Super Nova (1993)

Beat on normal difficulty. I used the type 1 ship and decided to follow the high path through the levels. My emulator does not handle the game perfectly so I got as far a level J before getting stuck. It would not show both my ship and the tunnel walls at the same time so it was pretty much impossible to navigate. The previous level boss was also partially non rendered for the same reason and was VERY difficult.

I started over from the beginning using the type 2 ship and kept backup save states at each level branch. It turned out there was only a mostly linear path because level C had the same problem as J so the entire bottom route was a no go. I beat the game by following the middle route to N and then loaded the backup to take the only workable branch up to M and O and got a different ending.

On top of those problems the game was extremely difficult; the kind where I had to save state every several seconds and, more often than not, die and have to load. The enemies and projectiles are both fast and tricky, and the game uses every trick in the book to make it hard. I liked the simple tactical aspect of not simply holding down the shoot button all the time and the variety of tactical options. The main gun is good for shooting to the front, while missiles and laser are good at up, down and diagonals. Laser can even do behind. I really liked the versatility of the laser but the damage was so low that I preferred missiles. On top of that you can hold both buttons to shoot 2 weapons at the same time but powered down, which I found to be a great way to deal with enemies using the type 2 ship because the max level of the main gun is very short range. I would have liked it better if an unused face button was set to the laser instead of using a button to swap weapons. Never tried type 3 ship.

Good game and one of the better shoot em ups.