''Sky Soldiers'' is a vertical scrolling shoot em’ up developed by

Alpha Denshi , formerly known as , was a Japanese video game developer founded in 1980. ADK began as a developer of arcade games and is best known for their library of SNK Neo Geo titles, including for its home consoles, produced in partnership with SNK. Mos ...

and released to arcades in 1988 by Romstar in North America and

SNK is a Japanese video game hardware and software company. It is the successor to the company Shin Nihon Kikaku and presently owns the SNK video game brand and the Neo Geo video game platform. SNK's predecessor Shin Nihon Kikaku was founded in 1978 ...

in the rest of the world. The game features a time travel theme as well as an organized weapon select screen at the beginning of each stage.

Story

In the year 2090, mankind invents a

supercomputer A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second ( FLOPS) instead of million instructions ...

called Desmoura to manage Earth's environment. Capable of replicating itself in various technological inventions, Desmoura achieves sentience as it sets itself around Earth's orbit. It becomes so powerful when it gains the capabilities to build a time machine in a matter of twenty years. Without warning or reason, Desmoura sends various war machines back in time by 100 years and starts attacking mankind's past technological feats possibly to change Earth's history. Special space fighters called STEALTHs are sent to fly against Desmoura's forces, attack the affected timelines and eventually destroy Desmoura.

Gameplay

Players travelled back in time starting in

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...

1945,

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

1915,

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

1945,

1944,

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...

1974,

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

1914,

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

1974 and finally the space station in the present time, 2110. Each time stage has two levels, both ending in a boss battle save for the final stage, resulting in a total of 15 Areas. The STEALTH ship weapon system is accessed in the beginning of each stage. The ship's main shot consists of a semi-automatic Wave Shot. The ship's bomb weapons include forward firing Missiles, Fire Balls, Homing missiles and the Buster bomb. The ship can be equipped with only one bomb weapon from either category at a time. The ship can only be loaded with a certain number of Bomb weapons and they can only be resupplied at the end of the level. The only pick-up item in the game is a parachuting human pilot shot down from malfunctioning fighter planes/jets; collecting these pilots results in random Bonus Points.

Reception

In Japan, ''Game Machine'' listed ''Sky Soldiers'' on their September 1, 1988 issue as being the fourth most-successful table arcade unit of the month, outperforming titles like ''

Ninja Spirit ''Ninja Spirit'', known in Japan as , is a 1988 platform game developed and released in arcades by Irem. Although praised by gamers for detailed graphics, serious themes, solid controls and game plays the game also gained notoriety for harsh dif ...

''.

References

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External links

''Sky Soldiers''
a
Arcade History
1988 video games Arcade video games Romstar games Vertically scrolling shooters Video games about time travel