Date Released: 8 September 1991
Date Played: 11 November 2021
Wings of Wor is a horizontal shmup created by the developer Masaya. You may know them for their homoerotic themed shmups in the Cho Aniki series. This game predates them by a couple of years, and although it isn't as off-the-wall insane as those games, there is still a very bizarre, unique, and compelling experience to be had with Wings of Wor.
You play as a super fit and jacked angel (foreshadowing of things to come in Cho Aniki) who has to fend off an invasion of Heaven by all sorts of insane creatures and bosses. While the cover art of the game is magnificent and is apparently a commissioned piece by Boris Vallejo (way to go Sega!), the character sprite in game is very flat and not very interesting to look at. The same can't be said of the game's enemies. There are dozens of different enemy sprites that range from fish, zombie heads, vampires, spiders, snail men, demons, robots, severed hands, and a ton more that I can't even remember. It's truly impressive and fits the game's art style perfectly. The game's aesthetic is such a strange mashup that I wasn't even able to describe it with my own words. So, I'll use Hardcore Gaming 101's description, "It's a mixture of ancient Greek, gothic horror, steampunk, mixed with bio-horror (like H.R. Giger)." Wow, that's some variety... and is especially impressive for a 16-bit game. This mish-mash of different elements helps the game to stand out and is certainly the main contributing element in the game's reputation.
You're greeted on the title screen by our hero posed in magnificent fashion while some awesome fanfare music plays. As you start the game (easy mode is default... and still brings quite the challenge) you enter the first stage which is a flooded underground cavern. You'll notice right away several layers of parallax scrolling and detailed scenery. You'll also notice that the graphics are kind of dark, dingy, and muddy. I'm not sure if this was intentional on behalf of the developers, but I think it's a bit of a turn off. Everything is so muted in its colors and brightness, that it's difficult for things to pop out at you and catch your attention. As you progress through this level, you'll soon encounter an earthquake that causes a nice screen rotation/wobble effect in the game. It's pretty striking and helps the stage stand out and is a testament to the skills of the developers. They wanted to flex their knowledge of the hardware (flexing will be another feature in their future games) as well as their creative prowess and it shows. The music for this stage starts off pretty upbeat with lots of horns and fanfare that I think suits the game well. I found myself humming along to this track after my first few times through the game. After the mid-boss, this music takes dark turn and becomes quite sinister that serves to foreshadow the stage boss which is some sort of steampunk tank with a human face. He's taken down easily and is a good icebreaker to the rest of the game.
The next stage begins with you flying over the surface of the water for a bit before finally submerging yourself into the depths for the rest of the underwater stage. You'll soon realize that a big graphical feature of this game is scenery in the foreground. There are large columns of algae that obstruct your view and you'll soon notice that bullets and enemies tend to get lost in the scenery. You'll also notice that the stage tends to drag on and on with large sections of popcorn enemies where nothing really happens. Fortunately, the stage ends with my favorite boss of the game. A ship sails into the screen and you have to attack the figurehead on the front of it to bring it down. After that, the whole ship rises to reveal that it's actually the hat of a giant pirate that was waiting below the water. Blast him in the face until he's no more and celebrate a victory well earned. Super cool.
Stage 3 has you entering a gothic castle with gargoyles, vampires, statuettes, ghost knights, and all other manner of spooky foes. The music that accompanies this stage is baroque through and through and is by far the best music in the game. I would love to whistle along to this, but that can be quite the challenge. It's not so easy to bring out the elegance of contrapuntal organ, harpsichord, and strings by blowing air across your lips. I really do love how this track changes the atmosphere of the game and brings it around to the gothic horror style. Hopefully the music will keep you entertained while you once again notice that the stage goes on for far too long and you'll keep heading down several long corridors that look exactly the same as you ascend to the top of the stage. You'll finally meet the steampunk boss who is another giant head (I'm noticing a theme) and you'll have to dispatch him while avoiding a barrage of bullets and puffs of almost impossible to see smoke. He feels a lot like the stage 2 boss, but less interesting and more annoying.
Stage 4 takes place in a steampunk factory and begins with a fast paced section where you have to maneuver down tight corridors (much like the similar stages in Gradius). The music here is upbeat and has some really fun clapping sections that I enjoyed. After this speedy section, you'll come to almost a crawl as you shoot your way through wave after wave of fast moving enemies and ground units. Once again, there are pipes and structures in the foreground that obscure a lot of enemies and shots and resulted in quite a few deaths on my part. The boss of this stage is the most frustrating in the game and is a dismembered body that sprays a large amount of red blood cells into the air for you to dodge. His heart is his only weak point and it floats behind him and is impervious to damage until it decides to dart out. After you finish him off, it's time to move on.
Stage 5 takes place in some sort of giant body. The entire stage has a wavy background that is a cool effect. The ceiling and floor also bring back the effect from the earthquake of the first level and makes the whole screen look like it's undulating and pulsing. It's pretty cool, but can get distracting before too long. There are also once again obstructions in the foreground (red blood vessels this time) that really obscure a lot of bullets (mostly red to blend in with the surroundings...) and fast moving enemies that appear from behind, above, below, and sometimes from nowhere. The music in this level is nothing to write home about, and the stage goes on forever. I timed it, and it was around 9 minutes... which is way, way too long. It's either very boring, or overly intense and could have used some more balance. The boss of this stage is... um.... notorious for being a giant bald man with a huge, mutated, and monstrous...umm genitalia... that covers the entire bottom portion of the screen. It's once again a fitting precursor to the Cho Aniki series and I have no earthly idea how this got by the censors at Sega during the early 90s. Blast him in the face until he's no more. I got to this stage without ever getting hit many times, only to die 9 times on this stage alone... and then used 5 continues and still couldn't beat it. After a few rounds of practice, I was able to clear it regularly with only a couple of deaths. It's an annoying stage and is my least favorite in the game.
