333 · Starship Hector
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A top-down/side-scrolling sci-fi shooter in which you take control of a small starfighter as you make your way through an alien planet with your objective being to destroy all enemy forces.
Starship Hector is a Hudson Soft shooter from 1987, and in Japan it is simply called Hector 87. We argued that the name works against it in English: Hector sounds like the guy down the street, not a starship. The back-of-the-box story has Earth wiped out by World War IV in "the star year of 2038", while the ship was thousands of light years away. It then returns to ancient Earth, where biomechanical creatures rule, and you fly through eras of history to fix the future. Mike, Sean and Joe were all on this one.
What works
- The bosses. If any of the development time was well spent, it was here. They look great and have real attack patterns, which is what you want from a shooter boss.
- The art. Joe called the sprite work the shining star: pretty backgrounds, flame pillars, some Super Nintendo vibes. The side-scrolling stages are better to look at than the vertical ones, which mostly look like Commando with other things thrown in.
- A health bar. No one-hit deaths, which is the most frustrating thing about most shooters. Little dispensers you shoot drop a bit of health, though nearly everything takes a big chunk back.
- Some variety. The stages alternate between vertical and side-scrolling, and the enemies change as you go.
What doesn't
- No power-ups at all. Your two attacks are a gun and a ground bomb, and that's the whole game. We aren't against shooters with no power-ups, but then the ship has to handle well, and this one moves slowly through a screen packed with projectiles. A speed or maneuverability upgrade was what we wanted most.
- A health bar that doesn't help much. Ships that fly into you kill you outright, and so does lightly brushing a wall, which seems odd for something this slow. Many enemies fire diagonally, so a whole corner of the screen gets sealed off. Joe felt trapped again and again and only made it to the third era.
- The ground bomb in the vertical stages. It's hard to tell if you're shooting low or high, and everything comes at you too fast to judge.
- Hector letters. You spell out H-E-C-T-O-R by bombing hidden things, only in the vertical stages, and we figure the game was built around them. We wanted a Gundam transformation.
- A boss exploit. You can damage bosses while they're still arriving, and speedruns lean on it. Some fights are over before they start, which spoils the best part of the game.
Beyond the game
Wikipedia calls it a spinoff of the Star Soldier series, which we couldn't see beyond sharing a developer. Star Soldier had power-ups, faster movement and background trap zones.
The bottom line
Skip it. We all voted no on the Essential Games List, so it stays off. Mike said the missing power-ups made it not even a starting point, and the game never changed his mind. Joe praised the sprite work, then said he had little else to say: it was boring and he'd forget it.
Written from our conversation in this episode.
- From out of darkness…shall arise a challenge to your wisdom
- NES Longplay
- Manual
- In the Star Year of 2038, the Fourth World War on Earth destroyed all of mankind. The Starship Hector was thousands of light years away on an exploration mission. Upon their return to what is now Ancient Earth, the Starship Hector found Earth to be desolate and inhabited by gruesome bio-mechanical creatures. Starship Hector must fight it's way past many different empires of these bio-mechanical creatures to save Earth's future.
- Combines vertical scrolling and side-scrolling stages
- Better to mix it up or do you prefer sticking to the same viewpoint?
- This switch requires players to adapt to different control schemes and enemy behaviors, increasing the overall difficulty.
- No Power-ups: Unlike many contemporaneous shoot-'em-ups, "Starship Hector" does not offer power-ups. Players cannot upgrade their ship or weapons, making it crucial to master the basic tools provided.
- LIFE METER
- No 1-hit KOs
- whenever you die you're sent back to the start of the level even during a boss fight
- uncover all characters from the name HECTOR
- which are hidden exclusively in vertical levels below circular ground areas the same size of regular turrets. Hit these spots with ground bombs to reveal them, then hit them again to uncover the letters. There's more than one of the same characters within the same level
- Unique Locations
- Based off various civilizations
- Bosses
- Unique fights
- Allegedly a Star Soldier Spinoff. Remember that?
- Star Soldier's game play is very similar to its predecessor Star Force, with the player having to to fend off flying enemies and hit ground targets for extra points. Players control the Caesar, which can be upgraded to fire in five directions simultaneously.
