I was one of those rare cases: Sega Master System owner in the U.S., shooter enthusiast, and Sega Challenge reader. However, I did find this at a retail store, corroborating Sega Retro's claim, and decided to purchase it immediately knowing it was supposed to be a mail order exclusive. One of the best purchases I ever made. I love the game, and I've been enjoying it for almost 36 years. I'm a fan of all Aleste games generally, now. Thanks for the video! Pro-tip: power up weapon #1 to third level. It can destroy all bullets (even those pesky yellow/orange ones) and has no time limit!
It's a pity Power Strike 2 wasn't available for you guys in the US. Probably the best 8 bit shoot em up. Power Strike's excellent but the follow up levels everything up. Sadly, it needs to be played on a PAL/50 hz system. On NTSC/60 hz it runs too fast and is therefore effectively unplayable.
@@Mark-g7t A pity indeed! Being the fan of Power Strike that I am, I did seek out and acquire a copy of Power Strike 2 for my SMS library. Excellent game, too!
@@MightyQDawg The MSX2 port (?) of Power Strike/Aleste has additional content, and two Aleste sequels that look excellent. Sadly, I don't currently have the means to play them. It's weird the way Power Strike 2 goes off into a completely different game universe, with it's alternative 1930's setting. I don't know if it's an Aleste game or not - it is and it isn't. An emulated version was included in the Aleste Collection a couple of years back, so maybe it's canon now.
Another great video Jeremy. I truly appreciate how you are able to weave between the historical value of releases, no matter how insignificant it may seem on surface level. I had no idea this is a mail order only game. Or at least, Primarily.
What an amazing time to be a console gamer! I also had the monochrome edition of the game (purchased from Toys 'R' Us). This was the game that got me into shmups. It was a tour de force of graphics, gameplay, and sound design I had not yet come across, and despite the budget pricing compared to Phantasy Star was one of my top 3 favorite SMS games. I loved the fact that the frame-rate slow down actually aided you in dodging the absolute glut of bullets that the enemy threw at you. Thank you for firing up some of my dusty neurons from my childhood with this video!
The Aleste series is one that always intrigues me on the fact of how hard it has attempted to stay alive for a series that isn't from a major studio that didn't get to fully live past the 2000's besides maybe Irem and R-Type. The fact that M2 literally just announced that they're teaming with Compile Heart to make a Aleste & Zanic crossover title is crazy. The series has some legs I will give it that
I didnt read Magazins or rewiews as a kid, but i knew Power Strike is special playing it back then. This and R Type were my fav shooters on my Master System.
Sega definitely also released the blue box version at retail in the UK too, as I bought a copy back in the day, solely because it looked so different, and had a confusing blurb on the back. The version with the colour cover didn't ship here until a good 6 months to a year later.
@ So did mine. Operation Wolf Returns: First Mission also ate up most of 2024 for me and it looks like Contra: Operation Galuga will do the same for 2025.
Thanks, I appreciate it. I feel like the video and podcast work I've been doing lately has been some of my best. I think we're all out here shining as brightly as we can against the growing darkness of the world.
Somehow a friend of mine got hold of this and I would borrow it every now and again. Great game. One of two games (along with Bomber Raid) that would not play nice with the Genesis adapter.
Thinking back on those Atari Age mail-in exclusives back in the day. Of course, one really can't say that Crazy Climber, Atari Video Cube and Swordquest: Waterworld are on the same level here.
I mail ordered this game from the Sega Challenge newsletter back in the day. When I sold all my SMS games to buy a Genesis, I dont think any of the mail ordered companies buying games offered any money for this. It was the one game I somehow had the foresight to keep. In 2014 or so I sold it for like 150.00.
As a European SHMUP fan, it surprises me to hear they weren't that big in the US. I figured Soace Invaders were big, and I heard american fans talk about them on the internet so they must have had their heyday... but they never were big hits in either arcades or consoles? Very unexpected. Still, cool to learn some more history about what was big in the eighties- apparently not mail-order games.
My go to rental shop for Master System games had this one in Quebec, which I have no idea if was a mail order in Canada or if Canada got a release of the European version. It was fantastic.
My brain is telling me the stores at the time had a copy of it on shelves with the EU box art, but the list of Canadian master system releases doesn't list it, and 30-something year old memories are never to be trusted.
It's unusual for you to just straight up say that anyone, even Sega's marketing team, "was really huffing something fun," but I suppose that's just the kind of not-technically-slander I've learned to love on this channel.
It's a pretty high bar to actually be slander (you have to present it as fact, it has to damage their livelihood, etc.), and anyway, I'm sure you run all your scripts past your team of lawyers to make sure everything is above board.
