Vertical Force (Virtual Boy)

 Vertical Force is one of those rare games for a console with a big gimmick that not only exists to shoehorn in the use of that gimmick, but is also just a decent game that happens to do so. In this case, it's a vertically-scrolling shooting game, that utilises the Virtual Boy's 3D gimmick to give the stages two layers. But it otherwise does just play like a pretty decent shooting game.

 

Specifically, since it came from Hudson Soft, it plays very much like a title from the Star Soldier series, other than the layers thing. And even that could be considered to beuilding upon the weird thing in the original Star Soldier where you would sometimes fly underneath bits of scenery if you approached them from certain angles. But now you've got a button to shoot and a button to move in and out of the screen (or since the game is top-down, to increase or decrease your altitude).

 

They really did a good job of working the gimmick into the game and using it in interesting ways, too. The second and third stages are especally full of fun little moments that use it. In the second stage, there's these whirlpool things that can suck you down to the lower level if you fly over them at the top level, and the third stage has lots of big rock formations that you need to fly over and under. Unfortunately, it does also feel like the rest of the game was left a little neglected.

 

It's very barebones and featureless for a 1995 console game, and especially if you consider it a part of the Star Soldier series, as even the PC Engine entries from years earlier had things like high score tables that saved (Vertical Force doesn't have high scores at all), Caravan modes, and so on. Vertical Force just has the main game, and that's not a particularly difficult one: on my second play I managed to get to the penultimate boss, and I think I'd be able to clear the game on a single credit without much more practice. (Though Ihaven't been able to replicate that success since, so maybe it was a fluke?). It's only four relatively short stages and a final boss that gets its own stage.

 

So, Vertical Force is a decent enough shooting game, that's also a little short and definitely too easy to be a long term interest, especially with the lack of high score tables. But if you want to play every Star Soldier game, this is definitely one of those in all but name (the default weapon even powers up in the same patterns), and also I'm going to assume that anyone playing Virtual Boy games in 2024 is doing so via emulation, so you're not going to feel like you've got much to lose.

Jack Bros. (Virtual Boy)

 This is one of the better-known Virtual Boy games, but I'm still considering it obscure, because it's still a Virtual Boy game, and like most of them, it's an exclusive to a console that almost no-one owned and has only fairly recently seemed to have attracted the attention of emulator writers. It also has something of a positive reputation, which I think must be entirely based on the fact that it's a little-known, lesser-played action game starring characters and monsters from the Shn Megami Tensei series.

 

There's been games featured on this blog in recent times that I didn't particularly enjoy for various reasons, games I didn't feel like I could recommend, but I think it's been a long time since I've featured a game here that I've actively disliked as much as I do Jack Bros. It's a maze game in which you have to collect a bunch of keys in each stage to open up the exit (or exits) and go to the next stage. One thing I do like about it is that it utilises the VB's 3D in a nice little way: you get to the next stage by jumping off of the side of the current one, and you can always see the next stage floating in space far below the current one. I also like the use of a combined time limit/health bar. That's something you see in a lot of the old top-down racing games I love, and it's rare to see such a system in a game of another genre (the only other example I can think of off the top of my head is Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars).

 

That's about all I like about it, though. The problems start before you even get to do anything: at the start of every stage, a fairy will appear to deliver a few textboxes of information, that you've either already worked out or could have worked out within a few seconds of play. Things like several variations on "there are enemies on this stage that will attack you", or the revelation, at the start of the eleventh stage, that you can attack by using the right d-pad. I've managed to get over twenty stages into the game, and that fairy was still showing up at the start of each one to deliver some worthless advice.

 

Then you start playing, and the game is just so slow and boring and easy. You waddle around the small mazes, find a few keys, and jump off the side to the next stage. Like you've probably already worked out, it uses twinstick controls, though you can only move and shoot in the four cardinal directions. Even with this in mind, the normal enemies are no threat to you at all, and the bosses only slightly moreso. There are three characters, though only one of them is really viable. Jack Frost has ranged attacks, but they're so slow and weak that he's useless. Jack Skelton does decent damage, but only at melee range. Jack Lantern has fast-firing projectiles that do decent damage, so is better than the other characters in such a way that makes them totally pointless.

 

Like I said back in the first paragraph, I think that all of the goodwill people have towards this game comes from its association to a beloved series. Unfortunately, for the first time in a long time, this is a game that was hard to review simply because playing it was such a tedious chore that I would put off going back to it, and wished I was playing anything else the whole time I was playing it. I'm not writing off the Virtual Boy as a console, though: I've played a few other games that have been better and/or more interesting, and I'll almost definitely cover at least some of them here in the future.