Crisis Wing (Playstation 4)

Vertical
Checkpoints OFF
1 Difficulty level
7 Stages (loopable)
Ship speed fixed
- - - - - - -
Developed by Pieslice Productions
Published by VGNY Soft / eastasiasoft in 2023

Even though I appreciate inovation every now and then in my shmups, more often than not in recent times developers tend to forget about design basics that are still important, at least for me, in any good and decent video game. Some of the quirks or problems I have stumbled upon frequently when trying more recent games include style over substance, shop mechanics + grinding, stupid online/offline leaderboards and botched scoring systems often associated with huge campaigns that are impracticable for an arcade/1CC mindset.

This is the main reason why Crisis Wing, released for all mainstream consoles after a decent run in PC territory, sounds like such a breath of fresh air. Heavily inspired by the classics of old pioneered by Toaplan, such as Truxton and Vimana, the game is a straightforward outer space campaign that dares to use the clichéd combo of shot + bomb across seven loopable levels. The fundamental difference in the design of Crisis Wing is that no ground terrain exists in the game, which sees the player exclusively fending off wave after wave of aerial foes while dispatching a worthy gallery of gigantic bosses. It's pure old school shooting fun in a quintessential arcade format.   

Upon being spawned the ship has only a main stream of two narrow shots, which is instantly upgraded by taking one of the power-ups released by specific carriers. It cycles between three colors: red gives you a spread vulcan, blue endows the ship with a slow but powerful missile salvo and green provides the classic straight pattern, just a little wider. In order to upgrade them you need to collect two items of the same color (the first one will add a "P" beside the score counter). There are two very distinct upgrade levels, after that any power-up collected in excess will be worth 1.000 points.

Release trailer for Crisis Wing on the Playstation 4
(courtesy of YouTube user and mega company PlayStation)

 

The carriers will also normally bring extra bombs, as well as a very rare extra life or a super medal worth 100.000 points. The medal mechanic is the most important device of the scoring system, and works in a similar way as that of the shmups designed by Shinobu Yagawa, such as Muchi Muchi Pork! and Battle Garegga. Medals are released periodically by killing regular enemies. Starting at 100 points, all medals successfully collected increase in value until maxing out at 10.000 points. If one of them is dropped this value is reset, unless there's another medal on screen which will be generated at the same value of the previous visible one. If a successive string of maxed out medals is maintained the super medal mentioned above will be released from a special carrier in stages 3 and 7, provided you manage to destroy the necessary enemy waves in each stage. If the criteria for the 100K medal isn't met then you'll get the 1UP instead.

Enemy destruction is indeed what you need to focus on in order to trigger either the abovementioned special carriers in stages 3 and 7 or bonus waves in the other stages. Not only do you get an extra number of free and easily destructible enemies for more medal generation, but you also score 40.000 extra points by obliterating a bonus wave. Finally, constantly hitting enemies also increases points slowly. That's all for scoring, but players should also be very aware of rank. Survival time, power-up levels and successive medal collecting add to the dynamic difficulty and the increasing enemy aggression in terms of bullet density and bullet speed. As expected in this case, rank is only alleviated by dying.

Score-based extra lives are granted with 250.000 and 500.000 points, and then for every 500.000 points after that.

Well designed, with good variety and packed with a steady flow of enemies from start to finish, Crisis Wing is definitely a winner on the gameplay front. It's challenging and engaging, with only a few short moments that could be described as unfair. In some sections a few enemies come from below without warning, a situation that's comfortably overcome by simple memorization. The first couple of levels is relatively easy, but soon crowd control and some degree of strategy becomes extremely important to get through with safety and confidence. And it goes without saying, but greed for medals is an extra threat for score chasers.

Hint: target both parts of the 2nd boss in equal measure if you want to have an easier fight

My general tips for Crisis Wing would be to get comfortable with the rank aggression as quickly as possible, go for the blue weapon on bosses if you can and don't be tightfisted with bombs. Dying with a full bomb stock always made me feel like a moron. There's absolutely no bonus for preserving them, just like there's absolutely no fanfarre in the ending, which just displays "COMPLETED" on screen and sends you right away into the second loop. Almost all enemies fire extra bullets during the loop, providing a remarkale leap in challenge that should please the most hardcore of players.  

If I had to be picky, there are very few aspects that could've been worked on in Crisis Wing. I'd much rather have a sound cue for medal spawning instead of medal loss, for example. I's not rare to be blindsided by the horizontal screen span (even if it's a relatively minor one) and lose a precious 10K medal. And although stage 4 is very long and seems to go on forever, I wouldn't say it's a drag because enemy variety shines throughout. The good news is that the music does a good job to support the action, it's just not that awesome in the sense you'd want to include it in your next gaming soundtrack playlist.

