Sega Ages Lightening Force: Quest for the Darkstar

Genre: Shmup

Players: 1, Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Lightening Force, known in other regions as Thunder Force IV, is a classic Shmup originally released on the Sega Genesis in 1992 and coming to the US in 1993, apparently the only time that game has been released in the US until this port to the Nintendo Switch. Lauded at the time for being one of the best Shmups on the Switch, it featured swappable weapons, and levels with screens that could be scrolled vertically as players progressed horizontally.

Visually, this game looks pretty good now for the most part, with a lot of action going on onscreen and some detailed enemies and backgrounds. However, I have to ass two major caveats here – firstly, this game suffers from pretty severe slowdown when things get especially busy, and while there is an option in the game menus to reduce slowdown, even this does not entirely fix the problem. Secondly, in a few of the levels the background is colored in a way that causes the action to blend into it in a way that makes it difficult to see where things are. These two flaws mar an otherwise solid visual presentation, that goes along with some great music and some difficult-to-understand voice clips.

The gameplay itself is good, but difficult, thanks in part to the screen frequently becoming too busy to track what’s going on, and also thanks in part to enemies often popping out of one side of the screen or another without warning, meaning that players will die from attacks they couldn’t have known about or prevented in their first playthrough.

This release of the game attempts to mitigate the frustration this causes by adding in a new “Kid Mode” that prevents the player from losing all of their acquired weaponry when they die, although I question the choice of name for this mode, as even in “Kid Mode”, the game is still far from easy.

Still, despite the technical issues, despite the occasionally frustrating design choices, and despite the patronizing name of a game mode that seeks to soften the blow of the game’s absurd difficulty, Lightening Force is still a pretty solid entry in the genre, with a good variety of enemies and some decent strategy coming from the weapon-swapping mechanic. While many elements of this game have not aged so gracefully, the core gameplay remains relatively solid (although I will get in one other small complaint – some bigger enemies and bosses in particular can really feel like bullet sponges, taking tons of damage without giving any indication they’re being affected).

As with the other releases in the Sega Ages series, developer M2 has included a good array of extra features in the game, including save states, replays, online leaderboards, both international and Japanese versions of the game, and multiple display options. Sadly, this game doesn’t have the music test mode featured in many of the Sega Ages games, though – a pity, considering this game’s soundtrack is pretty good.

While Lightening Force has aged a bit since its initial release, with both graphical and gameplay flaws that stick out like a sore thumb, it’s still a solid Shmup that fans of the genre should definitely check out, with a solid port that has a good amount of extras.

tl;dr – Lightening Force, also known as Thunder Force IV, is a Shmup originally released on the Sega Genesis in 1992, and this version marks its only other US release since then. This is a game that has aged noticeably, with issues both in its graphics and gameplay. However, despite this, the gameplay is on the whole pretty good, and this is a solid port with a good amount of extra features. Fans of Shmups should definitely give this a look.

Grade: B

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