The Master System had a good library. It wasn't as large as the NES library, but it still had some great games. Some of the best games for the console though were PAL region exclusives released in the 1990s.
Theres a very good playstation version of Zanac w 2p co op called Zanac Neo. Three selectable ships. Nine weapos apiece, adaptive difficulty and a sort of permament power up system Its one i go back.to.a lot
Can confirm, my local Toys R Us carried this. I can still remember being steered away by the generic monochromatic cover art in the "flap". And I think it was cheap for the time, maybe 19.99 or 29.99. Seemed like bargain bin fodder. Oh how wrong I was
I suddenly realized there was no mention of Tower of Druaga this episode! No reason it should've been, of course, but that's still an accomplishment. One of my resolutions this year was too check out Sega games I never played as a kid. Which is nearly all of them, since my family was all Nintendo up until I bought a Dreamcast after I moved into an apartment of my own with my partner. I'll make sure to look through your back videos for good recommendations.
I wouldn't be surprised if the reason why Sega of America gave Power Strike such a limited release was because of its (adaptive) difficulty. Kind of like how Howard Phillips told Nintendo of America to pass on Super Mario Bros. 2 because it was so difficult (& not all that different from SMB1), but in this case whoever was Howard's equivalent at SoA seemingly went "It's still really good, though... so let's just sell a limited amount to the sickos who subscribe to our magazine!".
I was a _huge_ fan of ZANAC on NES, and when I saw those sporadic photos of Power Strike in game magazines at the time and saw Compile's name on the title screen, I _knew_ it had to be a stealth sequel. Sadly, I never got to play it back then. Ah well, The Guardian Legend was awesome anyway.
I had Power Strike as a kid, but I'm also Canadian... and I don't really know the details of how it was purchased because I was still quite young and wasn't at the store when my dad bought it for me. (edit. my copy had the European full-colour box art as well, if that gives any hints.)
@@lukaslapont3008 Most PAL region Master System games can be played on NTSC Master System consoles, but there are some games that have compatibility issues such as graphical glitches, playing too fast, or being unplayable. Canada received some Master System games that were released in Europe but not the United States.
I saw Power Strike at my local Toys 'R' Us - I'd never heard of it but I liked shooters and the price was right ($15). I did think it was strange that the back of box descriptive texst said "You won't see this on store shelves!" and there it was - or at least, it was on one of the laminated hang tags the store used at that time. I loved it, and felt like I'd discovered hidden treasure. An amazing game, and one of the few shmups I've managed to finish.
if you think this is good, the sequel is even better. Only issue is it's optimised for PAL so it's either 50 fps at correct speed or too fact at 60. Oh, and it's super rare and expensive
Power Strike 2 really is the pinnacle of 8 bit shoot em ups. It's quite unbeliebable how much stuff is flying about in that game, the speed it moves at and with barely a hint of flicker or slowdown. It's a brilliant game but really not worth the hundreds of pounds/dollars it sells for. It's not that expensive if you're playing it on an everdrive or an emulator though... You're right about the 60 hz issue, the game's so fast optimised for 50 hz that trying to play it at 60 hz leads to instant destruction. But it works just fine on an emulator and who's going to blame someone for using emulation to play one of the best 8 bit games of any genre when it's otherwise unobtainable/unplayable?
I do wonder sometimes what were to happen if the console versions of Wizardry from the 80s came back with the enhanced visuals and audio, but were translated by Sir-tech themselves... who developed the game back in 79-81. Would we have gotten Animeigo at all, as that came about thanks to the lull that Wizardry was having at the time in new games.
I always felt like the shmup genre wasn't unpopular in the West, it just remained relegated to arcades. I feel like the US market has always put a lot more focus on the value proposition, and even though almost all NES games are short, shmups tend to be the shortest of the short. Shmups were pretty popular in the arcade throughout the 80s, but once fighting games and beat 'em ups came out, they became the genres of choice at the arcade - especially once they started tying them in to recognizable Western media franchises like Ninja Turtles and X-Men as opposed to the very japanese media that most shooters are based on.
Yeah it's weird how shmups never really got mainstream after about 1982 in the US, but did decent business in Europe and in particular the UK One example I remember is that Super Aleste came out here in the uk to almost mainstream acclaim and popularity, Whereas it's US version (Space Megaforce) was a rarity. Having said that, I had a US copy of space megaforce here instead of the Euro PAL release. Guess they sent all the unsold US copies our way 😅
I have such a hard time going back to Compile's 8-bit shooters, because the first game of theirs I got into was MUSHA and... well... not much compares to that.