- Stages have features known as "Trap Zones", where the player can dive in the background and become protected against enemy bullets and collisions but be unable to shoot as well. The game consists of 16 stages, with a boss at the end of each. If the player fails to defeat the boss in time, it will be taken back to the midway checkpoint in the stage and be forced to play the second half of the stage again.
- Known as Hector87 in Japan
- Essential Games List Vote
- Next week
- NEStalgia Byte
Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.
Starship Hector, this is the ultimate challenge to your battle skills.
And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Starship Sean. And I'm just Joe. In the star year of 2038, the fourth world war on Earth destroyed all of mankind. The Starship Hector, which was thousands of light years away on an exploration mission,
did something. Is that really what the back of the box is? Really? Oh, it was thousands of light years away. Sorry, I'm butchering it. What are you doing? I'm reading the plot on the back of the box, but it felt like it was an incorrect sentence, but now I realize that it's saying- That light years are a measurement of distance? Of distance? No, yeah. Just that, like, I'm realizing that that's the explanation for, like, why the Starship Hector wasn't destroyed as part of all mankind. Let me read the sentence again. You tell me if it's- I think it's just worded a little bit strange. I said this the first time. You didn't read it. But this is the sentence. This is the sentence. This is part of it right now? No, no, no, no.
In the star year of 2038, the fourth world war on Earth destroyed all of mankind, period. The Starship Hector was thousands of light years away on an exploration mission. Now it sounds better, right? Like, they're explaining why the Starship Hector survived when the rest of mankind was destroyed. Is star year just another, like, way to say year? Because it sounds like a normal year.
Well- And I feel like it's not going to be another 2,000 years until World War III, you know? Like, just being honest. It is a little strange because it all takes place on Earth, so we don't say we live in the star year of 2024.
Well, maybe- I'm going to start saying that. They need a standardized system because they can't measure it by, like, how long it takes Earth to go around the sun if we're talking about the whole universe. Well, then they should have used- There's already a standardized, like, star date system used in Star Trek, and they didn't do that. Maybe it's a good way of getting around, like, once that date passes. Like, 2038 was pretty far away in 1990, but we're getting close to that now. Yeah. And so once you get to 2039, it's like, no, no, we were talking about the star year 2038. Like, not our 2038. Anyway- Crutch. Yep. Starship Hector, thousands of light years away. has now returned, but not to the Earth that is destroyed.
Because they traveled via light years or something, they're now back to ancient Earth? Via light years? I don't know. Like, they didn't explain how they went back, so it's like- And light speed, you mean? Light speed? But what's the explanation? Like, so- There is no explanation. Yeah. Anyway, now it's ancient Earth, so they went so far away that they came back to a different time period, and- Didn't it happen in, like, Planet of the Apes or something? The, like, the modern one? No. No, but that's a bit of a spoiler, Joe. Sorry, everybody. No, it's a spoiler for, like, a Howe Old movie now?
I think it's also wrong, so it's okay. Yeah, it's mostly wrong. There's, like, a hint of truth to what Joe said. If you don't want to be spoiled, don't listen to the last 30 seconds of this podcast. The 30 seconds that we already talked about. The previous 30 seconds. Don't have listeners to that. Anyway, so, it's ancient Earth, so you would expect that, like, the Starship Hector is, like, the most advanced thing. However, this ancient Earth is inhabited by gruesome biomechanical creatures.
So, Starship Hector must fight its way past the many different biomechanical empires to save Earth's future. So, it's also, like, a little back-to-the-future thing, where they've gone so far away that they returned to the past, and now they have to get back to the future, but by doing some things correctly in the past. Do we even have to unpack, like... No, it's all in the back of the box, but no, I'm saying, like, do we have to unpack... What happened to... Is the Fourth World War against these biomechanical things that were, like, once the main inhabitants of Earth, but then, like, went underground? Is this some, like, 2005 Tom Cruise War of the Worlds stuff?
