Galaxy Force 2 is a port of arcade game made by Sega of Japan. The arcade game was originally made in 1988 and it was such a high-tech attraction, running on system that boasted three Motorola 68000 processors along with Super Scaler chipset to deliver one heck of Pseudo 3D experience for it's time, even using many scaling sprites for walls/grounds in the game. And that's not talking about deluxe arcade machines that were fully-rotable tilting-able cockpit.
And if you wonder why you never hear about Galaxy Force 1 – that's because Galaxy Force 2 was a direct upgrade for Galaxy Force arcade machines, adding two extra stages and other tweaks.
And then CRI decided to port it to Sega Mega Drive, which has only one Motorola 68000 processor and nothing to help with scaling. The port was made in Japan in 1991, came to US in 1992, being on 8 Megabit ROM.
It also had some other ports. Both PS2 Japanese-only release and “3D Classics” on 3DS are even superior to arcade version!
The game that you have here is nothing more than emulation of Sega Genesis version.
Now, technical part about Sega's emulation here:
The Sega Classic games that you purchase on Steam count as DLCs for "Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics" game that should appear in your library.
It has Bedroom HUB which is the one with many features yet lags for many and Simply Launcher which lacks Workshop and Online but at least it works just fine for everybody.
However, Simple Launcher has it's fair share of glitches as well. It can crash. And it does the second time you go to main menu, so always quit after saving there so it doesn't crash when you want to save next time!
Emulation itself, mostly sound, isn't that good but it does it's job. Also, yes, emulator supports quick saves.
As alternative, you can use external emulator to run games that you purchased. Sega kindly placed in all games that you purchased in "uncompressed ROMs" folder that program itself doesn't use, just change file extension to ".bin" or so. The file for this one being "GalaxyForceII_UE.SGD".
I also demand you to read digital manual of this game first. You can find it here on store page or go to "manuals" folder of game root and open "GF2_PC_MG_EFIGS_US_150ppi.pdf".
The plot is that Junos, system of five planets, is under attack from Halcyon, ruler of the Fourth Empire that you never see in the game. Who massacres everything there and builds up gigantic fortresses on those. Space Federation isn't happy and sends you on TRX-5 Quasar to ruin everything, the only ship of this kind that they have.
Actually, I have already forgot what it is about.
Let's talk about important plot. Anybody knows why there is a hair-fancy girl with lower half of body being space machine in Japanese ads of Galaxy Force? There is no such thing in the game.
The gameplay is a space shooter with view from behind, somewhat. Or, rather, one of many Sega's super scaler games, so to say. You can move around area while being forced to fly forward, avoiding enemies shot and obstacles. There are no bosses to speak of. You have infinite missiles and shots, so you can spam, albeit you shouldn't missiles into thin air, you can shoot them again only when they aren't on screen anymore. You gotta lock missile target on few enemies, albeit it locks automatically and only on those that are right in front of you and doesn't chain.
But what is likely to put people off is that this game is time-limit based. You have an energy counter, that slowly decreases over time. That's your time limit, so to say, as once it's out, it's game over!At least it's a short game, only 20 minutes or so. That means that you should speed up when possible.
The way that you get more of energy is by shooting down enemies and obstacles, so when the section is over, you will get bonus energy for completing and for amount of enemies destroyed. So sometimes you should slow down to hit them all.
There is also a shield, but it never restores. Once it's out, the hits will directly decrease your energy too.
This game will take some learning curve of few failed attempts at beating it, but then it should be no problem at all.
So, how CRI managed to port the game that runs on hardware more than three times more powerful than Sega Mega Drive/Genesis?
It was a mistake.
Or maybe ported too early.
Levels outside of tunnels now consist of just few obstacle and enemies objects and ground, which uses good old pseudo 3D trick of simulation movement by shifting colored stripes, if there is one. While arcade had canyons and valleys made of sprites. There are less enemy objects from what it seems as well. Just seems more sparse, easier to not get hit. It's just so bare in comparison! But even worse, the sprite flickers, the sprite flickers! Sega Mega Drive could do only 20 sprites per scanline, which is a horizontal line, from what I know. And yea, it's really bad there, you may not even see a missile coming at you because of it.
And in tunnels, well, it's another barren experience. Instead of being made of sprites to make it feel like a real place, it's nothing but another pseudo 3D use of shifting color stripes. And there is even less objects here.
Then again, actually, I like this effect! I have seen this shifting color stripes effect used for road sides on ground in many racing games before. But I have never seen it used also for ceiling and walls in same time to simulate a tunnel. Which also moves around, creating simulation of turns or getting larger/smaller. It also keeps the voices that warns you about left or right turns. Nice. Don't forget to slow down in some places.
The place where screen flicker hide rocks in the tunnel is no good however.
Also, music is still there and still great. Great!
There are also options. You can set difficulty, which impacts the speed of enemy missiles slightly, change shield strength and change energy consumption speed. Direction option changes if pressing up/down moves ship up/down or down/up. You should change it to “reverse” since it's reversed on “normal”, get it? And controls swapping options, which actually has purpose even on this emulator. That's because developers couldn't figure out where to put 4 actions onto standard Genesis 3-face-buttons controller. Nope, 6-button controllers weren't available yet. So you can either have “shots” or “speed up” being done automatically. Pew pew pew pew...
Overall, I enjoyed this short arcade experience on Genesis on it's own, it has a bit of chill smooth feeling, despite having loooow framerate. But it has flaws on it's own, such as flickers. And it's such an objectively underwhelming port of arcade game that I simply can't not “not recommend” it, despite enjoying it. Go find 3D Classics version on 3DS instead.
