Strikers 1945 II and Strikers 1945 III. All three vertical shooters play very similarly to one another and have a distinctive World War 2 motif that will instantly remind you of Capcom’s venerable 1945 series. There’s a lot more on offer here, however, thanks to a large number of different craft to master in each game and the ridiculous bosses that start off as gigantic planes, ships and other vehicles, before transforming into gargantuan bullet-spewing hellions.
Although the Striker games and Dragon Blaze feel very similar from a mechanical point of view, Zero Gunner 2 and Sol Divide do a great job of breaking up the compilation’s familiarity. None of the games have particularly complex scoring systems, but they’re all challenging enough that it should take a fair amount of practice before you successfully single-credit them, if at all.
All the included ports are of a high standard and appear identical to the ones that are already available on the eshop as separate downloads. As a result, each game has a variety of tweakable options that range from different filters (including adding scanlines) and screen sizes, to the handy ability to customise buttons and use Tate options on the four vertical games. The only downside to this last option is that you can’t play off a single Joy-con, meaning you’ll find things very difficult indeed if you’ve recently moved over to a Switch Lite.
So that brings us to the rather hefty price tag that Shooting Stars Alpha sports. With all six games already available separately at £6.99, there’s a good chance you may already own some of the games on offer and you’re saving very little by buying them as a collection. Add in the fact that Konami’s Contra and Castlevania compilations offer more games for around half the price and NIS America’s compilation starts to look very expensive for a digital release. A physical version does exist, but that’s even pricier due to only being available as a limited edition set (which admittedly includes three CDS, a nice artbook and various cards). If both packages were combined as a single 12-game compilation we’d be a bit more lenient, but as it stands it just feels cynically overpriced.
In a nutshell
There’s a decent selection of games on offer here, but it looks decidedly poor value when placed up against Konami’s recent range of mini compilations and NIS America’s own SNK collection. You’d be better off buying the individual titles on a case by case basis instead.
>> Score 69%