Release Date: 1984
Date Played: 11/16/2021
Sky Jaguar was released by Konami back in 1984 in the arcades and ported to a few select consoles. This is the MSX port of that game that was released that same year. Personally, I'm not sure how the game did in the arcades or with its console sales (since I was 2 years old when it came out), but I can tell you that the MSX port, while being primitive, is still a lot of fun and addictive.
You play as a plane in a primitive 8-bit vertical shmup. You'll notice right away that the colorful graphics look very chunky and are reminiscent of Xevious. This isn't a bad thing and makes the game stand out for its time. As with all MSX games, the scrolling is essentially nonexistent and the background moves forward in pretty distracting segments. If you focus on them too hard, it can mess with your brain a little bit. So it's better to keep your eyes on the enemies. When I say focus, I really mean it because a large majority of the enemies will either dive straight towards the bottom of the screen hoping to hit you or will scroll sideways until they spot you and then kamikaze directly towards you while firing off a hail of bullets. This, and the way the enemies come in waves, reminds me a lot of Galaga. The screaming sounds as the enemy combatants fall towards the bottom of the screen only helps to make that comparison since it sounds like it was pretty much stolen from Midway's sound engineers. Speaking of enemies, there are a lot of different types for a game of this era. Some are simple ships while others are abstract shapes like barbells and triangles. Some enemies turn invisible and others fire in unique patterns that you have to memorize in order to pass them. It adds some nice variety and learning the enemy behavior is the big draw of mastering the game. Despite the abundance of different types and behaviors, almost every enemy in the game is a popcorn enemy and dies in a single hit. The difficulty comes from the game throwing more and more enemies at you that also fire more frequently.
As for the gameplay itself, the game controls well and it's a lot of fun sweeping back and forth taking out the waves of enemies. Since most enemies fire and attempt to crash directly into you, bullet herding is a very sound and effective strategy. Sweeping back and forth across the bottom of the screen draws bullets and enemies to one side while you juke to the other. Occasionally, an enemy will drop a powerup. The first of these that you collect will give you a double shot that really helps with aiming and connecting with the bad guys. The second one you pick up might allow you to fire more rapidly, but it's difficult to tell. These powerups might be one of the earliest examples of a powerup in any game ever. I would be curious to know more about that. As for the stages themselves, there really aren't any and the game just continually "scrolls". The game tracks your progress over time with a rising counter called "scenes" but these are tied more to the number of waves you complete rather than a individual stage. That being said, the backgrounds do change as you move along. At first you're over a city. Then, you progress through a canyon, a forest, a desert, and the ocean. At the ends of scene 3 and 8, you'll encounter a fortress to destroy that serves as a sort of boss encounter but these only take a few shots at their weak points to dispatch. They are also heralded by the only music in the game which is a nice change and is greatly needed in a game with no soundtrack. This music is sinister and really lets you know something big is coming up. After scene 8, the game loops and has the same enemy patterns and types. Only their speed and number of shots increases as you finish each additional loop.
The game can get a little tough and overwhelming after a few scenes and this is especially true if you die and lose your powerups. Luckily, the game tends to replenish your power ups relatively quickly and it also awards extends at 10k and then every 40k after that. There are no continues, but you should be able to make it pretty far with a little practice.
Like I said, the game is very primitive but is still a good time even today. It holds up a lot better than many of its contemporary peers and makes you want to chase a bigger high score every time you play. I would recommend this game to any shmup fan out there. I think it's a shining example of how to make a game that stands the test of time. It's also a great example of a really good early attempt at solidifying the shoot-em-up genre. Konami did well with this and I have to give them a thumbs up.
I was able to make it to about a third of the way through the second loop before getting a game over on my best run so far. This gave me a score of 105,740 at scene 11.
Final Status: Completed (1 Credit Cleared / 1-ALL)
Final Score: 7/10 (Good and still fun today)
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