Japan Gaming Guide

Star Soldier R on Wii was the real crowd puller at Hudson’s Caravan tour of Japan. The game will be instantly familiar to series fans with the level design and enemies matching previous titles closely. The designers have gone out of their way to make a hardcore shoot-em-up, eschewing the idea that gamers need a break from the action every so often – Star Soldier R players will face a non-stop onslaught of enemies – and if they don’t like it, tough luck.

Attendees at the event were able to take part in a high-score tournament. Competition was intense. Some players had followed the tour from city to city to get more chances of hitting the top spot. The event was hosted by Hudson president ‘Master’ Takahashi, who’s legendary trigger finger can fire off 16 shots a second, enough to polish off even the most stubborn end of level boss.

The game looked pretty nice – the on screen action was very smooth, lots going on. Most players at the event opted to use the classic controller rather than the Wiimote, no need for motion sensing here. This is a simple shooter, blast your way to the top of the screen and then fight the boss. No going in close to enemy shots to increase your score as far as we could see, just blast blast blast. Nothing wrong with that though. We recognised the multi-shot weapon from previous versions of the game, but didn’t see the electro shot or the, er, green wavy thing. The competition used a special restricted two minute game mode though, it may be that the usual power ups are included in the game proper.

So if you’re a shoot-em-up fan, Star Soldier R is on the way. In the meantime try out some of it’s predecessors on the Virtual Console – Star Soldier, Super Star Soldier and Soldier Blade are all a few Wii Points away.

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