As a brief stop on the road toward playing a more substantial title, Thexder NEO is a small, but interesting, release for the PSP - at least if you haven’t played it before. Somehow I’d missed Game Arts’ platformer/shmup hybrid, which I’m told has been around since dinosaurs roamed the earth - or 1985, whichever you prefer.

If I had played it, I’m certain the ability to transform between robot and jet modes on the fly would have been the biggest draw when I was younger. Every other game that promised a similar gimmick always forced me to play as one or the other per each stage. Still, I enjoy the ability as much today as I might have then, even with some hiccups that make the feature less attractive.

Once that’s said and done however, the real draw worth talking about here is the game’s preoccupation with energy.

The primary laser weapon that players begin the game with, is the same primary laser weapon that they end the game with. It never upgrades or becomes more powerful, which at first made me wonder why the heck that was. Additionally, an energy bar serves as the life guage, and every shot the player fires drains energy from it. Aside from a boost jump in robot mode, and switching between the jet transformation, the only other button players need to worry about is a shield activator, that provides a temporary barrier between them and the various stage enemies - which of course drains energy when used.

There’s no bullet hell to dodge, as none of these enemies fire a single shot, instead diving at the player to physically drain energy away. Dealing with them is best handled in robot mode, with the jet transformation meant to get you through narrow passages. It’s nearly impossible not to smack the jet into walls or shoot enemies that aren’t directly ahead of your lasers. Destroying certain enemies replenishes energy and increases the amount that can be stored, and there are a few secrets scattered across the stages that provide more of the same.

At this point we’ve pretty well covered the bulk of what Thexder NEO offers. There are two difficulty settings, with easy allowing players to dash through the handful of stages into a short and standard boss fight, shooting the core and meeting with the credits faster than they can wonder where their ten dollars just went to. Normal difficulty offers the same stages, but forces the player to focus on striving more for high scores over completion due to the likelyhood of repeated gameover screens.

There’s really two ways to play the game, with the previous paragraph covering the natural instinct of rushing through the game quickly and ending up slightly dissappointed. And then on the other hand, there’s plenty of room to take a more strategic view of the game. With every shot fired draining life away, it pays to start picking them more carefully - remembering which enemies provide energy in turn, and exploring the twists and turns of levels to discover more. There’s also some well designed mazes in the later level designs that make reasonably good use of the robot/jet transformation feature.

In an attempt to stretch out the title’s longevity, an online mode is provided which I can’t entirely wrap my head around. Of all the ways to extend the features of a niche game, it seems odd to imagine that the people who pick Thexder NEO up are going to be readily avaible online and waiting for matches. The fact that I’ve been trying to play just one match for the last five days seems to back that up - that reminds me, if you’ve picked the game up and had the same problem, drop me a line and we’ll set something up.

Thexder NEO feels more puzzle-like than the robot images might lead you to believe, and is the type of game I tend to play around with more than play the hell out of. I’ve spent a fair amount of time exploring the game’s stages. Given the choice, I’d rather see Square-Enix invest some time in revisiting a title like Einhander, but there is enough to make Thexder NEO interesting, even if only briefly, and I figure that makes the game worth mentioning.