There always is something interesting seeing the difference in popularity of genres in US vs Japan. Though hearing about what shoot 'em ups people I know liked, I almost wonder if maybe it was people in the US preferred simpler ones rather than the bullet hells that ended up taking over. Very circumstantial evidence obviously though.
yeah, hearing about the SEGA Visions stuff with this one did seem parallel to Nintendo Power and their Dragon Warrior giveaway. I think I played the ROM of this at one point? might have to track down a flash cart and one of those cartridge power base converters. also funny timing on this one because it looks like compile has a whole new aleste chapter in the works for modern systems!
Xevious: also made with the assumption that you'd play it every day, after school, again and again, until the insuperable level of difficulty became superable. I had my own video on the very same chain of development, via Star Force, now deleted due to RUclips censorship. It was interesting how many viewers disagreed with this version of the history (that you and i have in common, AFAIK, coincidentally). Several wrote in claiming that Star Force and Star Soldier were trivial compared o Gradius, for example, or other specific titles, tracing the trend in a different way.
Given the multitude of boneheaded decisions they made, the question is not "Why did Sega crash out of the console race?", it's "How did it take them so long?"
thank you so much for using the proper term "shooter" instead of that awful term shortened from a one-off token dropped like a bag of dirt from a forgotten british gaming rag which makes me cringe anytime anyone ever says it, i would have had a seizure otherwise but yeah, gg aleste 3 was the highlight and surprise of gaming in 2020 for me
Tonka ruins everything. Case in point: Mighty Orbots. I heard someone else suggest that Programmers 3 evolved into Systemsoft, creators of Master of Monsters, but given all the research you do I would be inclined to take your word over theirs.
I would challenge you to look a little more closely at arcade genres! Were they really designed to be such disposable experiences when their gameplay is so complex and has so much going on at the higher levels?
Compile are one of my favourite devs ever, but I ended up being disappointed with this one. It's a technical achievement for its time, but its actual game design is just a couple of enemy patterns over uneventful repeating tiles that go on for way too long. The "AI" is utterly braindead and has no answer for just camping at the bottom of the screen with the base auxiliary weapon once powered up to the level where it can destroy shots, because it never runs out of ammo. The only thing that incentivizes touching the top half of the playfield are the power ups, but optimal play is to let the pods reach the bottom of the screen without shooting them and grab them when they're on top of you. Clearly they got negative feedback from that one, their trademark capsule mechanic rained down-screen in everything after this I believe.
This video really makes me wonder if the staff that worked at Sega of America during 1987 to 1988 would ever go to different arcade centers where late teens and older ages were actually playing the arcade games and if they would have paid attention to what the players were doing in those games like say on R-Type for example... To notice if some players were highly skilled and beating the game using one coin credit against what seems like impossible odds or if they would just be going to babysitting places where toddlers were playing arcade games or something... then again 80s Sega of America management always seemed confused and somewhat out of touch as evidenced by making the name change from "Aleste" to Power Strike while the NES had exotic names... just imagine NES gets a Lamborghini game and they leave the name alone while Sega gets a Ferrari game and they change it to Pony Power instead in the event that those IPs were obscure in this country those name changes represent the worst of the subsidiary branch staff awareness of making dumb assumptions about the gamer audience. Plus I would argue that even if you had a registered Sega Master System and a free subscription to Sega Challenge newsletter that I would doubt you would actually receive the newsletter at all... I had a fully registered Sega Genesis in the early 90s and HARDLY received around four issues of Sega Visions Magazine while when I paid for a special two year for the price of one for Nintendo Power Magazine, I got every Magazine plus bonus giftd and materials... including a free gamepad of all things from a gamepad company trying to sell their gimmick... I know that Atari Corp did indeed undercut and were outselling the Sega Master System since 1986 because the numbers are real and documented and for that reason Sega of America ended up being managed by Tonka Toys Corp... aka it wasn't Nintendo's fault or doing... Nintendo established themselves early and secured their beach head... Atari Corp already had access to retail channels... only Nintendo allowed them to be welcomed back by retailers who would have said no and Sega of America's management staff despite having some good management and bad management staff were just unable to really secure themselves to stable profitability and subsequent copying what Nintendo was doing which was further securing the fanbase by giving them reliable quarterly newsletters to magazines to full monthly magazines with all the information you needed and I bet ya Atari Corp never cared but they whined and accused Nintendo of being winners and Sega got third place... a distant third place. Just imagine you were either given or you actually purchased the Atari 7800, 2600 Jr and Atari XEGS only to be stuck with hardware and no game