Oh. See, you know... Yeah, I don't know. I mean, having not read the manual or the back-of-the-box, during your description, where I was thinking it was going was that there was a war against some sort of alien or other form of life other than human, and by the time Starship Hector came back, it was like,
oh, they'd already started a new civilization over that just seems to mirror ours. But that was just contextually me piecing together some bullshit that, like, based on... That bullshit is better than, I think, whatever story's happening, because it makes no sense in terms of timelines, and it's kind of a rip-off of Battlestar Galactica down to the titling convention, and the ship just kind of looks like the Enterprise, and I never gave a moment's thought. I just started playing shmup good, or shmup bad.
Well, I'll be honest with you guys. It wasn't until I got to the Egyptian level, which I think is, like, the fourth or fifth stage, that I realized we were going through the stages of history.
Like, I don't know. I just didn't... You needed a big pyramid? Like, oh, this is a historical period. You just needed a pyramid to, like, stand at home for you? But think of how many... Yeah. Because think of how many, like, times we've had, you know, Moai heads or, like, pyramids in other games. So, it's just like, oh, it's another space game with pyramids. And turns out those biomechanical creatures made the pyramids. I knew it. Uh, all right. Moving... Actually, not moving into the game just yet. I guess this is tied to the game.
Uh, it's the starship Hector. So, I guess Hector is, like, maybe the inventor of the ship or whatever, or... Oh, that's the ship's name. Okay, yeah. So, the ship gets a human name instead of something cool like the USS Enterprise.
Uh, but... Uh, you know... Is that fine? Like, did you... It's just a weird name, right? Like, localized, it's weird. It's very dumb. Uh, it's why I said the joke at the beginning that nobody laughed at, which I guess, you know, makes it even more funny that this is called starship Hector. The listeners all laughed. Guaranteed. I hope they did. Most of this podcast laughed. Thank you, listeners that laughed.
And now we can officially get into the gameplay, which is that starship Hector is a shmup. As Sean said, good shmup, bad shmup, we'll decide. I think he was talking about his gameplay skills, but we're talking about now the quality of the game. And, uh, starship Hector is one of those shmups that doesn't, uh, stick to a theme. It has vertical and side-scrolling stages.
Is it better to mix it up, like where you do, uh, ABAB, or do you prefer just sticking to the same viewpoint when you're playing a shmup? And I know that sounds like an obvious answer, or at least when I worded it, I was like, well, I don't think there's gonna be much discussion there. But the more I thought about it, I was like, I don't know, sometimes I don't like it when gameplay switches up so dramatically, uh, especially in something as tight as a shmup where you kind of are relying on your mastery of the controls.
Yeah, I think it depends on, on, on the specific game and like how much love is going into each type of gameplay, because it can be very cool if it's like, okay, now you've got like great game design in one way. Now you get to like experience a different way where you got to think about things differently. But also there, you know, I feel like we've had games before where they've thrown in,
um, maybe not necessarily like, uh, shmup that has side scrolling and forward scrolling, but like, where they've thrown in another form of gameplay where you're like, yeah, that kind of felt a little undercooked compared to the rest of the game. So it just depends on the execution, I think. Yeah, I think as a trend, like this is getting kind of like rote now, like there's been so many of these that like, oh, we're going to switch it up every level or so. And I, I, I kind of equate it to nowadays, every franchise with, it's like a triple A is like, oh, now, now we've got like crafting mechanics. It's going to make a whole new, like, so it's kind of like that, like, stop it. Just, just do the one thing good, please.
You know, cause the switch kind of requires players to not only adapt to the different control screens, but also the enemy behaviors, right? Like the way enemies, um, enter the screen changes too. So you have to think, I don't know. It just, for me, it was, it wasn't like, oh, I prefer, I couldn't even put my finger on which one I prefer. It was just more like a reset every single level, you know?
To me, like, it, it feels like, aside from, and we'll get into this, like there's a secondary fire that is like a ground attack button, basically. And aside from that moving from, you just kind of, you're just kind of shooting two layers of things to now you're shooting as you normally would in a shmup and also down towards the ground. Now you can actually see that Z axis. Aside from that visual change, it plays exactly the same. Like it really is just kind of a, a gimmick. Like, but I will say though, that based, you know, going off of what you just said about the, uh, that visual change of the, I don't know, the bombs you're dropping or whatever those are, the lower torpedoes that you're dropping.
