Arbalester

-Seta/Taito (1989)

The Story

While on a test flight with the new Shinden fighter, a storm unlike any other appears over the islands where your base is located. You fly back towards the islands to check the situation, but everyone starts shooting at you. It’s as if they have forgotten who you are. One city on the edge of the islands radios you. It seems some of your allies have not been affected. and there are a few carriers along the islands to.

The storm is thought to be a time portal as futuristic jets and planes appeared during the disturbance. Your allies have discovered that the key to everything is the command tank, being called the Arbalester. It has a device that keeps the future craft in the past. Destroy the super time tank and everything from the future will be ripped back to its correct time period.

My Thoughts

Arbalester has planes from the 1940s and modern jets like F-14s and stealth bombers. Between each stage your plane does some island hopping and lands at a base or an aircraft carrier before making the next attack run. The game has nine stages, but not every stage has a boss. In some stages you face off against multiple bombers or submarines while other all you do is reach the next island.

Throughout the game weapon upgrades will fall from enemies that will upgrade your weapon to exploding balls and then lasers. The fighter also constantly lays bombs to take out boats and tanks. They leave a nifty effect on the water while pouring out of the plane. As for large scale attacks, the Shinden can call on a huge, sweet looking bomber and a squadron of mini planes. The bomber ally is by far the coolest craft in the game (it’s the lone pic on the right). It’s too bad that that plane isn’t the one you pilot because I’ve already flown the Shinden plenty of times.

The graphics are pretty good and everything is easy enough to see. The same music tune plays over and over during the entire game and only changes during a boss battle. Overall Arbalester is a decent game with some solid shooter action, but it’s just nothing great.

Score: 6.0

-Shawn        

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