support or fanbase support... but you paid lower prices than Sega Master System... I really wish sometimes that somehow by some miracle that Sega in Japan had decided against launching the Master System and instead waited until 1988, made the Sega MegaDrive and launched it in 1988...thus leaving 86 to 88 with no Sega until the MegaDrive launch... and having different staff (which could still have destroyed the image of Sega by wrong marketing practices alone) Anyway as for your theory on why Japanese style space shooters or shooting games (because you kind of generalized the genre to include first person Doom clones) never catching on... some of the alleged blame lies with the mistakes NEC America did when they launched the Turbo GraFX 16 by ordering too many units and thus a wider audience not really getting into that... some can be blamed at Sega for flip flopping by offering a variety of shooting games early in the Sega Genesis years but failing to secure sales because yes 1988 to 89 was wasted... the Sega MegaDrive should have launched in 1988 to secure the early adopter test market and then around 92 Sega of America's management decided to mostly abandon supporting most of the Japanese made games in favor of chasing Disney like or license characters to the point you go and buy a gamer magazine and it felt embarrassing because some goofy characters were always on the cover story... not allowing access to the arcade style home exclusive shooters was a huge mistake... the Sega MegaDrive was essentially an affordable SNK NeoGeo AES. Also some of the blame can be laid on Nintendo itself when they decided to use the CPU that ended up being on the Super FamiCom aka Super Nintendo and that CPU due to its 4Mhz clock was initially being perceived as slow even though it is fast but I believe Nintendo could have negotiated to have that same CPU clocked at 8Mhz instead just to kill any speculation... which ironically is what Nintendo did when they made the Nintendo 64.. they extended the launch to 1996 for a process node shrink to reach nearly 100Mhz and silence anyone calling the processors slow.
The restraint you show in leaving us a whole six minutes and fifty four seconds without a Xevious mention is commendable.
Say the line, Bart!
I just started yelling Xevious at the end
I was one of those rare cases: Sega Master System owner in the U.S., shooter enthusiast, and Sega Challenge reader. However, I did find this at a retail store, corroborating Sega Retro's claim, and decided to purchase it immediately knowing it was supposed to be a mail order exclusive. One of the best purchases I ever made. I love the game, and I've been enjoying it for almost 36 years. I'm a fan of all Aleste games generally, now. Thanks for the video!
Pro-tip: power up weapon #1 to third level. It can destroy all bullets (even those pesky yellow/orange ones) and has no time limit!
It's a pity Power Strike 2 wasn't available for you guys in the US. Probably the best 8 bit shoot em up. Power Strike's excellent but the follow up levels everything up.
Sadly, it needs to be played on a PAL/50 hz system. On NTSC/60 hz it runs too fast and is therefore effectively unplayable.
Oh, good to know. Weapon 1 is useless ass at levels 1 and 2
@@Mark-g7t A pity indeed! Being the fan of Power Strike that I am, I did seek out and acquire a copy of Power Strike 2 for my SMS library. Excellent game, too!
@@JeremyParishyes. I have a friend that has mastered this game and has confirmed that number 1 is the best weapon once it's maxed
@@MightyQDawg The MSX2 port (?) of Power Strike/Aleste has additional content, and two Aleste sequels that look excellent. Sadly, I don't currently have the means to play them.
It's weird the way Power Strike 2 goes off into a completely different game universe, with it's alternative 1930's setting. I don't know if it's an Aleste game or not - it is and it isn't. An emulated version was included in the Aleste Collection a couple of years back, so maybe it's canon now.
You know you've watched a lot of these videos when you can just feeeeeel the Xevious reference coming in your bones
To me you are the best retro gaming channel period!!!
I honestly agree
Another great video Jeremy. I truly appreciate how you are able to weave between the historical value of releases, no matter how insignificant it may seem on surface level. I had no idea this is a mail order only game. Or at least, Primarily.
Hey Look! It's Enrico Pallazzo!
Jeremy rattling off the holy shooter begats at lightning speed is a masterclass in styling.
What an amazing time to be a console gamer! I also had the monochrome edition of the game (purchased from Toys 'R' Us). This was the game that got me into shmups. It was a tour de force of graphics, gameplay, and sound design I had not yet come across, and despite the budget pricing compared to Phantasy Star was one of my top 3 favorite SMS games. I loved the fact that the frame-rate slow down actually aided you in dodging the absolute glut of bullets that the enemy threw at you. Thank you for firing up some of my dusty neurons from my childhood with this video!
I still come back to this game it's a great shooter a real gem of the era
Aleste is slowly but surely making its triumphant return!
The Aleste series is one that always intrigues me on the fact of how hard it has attempted to stay alive for a series that isn't from a major studio that didn't get to fully live past the 2000's besides maybe Irem and R-Type. The fact that M2 literally just announced that they're teaming with Compile Heart to make a Aleste & Zanic crossover title is crazy. The series has some legs I will give it that
Decadently good comfort channel. The best
I didnt read Magazins or rewiews as a kid, but i knew Power Strike is special playing it back then. This and R Type were my fav shooters on my Master System.
