NES Shmups #6

Over Horizon (1991)
By: Hot B Genre: Shooting Players: 1 Difficulty: Medium
Featured Version: Nintendo NES First Day Score: 322,860
Also Available For: Nothing

I used to greatly enjoy reading the multi-format games magazines back in the 80s and early 90s and getting a taste of what delights were available to lucky owners of systems I did not own. Sometimes it could be frustrating, admittedly, and other times it gave me ammo for mocking said owners, but now and then, seemingly unremarkable games from these pages would get stuck in my head forever. Many of them were NES examples since I never owned it in its day, nor knew anyone who did (it wasn't popular here in the UK for some reason), and one such game that has been making its presence well known in my brain lately is Over Horizon which I have oddly-specific memories of seeing in the mighty Mean Machines magazine. As I recall, it received only a mediocre reception from Jaz and the gang, but, as sacrilegious as this may sound, I've become aware increasingly in my advancing years of just how often their opinions did not necessarily correspond with mine. Let's see if this is another example of that!

It's a horizontal scroller, in case it wasn't obvious, and a fairly normal one in most ways. You get a small yellow/gold ship to pilot which is apparently called 'Michael' for some reason. It reminds me of both Mr. Heli and the Cybernoid ship as well as something else I can't quite remember right now, and it's a pretty cool little ship too. It's quite agile and has a forward twin shot which isn't terrible for a default weapon, and you can shoot it left or right as you please too. This was apparently done because Yoshinori Satake, who was in charge of development, doesn't like enemies attacking from behind in shoot 'em ups. An alternative would be to simply not have enemies attacking from behind, you would think, but it works well here nonetheless. Startlingly, it's a game that was never released in any English-speaking territories (just Japan and Germany for some reason), so I'm not totally sure of the backstory, but the objective seems to be the usual type of thing - destroy evil aliens (Gamma Organisation) who are attacking your home region (the Alpharos star system) and bring peace to the realm, etc.

This consists of six stages, some of which are split into two sections, with each section/stage ending in a boss fight as you would expect. The first of these is the one that really stuck in my mind over the years due to all the greenery in it. Despite seemingly taking place in the vacuum of space, there are flowers and thick vines all over the place, and the stage boss appears to be some sort of malevolent plant too. Others feature frozen caverns with large icy obstructions, a scary fiery area with rock cats that spit flames at you, and even a stage that takes place in flooded ruins or something, with pesky waterfalls that knock 'Michael' around (sorry, I can't call the ship that anymore, it reminds me of the perpetually crying captain from Star Trek Discovery). There are also some spacey sections as well as the scary metallic enemy base-type areas, so it's pretty varied for a game with only six stages, especially with its heavy use of scenery and foreground obstacles and structures which always keep you on the move.

Progress through these congested stages is greatly aided by the power-ups that are carried by little ships with Pac-Man faces. These mainly drop either an 'option' (little floaty drone thing that duplicates your shots), which you can have two of (one above, one below your ship), or a weapon capsule which cycles between 'L' (lasers, your default weapon), 'H' (homing, or 'homming' shots to quote the game itself), or 'B' (spiky bomb things). All three weapons can be powered-up a few times and can be fired in either direction using the A or B button. Unsurprisingly, weapons revert to their lowest power levels upon restart when you lose a life, but the Pac-Man ships are quite common and it's not too difficult to build your weapons back up again. Much less commonly, the special ships also contain extra lives. It's actually possible to 'edit' the weapons from the title screen, which can give one weapon the characteristic from another - homing lasers, for example - and you can also adjust the position of your options/drones.

Seeing as there are only six stages, it's not the longest game ever (just over half an hour's worth for skilled players), and they are short - only a few slowly-scrolling screens long in some cases - but their scenery and obstacle-heavy nature means there are slightly different ways of tackling them which helps with the replay value. I really like the audio/visuals too. I haven't always been the biggest fan of NES graphics but everything here is sharp, stands out nicely, and is even varied too. Most of the colour is found on the first and last stages but the stage themes are distinctive and each is home to a decent range of enemies which seem to take the form of both ships and creatures. They are mostly small but there are a few mid-size cretins here and there, and some of the bosses are pretty impressive, usually forcing you to keep on the move and use both fire buttons to wear them down. There is also a considerable number of scenery-mounted guns which are often partially sheltered. The music that accompanies this action is excellent too. Several of the choons are stand outs and most suit the action superbly.

The thing I like the most about the game, though, is the stage design. I've always enjoyed shmups that gave you lots of scenery to contend with as well as enemies buzzing about the place, and each of the stages have at least one unique feature to that end. It might seem a bit tough at first but it's actually one of the easier games of its type I've played. With a bit of practise, even I was able to make it a decent way into the game! Even when I died (and lost my weapons) right before a boss, I was still able to defeat the idiot! I'm not really able to think of too much wrong with Over Horizon to be honest. I guess it's not exactly spectacular or especially original, and it could do with a couple more stages and weapons, but it looks and sounds nice, the controls and collision-detection are fine, and it's not stupidly tough or unfair. I'm not sure what Mean Machines' beef was as I can't find the review now, but I think it's a rather enjoyable game while it lasts, splendid even, and one of the more underrated such games for the NES.

RKS Score: 8/10

Gameplay Video: here's a video of the whole game being played by one of the talented fellows at World of Longplays (check out their great channel here). Oh, and don't watch if you want to avoid spoilers!