Pulstar Longplay (Neo Geo) [60 FPS]

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Developed by Aicom and published by SNK is 1995

In the year 2248, Earth scientists discover the first signs of alien life on the planet, Mars. The source of the signal is an unidentified object, which leaves the planet and exits the Solar System at light speed.
Fast forward eight years and aliens have followed the signal back to our Solar System and have launched an all out attack against the Earth. As one of the remaining pilots of the Pulstar attack force, it's your job to repel the enemy force and to save mankind from extinction.

Pulstar is a horizontally scrolling shoot 'em up released for the Neo Geo on both cartridge and CD formats. The cartridge version weighs in at 38 MB, which is a whopping amount of memory and must have cost a small fortune on release. This is one of the most lavish show-pieces in the Neo Geo's library and it's easy to understand why it required so much memory.

Anyone who has played any game in the R-Type franchise will instantly be at home here; the enemy design, artwork and gameplay mechanics are all very reminiscent of Irem's shooting games. Your ship is equipped with a laser cannon that can be fired as past as you can tap the fire button and this is useful for taking out some of the weaker enemies that you encounter, whilst holding the button down charges up a super attack (the effect of which varies depending on the weapon power-up you've collected). Collecting weapon power-ups will add a front-mounted module that, just like R-Type, can be used to block some of the projectiles fired by enemy ships. Enemies coming into contact with the module will take damage fairly rapidly, so those dare-devil pilots out there can try to fly as close to enemies as possible in order to kill them even more quickly.

It's also possible to equipped your ship with a pair of satellites that not only add extra fire-power, but can also be rotated by moving your main craft. Pressing the B button will lock the position of the satellites in place, allowing you to focus fire in the direction that you want; this is especially useful for dealing with situations where enemies appear from above/below and behind, where you're primary weapons cannot hit them.

I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised to find that, whilst the game was challenging, it didn't seem so ridiculously unfair compared to such bullet-hell shooters, such as DoDonPachi that I longplayed recently. The difficulty curve is just about right, with things getting progressively more difficult with each new stage; level five onwards will certainly be a test of your piloting/shooting skills!

Obviously, the first thing that you will notice about the game is the graphics. Pulstar boasts some beautiful artwork and animation throughout the game, which I suspect is actually pre-rendered 3D and then imported into the game. If you like your shoot 'em up enemies with lots of veins, tendrils and chitin then this is most definitely the game for you!

The music in Pulstar is also of exceptionally high quality and sounds absolutely fantastic. I particularly enjoyed the music that accompanied stage 5 (21:10) with it's floating synths and dreamy, ethereal effects.

It's fair to say that I thoroughly enjoyed longplaying this game. I'd never heard of this game, let alone played it before today, so it made a pleasant surprise to find a title that looked great, sounded great and played even better! It might not be that original, but it's slickly presented and will be sure to keep even the most grizzled of shmup fans coming back for more.
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