Sega definitely also released the blue box version at retail in the UK too, as I bought a copy back in the day, solely because it looked so different, and had a confusing blurb on the back.
The version with the colour cover didn't ship here until a good 6 months to a year later.
Right on time for the new Zaleste game being announced! Lord though crazy how they didnt want this spread
Heard about that!
@SolCresta3405 AHH SHO TENDOU PROFILE PIC!! HECK YEAH ANOTHER MEMBER OF SOL CRESTA!!
@ Heh, thanks. It’s my pic for shmup of 2022 after all~
@@SolCresta3405 Big same it ate up my for a year lol
@ So did mine. Operation Wolf Returns: First Mission also ate up most of 2024 for me and it looks like Contra: Operation Galuga will do the same for 2025.
The sequel is a rare case of being intended for 50hz due to being released only in Europe and Brazil.
Power Striker 2 is even more amazing
At 12 minutes you confirm my feeling that this was a Zanac successor.
Fantastic episode, Jeremy. But you better believe I am looking very much to the eventual episode you cover on the glory that is Musha Aleste.
If you're re-rendering this one anyway, there's a line flub at 5:14: "Japanese text takes more storage space than Japanese..."
Also he said episode 68
@@expendableindigo9639 I'm thinking that was intentional between the short hesitation in "Sixty...eight?" and the Naked Gun clip.
@@expendableindigo9639 and galga being from 1981
"Nice beaver" joke on episode 69? I se what you did there, Jeremy.
Aquatic mammals are big into numerology, it's true
naked gun movies were the golden age of film comedy
M2 ShotTriggers is finishing up Aleste Branch now and hopefully it releases this year 🤞
If anyone was curious at the cutscene shown at 9:39, It is: Kusoooo, Yuruseee! I believe it translates to "Crap, forgive me!"
It turned up at my video rental store here in Australia thankfully. Great game
oh god, it's the game version of a P-Bandai exclusive, right down to the edited monochrome blue cover
Nice beaver 🦫
Great line 👌
Power Strike is excellent mate 💯
Watching you dodge and miss those "P" powerups is causing me more pain than you know
I was trying to get them!!
From the auto-generated captions: Nice Bieber!
This Justin:
What an incredible video, Jeremy. Idk why, but this really feels like you are at the top of your game.
Thanks, I appreciate it. I feel like the video and podcast work I've been doing lately has been some of my best. I think we're all out here shining as brightly as we can against the growing darkness of the world.
It has been [0] days since Jeremy mentioned Xevious (but it’s been [852] days since he mentioned Heiankyo Alien)
Don't worry, the Casio PV-1000 has Space Panic which is side view Heiankyo Alien so another mention will come soon
Nice
A bear-chested Sylvester Stallone? Sounds awesome.
Somehow a friend of mine got hold of this and I would borrow it every now and again. Great game. One of two games (along with Bomber Raid) that would not play nice with the Genesis adapter.
Bomber Raid can be played on a Sega Genesis with a Power Base Converter but you have to use a Master System controller.
Thinking back on those Atari Age mail-in exclusives back in the day. Of course, one really can't say that Crazy Climber, Atari Video Cube and Swordquest: Waterworld are on the same level here.
I mail ordered this game from the Sega Challenge newsletter back in the day. When I sold all my SMS games to buy a Genesis, I dont think any of the mail ordered companies buying games offered any money for this. It was the one game I somehow had the foresight to keep. In 2014 or so I sold it for like 150.00.
Love someone as much as M2 loves Aleste. (As they should what's not to love)
As a European SHMUP fan, it surprises me to hear they weren't that big in the US. I figured Soace Invaders were big, and I heard american fans talk about them on the internet so they must have had their heyday... but they never were big hits in either arcades or consoles? Very unexpected.
Still, cool to learn some more history about what was big in the eighties- apparently not mail-order games.
I'm surprised too considering how much popular run and gun as well as FPS games are in the US (at least from watching videos).
My go to rental shop for Master System games had this one in Quebec, which I have no idea if was a mail order in Canada or if Canada got a release of the European version. It was fantastic.
My brain is telling me the stores at the time had a copy of it on shelves with the EU box art, but the list of Canadian master system releases doesn't list it, and 30-something year old memories are never to be trusted.
@@BearsinGamesNeo-qt5ww Another Canadian in the comments also said his copy had the Euro artwork, so your memories might be right after all.
It's unusual for you to just straight up say that anyone, even Sega's marketing team, "was really huffing something fun," but I suppose that's just the kind of not-technically-slander I've learned to love on this channel.
