GOTD 5/1/2016: Earth Defense (GEN)
Earth Defense (or The Earth Defend as its confused title screen calls it) is an unlicensed vertical shooter from Realtec released in the US and Taiwan. It has a slightly narrower and taller than standard cart, but not as tall as, say, an EA game, and in my experience won't play through my 32X. You must defend... um... Earth from an alien onslaught through five stages based incredibly loosely on real places. Back when I bought this some 16 years ago, I was mostly just enamored with the strange cartridge, and was curious if it was an unlicensed port of Earth Defense Force on SNES. It isn't.
What it is, though, is a Raiden-style shooter, and one that even supports 2 player simultaneous co-op (with an absolute shitstorm of slow down)! It's probably best played one player, as the slow down is far less pronounced in that mode, though it is most certainly present in spots, though it is often helpful a la Gradius III on SNES. You have a fairly small arsenal in this one, having the odd powerups drop from specific ships that carry them. You can get options to add firepower, a straight forward wave beam, and a spread shot. Each can be powered up four times, and become exponentially more powerful in each iteration. You also have shields to use, which cover you in flames, leaving you temporarily invincible. This will kill standard enemies for about five seconds, but will not harm bosses. Lastly, you can use the B button to reposition your options... but you'll lose it all if you die.
The graphics have an odd, low-budget style to them, with chubby, cartoony sprites that aren't far from an NES game... I'm pretty positive the Master System could have done this one in the right hands. Still, it does have a pretty decent speed to it, and enemy waves and patterns are pretty well-placed and tricky, offering up a pretty fair challenge. The bosses are pretty big for the most part (though the last one is surprisingly small) and actually pretty well animated, even though they can be bullet sponges if you don't have a powered up weapon when you get there. If you do, though, you'll tear through them in seconds. The backgrounds change by level, and get better as the game progresses. They aren't impressive by any means, but as unlicensed games go, I've seen a lot less effort. The music is a mixed bag, with a couple of kind of catchy bits and some that are pretty dull to listen to, but at least it isn't grating.
Earth Defense isn't going to be anyone's new MUSHA or Phelios, but I do like it better than the Genesis take on Raiden. It's fairly brief at only five stages, and it has its moments where it really gets ambitious with all of the enemies and bullets it wants to throw at you at once. I wouldn't call it a must play, but if you see a stray copy for cheap sometime, it's actually a decent little shooter, and I like it more now than I used to, as I didn't give it much mind when I first got it due to its mediocre graphics. There's a decent little game in there... and when I checked, there are sealed copies on ebay for about $20 right now.
Played this one?
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Originally Posted by kupomogli
