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.