It’s not slander if you’re just expressing admiration for their love of recreational experiences
It's a pretty high bar to actually be slander (you have to present it as fact, it has to damage their livelihood, etc.), and anyway, I'm sure you run all your scripts past your team of lawyers to make sure everything is above board.
Dang the master system got some heavy hitter games as the 80s ended
The Master System had a good library. It wasn't as large as the NES library, but it still had some great games. Some of the best games for the console though were PAL region exclusives released in the 1990s.
Great episode. I keep thinking that if I had access to that game back then, I'd probably be much more of a shmup fan.
It has been 0 days since a Zaxxon reference (and Xevious)
Xevious is to Jeremy what Truxton is to Marc
The title's pun was downright bad this time, Jeremy-
I loved it.
I played a lot of Astro Warrior when I was a kid on my Master System. I would of loved this game if it was sold in stores in the US.
On the subject of Compile games, I recently played through the MSX title 𝘎𝘶𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘪𝘤. Pretty awesome non-linear shooter with a unique twist.
Theres a very good playstation version of Zanac w 2p co op called Zanac Neo. Three selectable ships. Nine weapos apiece, adaptive difficulty and a sort of permament power up system
Its one i go back.to.a lot
Can confirm, my local Toys R Us carried this. I can still remember being steered away by the generic monochromatic cover art in the "flap". And I think it was cheap for the time, maybe 19.99 or 29.99. Seemed like bargain bin fodder. Oh how wrong I was
This game looks like a lot of fun actually, shame about the limited release in USA at least..!
11:37 - That is pretty darn specific lol. Almost sounds like a party got shortened by mass food poisoning.
I suddenly realized there was no mention of Tower of Druaga this episode! No reason it should've been, of course, but that's still an accomplishment.
One of my resolutions this year was too check out Sega games I never played as a kid. Which is nearly all of them, since my family was all Nintendo up until I bought a Dreamcast after I moved into an apartment of my own with my partner. I'll make sure to look through your back videos for good recommendations.
No Druaga, but Return of Ishtar was still shown briefly at 4:37, so close enough.
I wouldn't be surprised if the reason why Sega of America gave Power Strike such a limited release was because of its (adaptive) difficulty. Kind of like how Howard Phillips told Nintendo of America to pass on Super Mario Bros. 2 because it was so difficult (& not all that different from SMB1), but in this case whoever was Howard's equivalent at SoA seemingly went "It's still really good, though... so let's just sell a limited amount to the sickos who subscribe to our magazine!".
I mean it'd be the first time Sega decided something was too hard for its players.
I was a _huge_ fan of ZANAC on NES, and when I saw those sporadic photos of Power Strike in game magazines at the time and saw Compile's name on the title screen, I _knew_ it had to be a stealth sequel. Sadly, I never got to play it back then. Ah well, The Guardian Legend was awesome anyway.
Does Xevious have an ending?
When you run out of lives
I had Power Strike as a kid, but I'm also Canadian... and I don't really know the details of how it was purchased because I was still quite young and wasn't at the store when my dad bought it for me. (edit. my copy had the European full-colour box art as well, if that gives any hints.)
@@Jaspertine the Master System is region free as far as i know. Being european i never had an import for it though.
@@lukaslapont3008 Most PAL region Master System games can be played on NTSC Master System consoles, but there are some games that have compatibility issues such as graphical glitches, playing too fast, or being unplayable. Canada received some Master System games that were released in Europe but not the United States.
Ashcan school reference, nice.
I saw Power Strike at my local Toys 'R' Us - I'd never heard of it but I liked shooters and the price was right ($15). I did think it was strange that the back of box descriptive texst said "You won't see this on store shelves!" and there it was - or at least, it was on one of the laminated hang tags the store used at that time. I loved it, and felt like I'd discovered hidden treasure. An amazing game, and one of the few shmups I've managed to finish.
Now this, is pod racing.
I got Power Strike for $25 from 2nd and Charles back in 2010. What a lucky find.
this game trained us for future bullet hell
if you think this is good, the sequel is even better. Only issue is it's optimised for PAL so it's either 50 fps at correct speed or too fact at 60. Oh, and it's super rare and expensive
Power Strike 2 really is the pinnacle of 8 bit shoot em ups. It's quite unbeliebable how much stuff is flying about in that game, the speed it moves at and with barely a hint of flicker or slowdown.
It's a brilliant game but really not worth the hundreds of pounds/dollars it sells for. It's not that expensive if you're playing it on an everdrive or an emulator though...
You're right about the 60 hz issue, the game's so fast optimised for 50 hz that trying to play it at 60 hz leads to instant destruction. But it works just fine on an emulator and who's going to blame someone for using emulation to play one of the best 8 bit games of any genre when it's otherwise unobtainable/unplayable?
