Category: SNES Legacy

Sidescrolling? Infinite massive energy blasts as a main attack? Tons of powerups? It must be~~! Well, actually, that describes just about any side-scrolling ship-based shooter from the 90’s. But we’re talking about~~

 

Sidescrolling shooters were the *thing* throughout much of the 90’s, and the SNES was no exception. Heck, out of the 12 games already covered under SNES Legacay, two of them were already sidescrolling ship-based shooters. If that’s the case, then what sets this one apart?

 

 

Well, for starters, you get to select a character. While choosing a character is par for the course in many a side-scrolling beat’em up, we often don’t get to see it in the “shmup” counterpart. Heck, oftentimes we’re lucky if we get to see the pilot. In UNS, each character has a different skill (albeit I have no idea’s what Mickey’s actually is). I’d recommend picking up Greg if you’re a beginner since he recovers from damage quicker, and if you’re a pro you’ll probably go with Shin since he levels up his planes faster. This is useful since if you know how to beat the levels quickly you’ll get less EXP than someone who’s likely to die a few times before completing them.

 

 

Oh, right; did I mention? There’s EXP. It’s not as impactful to the gameplay as I would have liked it to be, but after picking up enough blue and red powerups you’ll notice your guns shooting larger blasts or maybe even shooting a shot in a second direction. I wish I could say that this was an appealing part of the game but… well, it sort of works like this. The first time you play the game, you’ll find yourself dying so often that you’ll be drowning in EXP and your ship will quickly become maxed out. At this point EXP might as well not even be a part of the game since you’re only a couple levels in. On the other hand, if you’re good enough at the game to make it through the first couple levels without dying, you’re probably good enough that it doesn’t really matter when you level up, since you don’t necessarily need the added firepower right away. I guess what I’m trying to say is that leveling up just kind of “happens,” and you just play the game without paying too much attention to it, or necessarily strategizing heavily around it.

 

 

Ship-purchasing is unfortunately in the same boat. There may be 6 ships to choose from (5 of them you have to buy) but they all play out fairly similarly enough to each other.  I came the conclusion that instead of trying to buy some of the cheaper ships early on, I should just skip them all in lieu of the “best” ship “Efreet”, saving up $1,000,000 right from the start to buy it. That being said, the powerups are where the real strategy and (in my opinion) fun from the game comes from. Assuming you have the money to do so (and the Efreet ship) you can load out your plane any way you want (with every single weapon if you really wanted). This made approaching each level a lot of fun, since you got to truly customize your loadout and approach each level with the best strategy you could come up with. Since you have to juggle all the powerups one at a time, it really isn’t to your advantage to take a bunch of guns with you that are no good for the level. Likewise, clever use of the weapons themselves at certain points makes the difference between a difficult level and a manageable one. To boot, none of the powerups made other ones obsolete–they all felt unique and useful in their own way. (Except for the Falcon missile, because that thing is a worthless piece of crap.)

 

 

The last unique mechanic that separates UNS from other shmups is the way ship destruction is handled. In quite a few shmups, damage of any kind means instant death, or a very near equivalent (loss of powerups). I can understand the sentiment for this implementation–it keeps the game challenging in light of your usually ridiculously powerful arsenal. The problem is that it can lead to frustration or even a sense of unfairness within the player (Gradius III I feel is a pretty good example of this). On the other hand, if you gave your player a health bar with say, 5 hits, they would take advantage of the health pool and purposefully face-tank their way through some obstacles. UNS has a perfect balance of both worlds. You have a health bar that allows you to take several (6?) shots of damage over the course of the level. The catch is, that the moment you are shot, you enter into a “DANGER” state, where for about 5 seconds if you get hit again you straight-up die. This truly is a beautiful mechanic that allows forgiveness of mistakes without letting the player off scot-free.

 

 

Missions are chosen in a pseudo-linear fashion with various portions where you get to choose which level you attend within a set. Don’t get too excited by the mission select screen either–it’s sort of neat that there are moving pieces on it that approach and (eventually) attack your base, but there’s not a lot of strategic element to it. Basically if any of the 3 special units (the two planes or the submarine) enter attacking range of the base, you are forced to complete their level before you gain the freedom to choose your levels again. Other than that and the RNG of the convoys that you can target (bonus mission for extra gold) it’s just your basic “select your mission” screen.

 

 

Overall, I’ve played far worse games and far worse shmups, as UNS is pretty solid. Its enemies and bosses may not be the most creative in the franchise, but the freshness of some of its mechanics that diverge from the norm, combined with the game’s forgiving learning curve give the game some genuine appeal. It’s not too long–my final run at beating the game only lasted an hour-and-a-half, with my overall playtime somewhere in the 5 hour range. With the grades in, I’m putting this in Tier 2–it’s guaranteed to at least be the delight of shmup fans and even a few who aren’t.