Soldier Blade
Title screen
| Developer: | Hudson Soft |
|---|---|
| Music: | Keita Hoshi, Makiko Tanifuji |
| Program: | Uriko Uribo |
| Release date: | JP: July 10,1992 |
| Previous game: | Final Soldier |
| Next game: | Star Parodia |
Contents
General Information
Soldier Blade is the third game in the Super Star Soldier Series on PC Engine and the final one that was released on HuCard. It was developed and published by Hudson Soft in 1992. The game was released in Japan on July 10, 1992 for PC Engine and in USA in September of the same year for Turbografx16.
Story
The player pilots a ship named Soldier Blade v.92 and fights against the evil Zeograd army.
Gameplay Overview
Soldier Blade is a vertical scrolling shoot-em-up. It’s a classic starship shooter with the player character fighting its way through seven stages (operations) starting on the earth’s surface with cities, ocean and sky, but also space, space stations and the moon in later stages. Each stage has a boss and a midboss, stage 6 also has a special midboss that imitates former bosses (just like a boss rush section).
The players ship has a vulcan shot as default weapon but can change the shot type by picking up specific power ups:
- red: Vulcan shot. Can be powered up to a multi-direction shot by picking up additional red power-ups
- blue: laser. Can be powered up to a three-way laser by picking up additional blue power ups
- green: Wave beam. Can be powered up to three waves by picking up additional green power ups
To level up a weapon the player needs to pick up power-ups of the same color as the weapon he is currently using. Picking up another color just changes the shot type. Each weapon has 3 levels.
By picking up the first power-up, the player also gets a little robot that follows the Soldier Blade, serving as an option-cannon. The player can also sacrifice one of the collected power-ups to let the robot execute a special attack. If a green or red power up is used, the robot starts flying around the screen and attacks every enemy in range. By using a blue power-up, the Soldier Blade shoots a huge laser beam for a short time. As long as the special attack is active, the players ship is invincible.
Power-ups can be stacked up to a maximum of 3.
Sacrificing a power-up doesn’t set back the power level of the main weapon.
If the Soldier Blade is hit by an enemy or projectile, the weapon level is reduced by 1. If the weapon level is 1 and the ship takes a hit, the player loses 1 extend.
If the weapon level is maxed out and the player picks up a power-up of the same color as the recent weapon type, it acts as a screen-clearing bomb.
The ship has two different speed options, low and high, which can be changed as desired.
Soldier Blade has two game modes:
- Normal: regular game with two difficulty options (normal & hard)
- Caravan: 2min & 5 min stages
Controls
- I: Special Attack
- II: Shot
- Run: Pause game
- Select: Change ship speed
Strategy/Scoring
Scoring within the main game is pretty classic. The player earns points by shooting enemy formations and killing bosses.
The best strategy for survival is to level up a weapon to maximum and then “chaining” special attacks, by always sacrificing a power-up, each time a new power-up appears on screen and can be collected. So the power-up stock is always on max and the player can benefit from invincibility-phases, each time a new power-up drops.
In caravan mode the player can earn bonuses by shooting certain enemies simultaneously with the multidirection vulcan weapon. There are also many destroyable blocks throughout the caravan stages that can be shot for points. The caravan stages also have hidden bonuses, that can be discovered by shooting certain spots in the stage.
Gallery
References & Contributors
- PC Engine Software Bible (https://www.pcengine.co.uk/HTML_Games/Soldier_Blade.htm)
- Star Soldier wiki (https://star-soldier.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Soldier)