Power Strike looks great for me to play this rare Sega Master System game. 😀👍🎮
He’s doing voices. This one must be personal.
I do wonder sometimes what were to happen if the console versions of Wizardry from the 80s came back with the enhanced visuals and audio, but were translated by Sir-tech themselves... who developed the game back in 79-81. Would we have gotten Animeigo at all, as that came about thanks to the lull that Wizardry was having at the time in new games.
I always felt like the shmup genre wasn't unpopular in the West, it just remained relegated to arcades. I feel like the US market has always put a lot more focus on the value proposition, and even though almost all NES games are short, shmups tend to be the shortest of the short. Shmups were pretty popular in the arcade throughout the 80s, but once fighting games and beat 'em ups came out, they became the genres of choice at the arcade - especially once they started tying them in to recognizable Western media franchises like Ninja Turtles and X-Men as opposed to the very japanese media that most shooters are based on.
New Segaiden? SCHWING!
Yeah it's weird how shmups never really got mainstream after about 1982 in the US, but did decent business in Europe and in particular the UK
One example I remember is that Super Aleste came out here in the uk to almost mainstream acclaim and popularity, Whereas it's US version (Space Megaforce) was a rarity.
Having said that, I had a US copy of space megaforce here instead of the Euro PAL release. Guess they sent all the unsold US copies our way 😅
The Red Lander jingle
I have such a hard time going back to Compile's 8-bit shooters, because the first game of theirs I got into was MUSHA and... well... not much compares to that.
There always is something interesting seeing the difference in popularity of genres in US vs Japan. Though hearing about what shoot 'em ups people I know liked, I almost wonder if maybe it was people in the US preferred simpler ones rather than the bullet hells that ended up taking over. Very circumstantial evidence obviously though.
yeah, hearing about the SEGA Visions stuff with this one did seem parallel to Nintendo Power and their Dragon Warrior giveaway. I think I played the ROM of this at one point? might have to track down a flash cart and one of those cartridge power base converters. also funny timing on this one because it looks like compile has a whole new aleste chapter in the works for modern systems!
There have been ZERO days since the last Xevious reference. Also, you totally been saving that Naked Gun clip for episode 69, didn't you?
can't believe this game only got a p-bandai release in the US
Interesting. My dad got this for me from a trip, no mail order required.
I wonder if The Bishop of Battle will ever get covered on this channel
I remember being disappointed in the box , it was black and white. No color print
Pretty good game, though you will notice a bit of slowdown when there's many enemies on screen at once
Aleste's fair in Segaiden and console wars.
Xevious: also made with the assumption that you'd play it every day, after school, again and again, until the insuperable level of difficulty became superable. I had my own video on the very same chain of development, via Star Force, now deleted due to RUclips censorship. It was interesting how many viewers disagreed with this version of the history (that you and i have in common, AFAIK, coincidentally). Several wrote in claiming that Star Force and Star Soldier were trivial compared o Gradius, for example, or other specific titles, tracing the trend in a different way.
That AI cocktail tidbit sounded very personal ....
I have a hell of a time entering the code for multiple lives at the title screen. I am using a genesis arcade stick with rapid fire for game play.
Aleste on Sega Mark III is way cheaper to get than Power Strike. The box isn't ugly as sin too :)
Given the multitude of boneheaded decisions they made, the question is not "Why did Sega crash out of the console race?", it's "How did it take them so long?"
thank you so much for using the proper term "shooter" instead of that awful term shortened from a one-off token dropped like a bag of dirt from a forgotten british gaming rag which makes me cringe anytime anyone ever says it, i would have had a seizure otherwise
but yeah, gg aleste 3 was the highlight and surprise of gaming in 2020 for me
Sorry dude, but when most people hear "shooter" they think Doom and Fortnite.
Aleste? I don’t even know her!
The last game i've played on Master system about 35 years ago...the cartridge is still inside the console.
0:30 someone let Geoffrey Chaucer play with ye Chryon agayne.
May I ask where you got your black and boo shirt? 👀
Uniqlo, about 8 years ago...
Tonka ruins everything. Case in point: Mighty Orbots.
I heard someone else suggest that Programmers 3 evolved into Systemsoft, creators of Master of Monsters, but given all the research you do I would be inclined to take your word over theirs.
Both can be true. Studios employ multiple people who follow separate career trajectories and often split to establish different companies in the ‘80s.
I would challenge you to look a little more closely at arcade genres! Were they really designed to be such disposable experiences when their gameplay is so complex and has so much going on at the higher levels?
