|
Manufacturer:
Romstar
Year:
1990
Class: Wide Release
Genre:
Scrolling
Shooter
Type: Videogame
 
I was always a fan of Fire Shark. It is like many of the shoot’em’ups of its
genre and isn’t any thing special but for me it was one of those games that
you had to play time and time again. I
spent a fortune playing this in the arcade and remember also playing this
game on the Megadrive.
It
was one of the first arcade games I played and could afford to play. I had just got my first job and along with
Raiden, Twin Cobra and The Gradius series (also known as Nemesis in the UK)
were a joy to play in the arcades. At
the time the computers and home consoles weren’t able to reproduce the arcade
graphics and weren’t able to cope with the shear number of sprites.
|
|
Sprites are the name that referred to the objects of the
screen. So for example; your ship was
a sprite; the enemy ships were sprites.
On the PSX version of the game Raiden, they still couldn’t reproduce
the same amount of sprites of the arcade.
So the only way to really enjoy the game properly was in the
arcades. I was never a graphics whore
and always enjoyed the game for the playability. As long as it was close to the arcade,
that would be fine for me. The only
trouble was; once you get used to champagne, wine just doesn’t cut it any
more.
|
A few screen shots of the game and the different
bullets used
|
|
This screen shot is linked to a larger version by clicking on the
picture
|
|
|
You always started off with this type of fire. It was a standard fire. Not very powerful but, was quick and once
you picked up enough P icons, became quite devastating.
|
|
|
This was the second most powerful weapon but was more focused than
the weapon above and was very useful against the enemy bosses but wasn’t as
useful and meant that you had to us a strategy to navigate this game.
|
|
|
This is probably the most powerful weapon and would home in of your
enemy. That said it did have its
weaknesses.
For example; if you were fighting an enemy boss; you sometime found
that the small ships would still be able to attack you with out you
attacking back. It has been along
time since I played this game and my memory of this weapon may not be
correct.
|
Overall,
this has to be considered a classic game and one that in its own little way,
introduced some weapons systems that have been used time and time again. I personally think that Nemesis still has
the most influential weapons system of all but, don’t discount this game
either. It is a blast and like every
great game has been copied to death (usually by the same company)
|
