Spiral Wave

~ SPIRAL WAVE ~

Media Rings

HuCard

1991

This is a really interesting little game and a bit of a sleeper. It begins in the spirit of Cyber Knight by having you utilize menus (the main commands are in English) to travel via starship to different worlds and solar systems. You encounter myriad alien allies, adversaries, and oddballs along the way.

Once you reach your destination, however, the game is anything but a role-playing affair. You enter "into-the-screen" shooter sequences a la Space Harrier and After Burner II and blast up waves of enemies along with the occasional minor or major boss machine.

To be successful in this game, you need to acquire energy units (which is accomplished by destroying enemies) and make good use of them. Energy is necessary for practically everything you do outside of the action scenes, from traveling to other planets and warping to other solar systems to upgrading your ship for additional shield strength and mightier firepower.

In truth, most of the early shooter stages could be passed fairly easily by simply dodging your opponents and their projectiles, but then you'd end up stuck in space in a sad, energy-less plight.

The shooting action does pick up and actually gets surprisingly intense as far as speed and number of enemies and projectiles go. But one problem that afflicts the enemy armies is that, while the troops you fight change in physical appearance, their patterns largely remain the same. And once you've earned some nice lasers and shields for your ship, it becomes pretty easy to zip right through the levels since the enemies wear out their attack stratagems early on. It's still pretty darn fun in a mindless way, but it can get repetitive.

Repetition strikes the background graphics as well, as all of the action scenes take place in outer space. You orbit many different planets but never actually head down to visit them. The space looks pretty good, actually, and changes in tone as you travel around, but various shades of vacuum can't rival actual environments.

Quality music makes up a bit for the repetition in other elements. The tracks are catchy and reminiscent of the spectacular audio in Sinistron. But even the tunes are stretched a little thin, as there are so many action scenes they need to cover.

As mentioned before, the ship menu is in English, but folks who can't read Japanese may still experience some trying times, like if they need to warp all over to figure out the next place they're supposed to visit. And the last system in particular can be difficult to navigate through if you don't know the course you're supposed to take. I've written up a mini-guide so that players can focus on the fun action stuff and not get bogged down in bumbling around the universe.

Spiral Wave could've been something special had the designers provided level settings other than outer space and given the enemies a little more to do. But they certainly deserve credit for producing something different--and achieving a fair amount of success with their efforts, at that. It's a fun game with good music that can be had on the cheap, and it's definitely worth experiencing.