Compile are one of my favourite devs ever, but I ended up being disappointed with this one. It's a technical achievement for its time, but its actual game design is just a couple of enemy patterns over uneventful repeating tiles that go on for way too long. The "AI" is utterly braindead and has no answer for just camping at the bottom of the screen with the base auxiliary weapon once powered up to the level where it can destroy shots, because it never runs out of ammo. The only thing that incentivizes touching the top half of the playfield are the power ups, but optimal play is to let the pods reach the bottom of the screen without shooting them and grab them when they're on top of you. Clearly they got negative feedback from that one, their trademark capsule mechanic rained down-screen in everything after this I believe.
This is certainly not one of the best master system shmups. It literally objectively is.
This video really makes me wonder if the staff that worked at Sega of America during 1987 to 1988 would ever go to different arcade centers where late teens and older ages were actually playing the arcade games and if they would have paid attention to what the players were doing in those games like say on R-Type for example...
To notice if some players were highly skilled and beating the game using one coin credit against what seems like impossible odds or if they would just be going to babysitting places where toddlers were playing arcade games or something... then again 80s Sega of America management always seemed confused and somewhat out of touch as evidenced by making the name change from "Aleste" to Power Strike while the NES had exotic names... just imagine NES gets a Lamborghini game and they leave the name alone while Sega gets a Ferrari game and they change it to Pony Power instead in the event that those IPs were obscure in this country those name changes represent the worst of the subsidiary branch staff awareness of making dumb assumptions about the gamer audience.
Plus I would argue that even if you had a registered Sega Master System and a free subscription to Sega Challenge newsletter that I would doubt you would actually receive the newsletter at all... I had a fully registered Sega Genesis in the early 90s and HARDLY received around four issues of Sega Visions Magazine while when I paid for a special two year for the price of one for Nintendo Power Magazine, I got every Magazine plus bonus giftd and materials... including a free gamepad of all things from a gamepad company trying to sell their gimmick...
I know that Atari Corp did indeed undercut and were outselling the Sega Master System since 1986 because the numbers are real and documented and for that reason Sega of America ended up being managed by Tonka Toys Corp... aka it wasn't Nintendo's fault or doing... Nintendo established themselves early and secured their beach head... Atari Corp already had access to retail channels... only Nintendo allowed them to be welcomed back by retailers who would have said no and Sega of America's management staff despite having some good management and bad management staff were just unable to really secure themselves to stable profitability and subsequent copying what Nintendo was doing which was further securing the fanbase by giving them reliable quarterly newsletters to magazines to full monthly magazines with all the information you needed and I bet ya Atari Corp never cared but they whined and accused Nintendo of being winners and Sega got third place... a distant third place.
Just imagine you were either given or you actually purchased the Atari 7800, 2600 Jr and Atari XEGS only to be stuck with hardware and no game support or fanbase support... but you paid lower prices than Sega Master System...
I really wish sometimes that somehow by some miracle that Sega in Japan had decided against launching the Master System and instead waited until 1988, made the Sega MegaDrive and launched it in 1988...thus leaving 86 to 88 with no Sega until the MegaDrive launch... and having different staff (which could still have destroyed the image of Sega by wrong marketing practices alone)
Anyway as for your theory on why Japanese style space shooters or shooting games (because you kind of generalized the genre to include first person Doom clones) never catching on... some of the alleged blame lies with the mistakes NEC America did when they launched the Turbo GraFX 16 by ordering too many units and thus a wider audience not really getting into that... some can be blamed at Sega for flip flopping by offering a variety of shooting games early in the Sega Genesis years but failing to secure sales because yes 1988 to 89 was wasted... the Sega MegaDrive should have launched in 1988 to secure the early adopter test market and then around 92 Sega of America's management decided to mostly abandon supporting most of the Japanese made games in favor of chasing Disney like or license characters to the point you go and buy a gamer magazine and it felt embarrassing because some goofy characters were always on the cover story... not allowing access to the arcade style home exclusive shooters was a huge mistake... the Sega MegaDrive was essentially an affordable SNK NeoGeo AES.
Also some of the blame can be laid on Nintendo itself when they decided to use the CPU that ended up being on the Super FamiCom aka Super Nintendo and that CPU due to its 4Mhz clock was initially being perceived as slow even though it is fast but I believe Nintendo could have negotiated to have that same CPU clocked at 8Mhz instead just to kill any speculation... which ironically is what Nintendo did when they made the Nintendo 64.. they extended the launch to 1996 for a process node shrink to reach nearly 100Mhz and silence anyone calling the processors slow.
But then they made the huge mistake of claiming all games should be 3d graphics... that killed off the Japanese N64 support.
Is it actually pronounced alest-e? Never been sure if it was that, alest or alest-ay
The katakana writing (アレスタ) implies it's supposed to be pronounced a-lest-UH.
69.
nice.
"Nice beaver 🦫"