Um, I think that that is a case where it's, that they may, even though like the first thing you play is the overhead view, it feels like that is less developed. And maybe that's just by nature of like the lack of a Z axis there, or at least going downward because it is not intuitive half the time what you're shooting at. Like if you're shooting at something on the ground or something in the air where, I mean, I'm sure you, you look at a screenshot of this, you could probably pretty easily tell what's ground and what's in the air, but everything's happening so fast. Everything's coming at you so fast. It's your brain doesn't work that fast half the time. So it felt like I needed something else to make, to make those.
Yeah. More apparently different. And then in the side scrolling, of course you can just see, okay, that's below me. I'm going to shoot below me. This is in front of me. I'm going to shoot in front of me. But the other one, it's like, you can't really tell it. Am I shooting low or am I shooting high for this? Am I hitting this thing? There's a little bit of trial and error sometimes.
I think the, the biggest thing for me, I think if it's just more psychological, cause I, I kind of agree. But I think the actual reason is just that the side scrolling stages are just prettier to look at. Like there's some actual art there. Whereas in the moving forward, vertically scrolling, it, it all just kind of looks like commando, but with some other stuff thrown in. Yeah. Right. Sean, you mentioned the two ways to attack using either the ammunition or the bombs. That's it for the entire game. Uh, usually we get into a section on our, uh, shmup podcast, which have become rather formulaic where we talk about the power ups and how the power ups are different, but there are no power ups. You cannot upgrade the ship in any way.
And, um, you know, that's a, that's tough. Uh, in, in this, in the, in the breadth of all of the shmups that we've played, like that's a tough thing to receive now. Yeah. The, the only thing that, that this game has to offer mechanically, that's any different than anything we've played before is this game.
One, it has a health bar that not the first time it's been done, but it, that needs to be stated to describe the one thing that is new. And that is PEZ dispensers across the, uh, the area of the map that act as like little, little health dispensers. You shoot them to give you a little poop of health and you eat it up and you get a little bit of health. And it doesn't really make a difference because everything kind of takes huge chunks of your health away. But that's the one thing, little, little, little dispensers.
Well, I mean, look, the, the life meter is nice because now there's no one hit KOs, which are probably the most frustrating part of any shmup is like just when you were getting good, you get accidentally hit by one thing and you lose all your power ups and you either, whether, whether you start back in the same exact place or start at the beginning of the level,
um, you know, it just sucks to lose all that progress when it's designed for it. At least in this case, when you die, um, it's just like, Oh, well, I was only ever supposed to have the gun and the bomb. So it's not like I lost any progress. I just need to make sure I don't lose all my health. But why can't we just, why is it that we can't have both, right? Like games, games with shmups can have power ups and a life meter and probably work just fine. Heck, I bet there's more than a handful of examples post NES, but we seem to struggle with the balance
here of like, you know, would this game have been too freaking easy if it had a health bar and had like a spread, uh, mechanic and like heat seeking missiles and stuff. I don't know. That's hard to say, but it is frustrating that like such a great feature, such a much necessary feature for people who aren't great at these old school shmups, something like a health bar is then like hindered by, uh, other features that are standard in NES shmups missing. Yeah. I, I, I, I think I've, I think I've said this before on other shmup episodes.
I'm not fundamentally opposed to the idea of no power ups in a shmup. I think that can be fun because it can be like twitch reflexes and stuff. It's just the way that the, the way that the vehicle controls has to sort of lend itself to that. And I feel like in this case, it doesn't like, I, I was desperately the whole time needing a speed or maneuverability power up. And like, I did feel like there were times in this where it's like, yeah, no matter how skilled I am with, with the, with the tools I have at my disposal, like it's going to be pretty hard for me to not die at this point, you know? Um, so like, I think that this game particularly needs it for, for those reasons because.
