Arcade Archives Omega Fighter

Genre: Shmup

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local), Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Omega Fighter, released in Arcades in 1989 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2018 and PlayStation 4 in 2019, is a Shmup where rather than flying to different locations throughout the game, players tackle one massive ship, with each level representing a different section to take out.

As Shmups go, I find Omega Fighter to be mediocre, with some really poor design choices and nothing other than its core concept to set it apart. You fire so quickly that the only challenge here is either due to your speed being so slow you can’t maneuver past enemy bullets, as well as bullet sponge enemies that take forever to beat if you picked the W weapon power-up instead of the I weapon power-up. Also, there are no continues here – lose all your lives and it doesn’t matter how many simulated quarters you pumped into the machine, you’re restarting from stage 1.

This release of the game includes a new “Hi-Score Mode” that challenges players to get as far as they can in one run. There is also a new “Caravan Mode” that does much the same, but with the limit being five minutes. There’s also a “Special Original Mode” and “Specialmode Original Mode” of the main game, but I honestly can’t tell the difference other than maybe more enemy bullets onscreen. In addition, this release of the game gives players a decent array of options, including various display options, sound options, challenge modifiers, button mapping, and online leaderboards.

At $8, the Arcade Archives release of Omega Fighter seems absurdly pricey, especially given how generic it seems and how poorly it plays. With this being the case, I just cannot recommend this game. There are countless Shmups on the Nintendo Switch, do not waste your money on one this overpriced and mediocre.

tl;dr – Omega Fighter is a mediocre Shmup whose only unique feature is that its levels comprise different parts of a large enemy spacecraft, but otherwise is dull, uninteresting, and suffers from some poor design choices. You have too many better options for Shmups on Nintendo Switch to waste any of it on this game.

Grade: D

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