A few years back when Sega relaunched the Sega Ages range and stopped them being crap, a port of Galaxy Force II was on the original list of titles that they intended to release. Now that it's finally out, I thought I'd post a few first impressions.
Presentation is the same as all the recent Ages compilations, and has the usual impressive set of options and archive material. You can run the games scaled up to 480i or 480p (with or without filtering) or in their original 240p resolutions. The archive material is pretty comprehensive, even down to having such things as scans of the spine card from the Saturn version or the complete FM Towns version's manual. All the game versions have sound tests, and the arcade version has a super play for you to watch. There's even a bizarre promo video from the 80s which has a load of guys in suits watching a man dressed entirely in silver playing the big sitdown arcade version of the game. I'm sure it looked futuristic at the time.
The pack contains four versions of the game: the original arcade version, the Megadrive version, the (slightly optimistic) Master System port and the new "Neo Classic" version, which is the main focus of the pack.
Like with the Panzer Dragoon pack from a year or so ago, this new version of the game plays the same as the original, but they've significantly upgraded the graphics. The style of the game remains the same - they've not redone it with polygons or anything like that - but there are new transparency effects and much higher resolution sprites and backgrounds. They look to have been largely updated by hand, rather than run through a MAME style filter, and the overall effect is really nice:
As you might be able to tell from the above shot, another change is that the game is now widescreen (letterboxed or anamorphic). They've opened out the sides of the display, rather than cropping, as you can see:
(Arcade)
(Neo Classic)
Audio is mostly untouched, although they have brought back (I think) the original composer to write an ending tune for the game, as it didn't previously have one. Plus you can select the arranged FM Towns soundtrack if you want.
Controls are fully customisable, and even support a USB flight stick if you happen to have one. The defaults work well, though, with firing on the shoulder buttons, moving on the left stick and the throttle on the right.
Really, short of packing in a giant rotating spaceship cockpit, this is just about as good a retro package as you could ask for, and I think anybody who likes Galaxy Force will be very happy with what they've done for this release. For my money, the Ages range continues to demonstrate how retro packs should be done, and they clearly put a lot of care and attention into each release, especially compared to some of the barebones, churned-out rubbish that gets shoved onto Marketplace and the PSN.
Looking forward to their next release, which will be Virtual On.
( surprisingly )
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