Yeah. I mean, the main reason being that you move so slow and the, the, the screen is so saturated with projectiles. Like, I feel like this might be one of the slower moving vehicles in a shmup that we've had in a long time, at least. And that does not go well with like you being underpowered. I think that if you're going to make the decision to not, to not do power ups, like you have to
actually, you kind of have to revolutionize shmups. Like you have to do something so fundamentally different that it lends itself to just like, Oh, focus on this action. Um, because if you're not going to do that and you're just going to kind of create a, uh, a template shmup, as I used to say, um, that's the only lever you have to pull is like what kind of cool, uh, actual power ups. Am I going to, am I going to give the player?
Um, I guess like, yeah, the, the art is always a plus, but like in terms of gameplay, that's it. And they kind of shot themselves in the foot here by not doing anything with it. Well, they did add one other thing that we're glossing over. Probably the reason that the, um, spaceship is named Hector. And that is because throughout the pilot's name is Hector.
No, you get the, you get the ability to collect the letters that spell out Hector. You can collect the H E C T O and R hidden exclusively in the vertical levels. I don't know why they couldn't be in the side scrolling ones. Uh, it, it wouldn't have been hard. Um, the tiles would just, you know, it's not like, Oh, well, I don't know how to, because of the way the tiles are shown vertically. I don't know how to rotate the tiles. Right. Exactly. It doesn't make any sense.
So, uh, in the vertical levels, these are, um, these are hidden. You blow up area. I think you have to use, I think they're only with the bombs. I think you have to purposefully destroy, um, destructible things in order to reveal them. And then when you, um, uh, you know, in order to get all those, all those letters to spell out Hector, that must be why the game is called Starship Hector. They, they had the letters in first and then they built the game around it.
Yeah. Because you know all they had to do to make it at least sound cool. It would still sound generic, but if you just change it to the H to a V now it sounds like a spaceship name. And not the guy down the street.
Spelling out Hector should have given you something like, um, uh, we played a game like this on the Nostalgia Bites, uh, podcast, like early on. But like once you spell out Hector, your, uh, Starship turns into like a Gundam style, like humanoid. Yeah. And then, you know, like that's what it should have done. That's Hector. Yeah. I think that game was called Xerion. The one we played on Bytes. Sounds made up enough to be true.
Yeah. See, you know it's bad when even I can't remember them, but we got in our stride with the Bytes episodes. For those of you that don't know, Nostalgia Bites is something we do on Patreon.com slash Nostalgia. Uh, they're the Famicom games and I'm looking into it and it doesn't look like it was Xerion. So I think it was Formation Z then by process of elimination.
That was a Bytes game? It was a Bytes game. Wow. I don't know. Maybe I'm making all of it up. Maybe that was just shameless self-promotion. Can we hire a podcast historian to just keep our shit straight? Aren't we the podcast historians? I don't have time to do that. I'm playing the games. It was Formation Z. Okay. So at least we can feel good about that. Could the podcast historian label each part of the, each era, like history one, history two, history three? What is that? Why do they do that? Why do they do that, Joe? I don't know. Like, is that what, is that what we call it like colloquially? Like, oh man, what's your thoughts on like history four? You're talking about ancient Egypt, that's history four.
I don't get it. I don't understand if it was even like, you know, cause you're traveling. I mean, I thought it was all happening at the same time and you were just going from civilization to civilization.
But if you were like, who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who is who The actual coolest part of the game, though, with one unfortunate fatal exploit, are the bosses.
I gotta say, if any of the time spent on development was well spent, it had to be on the bosses. Because they're all not only cool looking, but they offer the kind of attack patterns and variety that you want from a shmup boss. And so I enjoyed seeing all of these bosses, and I enjoyed the fights themselves. But why are you able to actually deal damage to them before the fight begins?
Wait, you can? You can, as long as they are on screen, right? They wait for the whole screen to fully appear before they start attacking. But if you can see them, just go right up to them and shoot them in their weak point. And it will count as damage hit. And if you watch some of the speed runs of this game, I guess you can call them, that's the strategy. Because some of them, the fight will end before the boss starts fighting. Well, that sounds like a mistake. Has to be a mistake, but they left it in the game. And therefore, it makes what I'm saying is the coolest feature.