Besides the normal Arcade mode for one or two players in couch co-op, there's also a Time Attack mode (2:30 minutes) and a sweet Boss Rush mode that offers much more than the regular parade of bosses and mid-bosses. A handy Practice mode allows training with some flexibility for the levels you have reached in a single credit. TATE is available along with some nice options for filters and such.

My final high score table for the normal game campaign is below, reaching the third stage in the second loop. 

P-47 II - The Freedom Star (Mega Drive)

Horizontal
Checkpoints OFF
3 Difficulty levels
6 Stages
Ship speed by icons
- - - - - - -
Developed by Jaleco
Published by City Connection in 2025

The Mega Drive is well known for being a powerhouse for shmups. There are so many of them available for the console that a few people think it was too much, when in fact there's always room for more in the heart and soul of every fan of the genre. And seeing brand-new shmups being released for the system in 2025 is nothing short of amazing. One of them is P-47 II - The Freedom Star, a game that was ultimately cancelled prior to release and only saw the light of day after 35 years. Once again the old say is true: better late than never!

The physical edition of the game came out under the banner of different publishers. City Connection took care of the Japanese release, whereas Retro-Bit did the job in other regions partenered with Strictly Limited Games in Europe and Limited Run Games in the US. Developed as a true sequel to P-47 - The Phantom Fighter, an arcade shmup that was ported to several systems at the time including the PC Engine, this game – also referred to as P-47 II MD, as in the box cover – does look better in terms of color and use of parallax, just like a competently designed title should look like in 1990. It does lift some music themes from the original game but that's it, everything else is new.

Just for reference, the arcade sequel P-47 Aces came out in 1995. If we consider P-47 II should've come out in 1990, then we can assume P-47 Aces is actually the third chapter in a fairly obscure series.

P-47 II MD - Announcement Trailer
(courtesy of YouTube user and Western publisher Retro-Bit)

The core gameplay in this 16-bit follow-up is based on collecting power-ups for the main gun and special weapons to enhance the plane's firepower. Helicopters are the carriers of all items, which include speed-up (S), power-up (P), hyper/health (H), extra life (1UP) and an assortment of four special weapons: ground bombs (B), twin vulcan (T), homing missiles (M) and guard option (G). Sticking to the same special weapon upgrades its efficiency, which once maxed out will result in a bonus of 5.000 points if you keep collecting the same item. This bonus also applies for maxing out all other items except for H, which deserves special consideration. 

H stands for Hyper, the special attack that sends forward a powerful exploding bomb that inflicts a ton of damage and clears the screen from bullets. However, hyper stock also works as health, so each hit taken consumes one hyper. This means, of course, that taking a bullet with no hypers in stock makes you lose a life. In the strategic balance between bomb usage and survival it's important to know that hyper stock is always replenished to three when a new stage starts, unless you have three or more in reserve (in this case you preserve the current stock). Even though the maximum visible amount is five, it's possible to stock more hypers than that.

Since hypers in excess aren't worth any extra points, you certainly won't feel guilty for using them as bombs instead of health. It's an interesting detail that serves as evidence of how to actually apply simple yet effective rules to implement the scoring system. On the other hand, the health mechanic associated to hypers turns P-47 II into a very easy game that shouldn't be a great obstacle for the average shmupper. There's no problem at all in that, except for the fact that the game's appeal wears off pretty fast due to the lack of challenge. The soundtrack, a selection of tunes that range from just okay to absolutely boring, doesn't help in the appreciation either.

In the pursuit of Gunfish, the "hugest" armored airship

All things considered, P-47 II at least looks decent with no slowdown at all. Mountains, forests, oceans, caves and fast moving clouds certainly bring up that sweet reminiscence of the good old 16-bit days. It isn't exactly flashy or graced by outstanding graphical moments, lacking the polished smoothness of Steel Empire and the dynamic intensity of Fire Mustang, two titles that can certainly be cited as similar in design and tone. At times it also reminded me of UN Squadron, Air Buster and even some Thunder Force III in the cavern stage, which is nice.

Jaleco and all publishers involved certainly deserve recognition for their job in bringing P-47 II - The Freedom Star to life after so many years. The game isn't stellar by any stretch of the imagination, but the simple fact that it gets the basics right and doesn't offend the player with broken features is to be commended and saluted by all Mega Drive shmup fans.

The high score below was achieved in the Normal difficulty with no lives lost. In this run I believe I missed one power-up item for the 5K bonus. The power-up and the hyper are the only ones that drop to the left pretty fast when released, so take that into consideration if you want to maximize the score when playing.