Moving on to the final stage, you'll find yourself flying through the clouds with gorgeous rays of light beaming down in the background. You'll also note that there is a pretty large blanket of clouds on both the top and the bottom in the foreground that obscure about a third of the screen... sigh. This whole stage is a boss rush of the game's mid-bosses. I actually really like this with the exception of one thing. They bring back the final boss of stage 4 and when he lobs up his bunch of red blood cells, they are obscured terribly by the clouds in the foreground and you can't see where they are coming from. I was never able to get passed this boss without dying several times and it was extremely frustrating to not be able to see what you're doing. It got on my nerves pretty badly and made me want to quit the game. After this, you meet the final boss who is a giant embryo... and a giant disappointment. He really only does one thing; spewing out orbs that randomly float around the screen. You have to maneuver between around 12-20 of them at any given point while keeping constant damage on the boss who can only be hit about once every 8-10 seconds. The boss never changes up his patterns and it's just a long battle of attrition until he falls. Like most of the stages, it takes far too long and you'll be begging for it to be over. Then, the credits roll and it's time to play through the game again on a second and harder loop.
As for the gameplay, it's normal for a horizontal shmup. You collect blue orbs which increase your shot spread and red orbs which increase your firepower. You can also collect feathers that increase your speed but be careful not to get too many of them, or it's too difficult to dodge accurately and will lead to you crashing accidentally into a wall, enemy, or stray bullet. There are also orbs that can change your forward shot from a spread to a focused attack with some upward and lower defense and even a rare forward and backward facing shot. Having the correct type of shot is essential to your survival and luckily the game seems to provide the correct type of shot when you need it. You're given no bombs in this game and instead are able to collect different magic scrolls to aide you. You can collect up to 3 scrolls at any time and you activate them by pressing the A button. These range from lightning bolts, guardian angels, homing attacks, ground attacks, and more. They all have limited ammunition and if you happen to collect more than 1 of the same scroll at the same time, it will increase its ammunition and effectiveness. These magic attacks are sometimes essential to finishing a level unscathed, but more often than not are pretty much useless and you end up ignoring them. Also to help you on your way are extends every 200k points and secret 1Ups hidden around some of the levels. I was able to find one of these in stage one right before the mid-boss, and 2 of them in stage 4 during the speedy section. They were essential to my success and I wonder if there are more hidden around the rest of the game to help you out. There is some slight Gradius syndrome to the game where when you die and power down, it can be quite difficult to overcome the strength of the enemies. But, it isn't nearly as bad as a lot of shmups out there and with enough practice you should be able to succeed even after dying a few times. There are an abundance of powerups in the game and recovery is usually pretty painless. Scoring is pretty straight forward and basically hinges on just grabbing as many powerups as possible.
So, there's an overview of the game. How do I feel about it? Well, it has some awesome style and is super unique in its design. This is especially true of the huge amounts of enemy models and various bosses. The graphics are pretty outstanding if a little muddy and muted and really have that "Genesis" feel to them. The music is frequently outstanding but can get a little unmemorable on some tracks. It also has some scratchy sounding midi samples...but isn't that what you're supposed to expect from a Genesis game? The powerup system is well thought out and fun and I enjoyed it immensely. The game controls well and it a lot of fun to play. If you left it at that, this would be one of the best shmups on the Genesis, honestly. But, the game is brought down... way down by some glaring issues. Firstly, the levels are way too long and drag on, and on, and on. There are whole sections where not much happens and you can just sit in one spot and hold down the fire button and nothing will touch you. Some of these stages are around 10 minutes long, which is insane. The whole game clocks in at around 45-50 minutes and I fell like that should be shaved down to around 30 minutes or so. Secondly, the scenery in the foreground constantly blocks your view of the enemy bullets and the enemies themselves. I'm guessing 80% of my deaths came from not being able to see what was going on by these obstructions. They appear in pretty much every stage and while they do add some nice atmosphere, they are a marked detriment to the gameplay. The game is often a test of attrition rather than skill. Very rarely will the game actually force you to dodge difficult patterns and rather relies on throwing hidden stray enemies and bullets at you in the hope of "sucker punching" you. Instead of routing and learning intricate patterns in the levels, the game just throws slightly annoying patterns at you until it gets lucky and brings you down. With the extremely overlong lengths of the stages, the game has lots of chances to get lucky with these shots and will inevitably succeed.
These two problems bring down what is otherwise a really good, fun, zany, and unique experience with a great premise and awesome atmosphere to a frustrating and middling shmup that is still worth playing, but isn't worth putting in a lot of time to master. I was close to being able to get a 1-credit clear on the default settings, but would always have my runs derailed by an obscured bullet. In the end, I settled for simply beating the game and decided to move on to something new.
Final Status: Beaten (very close to 1CC) around 1million high score.
Final Review: 7/10 (good... with 2 huge flaws)
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