Something that requires some restraint. Because, for instance, the, what was it? It's like a giant face in one of the vertical levels. Yeah. And that's like a cool fight. But if you can just destroy it before it really takes off, then you don't even need, like, why bother with it? Yeah. I wonder, though, how much you need to know what's coming in order to really exploit that. Because I, I mean, I was always shooting, but like, and granted, I only got to, like, history three. Because I do think the rest of this game, outside of the bosses, is incredibly difficult.
But, um. Yes. But the bosses that I got to, I wouldn't have known where their weak spots were until it was probably, like, a little too late for me to use that exploit. Unless I had, you know, already been familiar with it. Correct. Yeah, that's a good point. And, and Joe, what made the games so, the game so difficult for you? Well, I mean, for me it was, and this happens in a lot of shmups, but it was so oversaturated. Especially, like, by, like, the third history. By the third history.
Um. You're, you're like, I mean, you are, sometimes you're going in, like, small, narrow areas. There's projectiles everywhere. There are, like, ships that just fly right into you that kill you in one hit no matter how much health you have. Which is bullshit if you're going to have a health bar. Yeah, exactly. But, and then there's, I mean, so much of that happening. And you, like I said earlier, you move so slow. It's really hard to dodge sometimes.
I mean, I, and I'm sure that someone who's, like, a master at this game would laugh at me. But, like, I swear that there's times where I'm, I'm, I die and I'm, like, going over in my head. I'm like, I don't think there was a way I could have gotten out of that. But, obviously, there probably was. But, like, I feel like I was trapped so often and died from, like, like I needed to be framed perfect if I didn't want to die. Sean, you agree with that assessment? Or was there something else troubling you?
No, I'd say that was it. I mean, it's, it was a combination of, of, like, density of projectiles. Um, the fact that your health bar doesn't matter if you make contact with a wall. I feel like that's something that, like, we kind of didn't see for a while. Like, you can kind of, like, you could, like, rub up against a wall. You just couldn't move any further. Um, but now if you lightly touch a wall, you will just explode. Um, which is odd considering how slow you move. Um, yeah, just the same complaints. Yeah, I would say, too, especially in the later levels, it's surprising.
That there's so many enemies on the screen at once. I think they thought that was the way to up the challenge without necessarily testing, like, how those enemies shoot. Because the way that they shoot, you know, very few enemies shoot at you, like, head on, right? Like, just they shoot straight down and you just have to line up with them and dodge their shot and shoot their shot. Most of these enemies shoot diagonally in, in the, in whatever which way they feel like. Like, so you wind up getting too many enemies of that and then it's, like, an entire, like, zone has, of the screen has been, like, cornered off for you.
And if you just happen to be unluckily in that area when those enemies come in, you might just be in the line of fire with no way out. Uh, which is unfortunate because it's easier. It's easier, and this is true of a lot of video games, it's easier when watching, uh, somebody who is beating the game, like, watching a playthrough after the fact and, and seeing what needs to be done. But when you're in control, there are sometimes just, it's not even a matter of reflexes, it's just a matter of unfamiliarity with what's happening.
Yeah. As it's occurring to you that it's bound to happen. And so I think that, even though you have the life bar, the life bar is absolutely necessary because if we were dealing with one-hit KOs, this game would be even more frustrating. And you can't, like, you wouldn't even have to, thankfully, like, depend on your reflexes because once it gets to that point, the slowdown is insane. Oh, yeah. So you just get to watch yourself in an unwinnable situation in slow motion. That's just a side effect of going back to ancient Earth when you're from the future. True, true. Isn't this a 1987 game, Mike? It is because in... Well, it's a star year, 1987. Star, this game, yeah, this game was developed by Hudson Soft in star year 1987.
And Sean, I don't know if you know that because in Japan... The main screen. Okay, in Japan, the game is not called Starship Hector. It's just called Hector 87. Ah, okay, you gotta keep the Hector. Hector was important. Starship was like, eh, a little too nerdy.
