Nostalgia Trip – Sinking the Battleship

When I was younger I used to keep a written list of every videogame I wanted to own. Okay, technically I still have one, but it’s much smaller today. But while I might have dreamed about having a wall of titles to choose from, I had to make due with a few games each year like most.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, because now that I can pick-up whatever games I want, I seem to appreciate them a lot less. I’ve lost some crucial element along the way, and don’t take the time to really enjoy videogames the way I used to. Sure I finish them, but that’s very different from the amount of time I used to invest exploring every inch of them.

U.N. Squadron is a game I played nearly everyday for four years straight. I’d come home from school, feed the dog, and slide that well worn cartridge into the Super Nintendo to see that unicorn logo light up the screen. The pop tarts would cool and the coffee would boil down into tar while I went through each stage like an exercise routine – playing over and over again until I knew where every enemy was coming from and where every bullet and bonus was waiting.

This information is still occupying some region of my brain that could undoubtedly be put to better use. I might not be capable of solving complex mathematical equations, but I can turn that game on and put my brain on auto-pilot. And there really isn’t any game in the last few years I can say the same about.

This is actually the battleship from the arcade version of Area 88 – the design is essentially the same as its SNES counterpart..

U.N. Squadron became my favorite shooter in part due to the fact that it was one of the few I had on the SNES, and also because it is the finest shooter on that system. Its visual cues brought the best of the OVA, which I was unaware of at the time, and offered a world of mercenary pilots with multiple planes and weapons worthy of earning the cash needed to buy them – how I love the dual fire of the A-10 Warthog. Each stage involved invading heavily fortified enemy positions, stretching from barren deserts to lush forests with two stops over the ocean for good measure.

The longevity that keeps me coming back to the game is the appearance of the most memorable shooter boss battle I’ve ever encountered. Sure it would be cooler to mention a few rare Japanese SHMUP titles instead, but they’ll never occupy the same space in my heart.

While I’m partial to the forest level, taking on the battleship is the sequence that makes the game for me. Similar to the fortress of the forest level, the battleship stretches beyond the edge of the screen, too massive to ever fit completely in sight. The initial thrill is taking it apart piece by piece, blasting away turrets and towers as flames erupt over the deck. But with each revisiting, it becomes much more about perfecting a systematic process, refining the strategy until your able to take every bit of the ship apart like a science. And there’s something special about taking the time to strip away the weapons and making the ship utterly defenseless before swooping in for a well earned kill rather than pummeling the core right away.

A few people have suggested to me that we simply have more time to master games when we’re young, and that’s certainly true. But the funny thing is that this entire stage can be defeated in less time than it takes to load a current release. And that’s a nagging thought at the back of my brain, because I can suggest that games have changed and lost something I once found special, but then I am probably just as guilty of having done the same. Besides, there are still releases that make me nostalgically remember that type of gameplay – the stages from IREM’s Hammerin’ Hero come to mind as an example from this year.

The one release that has come closest to having the same effect on me is G. Rev’s Dreamcast SHMUP, Under Defeat – which oddly enough has its own battleship stage minus the ability to take passes overhead, but with the same satisfying level of destruction that make these boss battles memorable.

But before I spiral off into another game let’s watch someone from youtube show us how to take on that battleship from U.N. Squadron.