Developer: Hudson Soft Publisher: Hudson Soft Released: June 1990 Genre: Shooter
Star Soldier was a big hit on the NES and one of the first big shooter series after Gradius. This was in Japan, where the series became a staple for decades. In America there was not enough fanfare behind it but at least almost every game was released in the US. Starship Hector was the first follow-up to Star Soldier and made exclusively for the NES. While more advanced than its predecessor in some ways its gameplay is a bit sterile. This is still an enjoyable game but could have been even better with a little more work.
While Starship Hector is a sequel to Star Soldier it does not follow the exact same formula. In fact it has more in common with Twinbee or Xevious. Your ship has two weapons: a Vulcan cannon for airborne targets and bombs for ground based enemies. Like Stinger it also alternates between horizontal and vertical scrolling levels. Honestly if you were not told it was part of the series you would probably never associate Starship Hector with Star Soldier. There is nothing wrong with that, almost every series experiments before finding its footing.
One area that I wish it followed its predecessor is in its power-ups; there are none. The two weapons you start with are your only options for the entire game. I won’t lie, it is hugely disappointing. Half of the fun in most shooters is experimenting with an extensive weapon catalog to find your favorite. I will say however that despite that Starship Hector is still surprisingly enjoyable in spite of that fact. With no overpowered weapons backing you up the game comes down to skill. The game does a reasonable of being varied in its gameplay so that you will not dwell on the fact that there aren’t any shiny power-ups to keep things interesting. But it certainly would have helped.
Unlike most shooters you have a life bar although it doesn’t quite work the way you expect. The amount of health you lose is dependent on the enemy. Smaller ships and bullets will only deplete two or three points of life. Larger enemies will take massive chunks or sometimes even the entire meter. The only item in the game is health tanks dropped by statues you must shoot repeatedly. Trying to regain a reasonable amount of life in the short period you have to blast these statues without a turbo controller is futile. It is better to assume they do not exist at that point. It does make the game more difficult than probably intended but I still found it reasonable.
The balance in difficulty between the two modes is stark. The side-scrolling stages I found easier as there tend to be less enemies. There is less space to move around and so it is also easier to kill enemies. Even though you can’t restore health in these levels it isn’t as bad as it may seem. The vertical stages are a different matter. Anyone who has played a Compile shooter like Zanac will be at home here. Not only are there are frequent enemy waves they are aggressive as well. The bosses are a challenge as well. It would not be so bad if there were checkpoints but being kicked back to the beginning of the level upon death is more annoying than challenging.
Starship Hector is a short game at six levels. The median difficulty means that most will have some trouble seeing this to its conclusion. On one hand it is disappointing that it is not longer. The game does a good job of balancing its horizontal and vertical stages, certainly better than Stinger. If there were a few more it would have been excellent. But at the same time were the game longer the lack of power-ups and other items might have become more egregious. Starship Hector was the first in the series to introduce the two and five minute modes for those that like to compare high scores. While nice it isn’t a good substitute for more content overall.
In Closing
This is a tough one for me. I like the general gameplay and flow of Starship Hector but it is a bit lacking. Once you have experienced the gameplay and depth of other shooters it is hard to go back to one so pedestrian. It does its best with what it has but I can’t help wishing there were more. Of the three games in the series for the NES this is the best one but it has stark competition on the system.