Like, kids don't really like Starships. That Nintendo of America was like, just pleading with them, like, please let us make them think that it's actually like a space game and not about some guy named Hector. But you know what, though? We laugh about it, but before Mario was synonymous with like a Nintendo mascot, it was just a plain, boring Italian name. Yeah, but... So maybe they were shooting their shot and hoping that, like, Hector would be like the spaceship equivalent of the... Yeah, but Mario isn't a sailboat, though.
That's a fair point. Allegedly, this game is a spinoff of the Star Soldier series. Do you remember Star Soldier? We played that game. I feel silly even asking if you guys remember that. Yeah, come on, you know we don't remember that. Okay, well, here's how it works, okay? Star Soldier was a sequel to Star Force, another game we played. So we played Star Force, Star Soldier, and now the spinoff, Starship Hector.
But the weird thing is, is that I really can't, other than the developers being the same, I can't figure out how this is a spinoff. Like, is this just one of those things that, like, somebody wrote on Wikipedia and then it gets regurgitated all over the place? Because there's no, like, there's no lore in common, as far as I know. And in Star Soldier, there were power-ups. So that was, like, this is a downgrade now, no power-ups. And also there were... You move a lot faster. Yeah, sure. A lot faster.
I'm watching the video right now. I have no memory of it. Star Soldier also had these, like, trap zones where you can go into the background. And, you know, again, another really cool feature. But we don't have any of that in Starship Hector.
And is every game that has Star in the title just a spinoff of Star Soldier? Is that how this works? I don't know. Like, you wouldn't say Zelda games are a spinoff of Super Mario Brothers just because the same people made it. It sounds like a marketing gimmick.
Yeah. It's just, like, to associate it with something that they thought was successful. Because I guarantee you that when they were first designing the game, that I was like, yeah, we have to make this a spiritual successor to this other very generic game that we made. So, yeah. Well, even our podcast is full of marketing gimmicks because the hook of our show is what we do at the end of every episode. And we're going to do it again here with the Essential Games List. It'd be funny if we didn't this time.
So let's not. All right. No, we're going to do it. And I'm going to come right in and tell you guys it's a no for me. And I do wonder how much of just, like, because I have on my list of notes here, the only thing in bold is no power-ups. And I wonder how much of, like, not that that was, like, the nail in the coffin for the game, but that was what made it not even a starting point. Like, it was like, I just don't think, like, it's not going to be interesting enough. And I kind of went in with that bias. And I played it and I was like, yeah, it's really not going to be interesting enough.
I like the bosses. I kind of like traveling. You know, the locations are unique. And they managed to feel a little different because the enemies do change up. In fact, in the manual, there's this nice splash page of just, like, all the different enemies and all the different places you'll go and all the different bosses you'll see. And I like that. It shows that there's variety to this game. But it didn't feel like there was a lot of variety while I was playing. And so for me, it's a no. What about you, Sean? I've pretty much made my opinion clear already. Sorry about that. But it is not essential. Joe? I'll say something nice about it first.
I do think that the sprite work is pretty beautiful in this game. And then there's, like, the bosses, but also some of the backgrounds. And there's, like, flame pillars. It gave me very Super Nintendo vibes.
Like, that's the shining star of this game, in my opinion. It's well designed visually. The fire pillars. Yeah. The stars. But then, I mean, I won't even say anything bad. I just don't have much else to say about it. Like, I'm, like, Don Draper-ing it. Like, I don't think about you at all, kind of. Like, it was just boring. I'm going to forget about it.
So, not essential and not good. All righty. And that has been another episode of Nostalgia Shmups. I'm sure we'll get one pretty soon because that's just how they work. Do you think The Adventures of Gilligan Island is a shmup? Gilligan Island. I think Gilligan's Island. I think Wall Street Kid is a shmup. I'm dropping my S's a lot today. I don't know what that's about. I'm a little concerned. Me think Wall Street Kid is a shmup is what Joe is going to say. Yeah. Okay, yeah, because that's next week's game. So, thank you for that, Joe. At least one person on this show sounds coherent. I mean, sometimes. Good hello.
Good. Thank you.
