Aerial Assault (Master System)
The year is 1999 and an evil military group known as N.A.C. has not only developed a super laser capable of wearing down the Earth’s Ozone layer, but they’ve used their advanced technology to take on every military power of the planet… and won. Before the N.A.C. can do any more damage though, a single unassuming jet fighter flew in to fight the enemy’s forces. Known only as the Freedom Fighter by the hopeful people of the world, it is somehow the only match for the N.A.C.’s incredible power. This seemingly generic plane in a generically named game is what you will control if you choose to play Aerial Assault for the Sega Master System.
Despite jet fighters usually moving fairly realistically in video games, the Freedom Fighter moves with full freedom around the screen, this degree of motion usually reserved for the spaceships, mechs, and magical girls that usually play the starring role in sidescrolling shoot ’em ups like this one. The fairly realistic design of the Freedom Fighter belies its true capabilities though. By default, the jet packs two ways to attack, the first controller button assigned to a rapid fire front facing machine gun and the second button dropping bombs below the aircraft, the gun having infinite ammo but the bombs having a set quantity meaning you’ll have to pick up refills. While you’re shooting down enemies in Aerial Assault though, certain special ones like the spinning jets and red helicopters will contain power-ups that drift around the screen, these altering your shot type and providing other benefits or detriments depending on their symbols.
When it comes to machine gun replacements, Aerial Assault packs in eight alternatives to the default shot, many of them having interesting applications depending on which foes you’re fighting. The Explosion Shot is good for clearing bunched up enemies, the 3-Way Shot and Wide Laser both make it more likely your attacks will hit enemies at the expense of fire rate, and options like the Laser and Chaser Missile provide greater damage while mostly being forward-facing shots like your default weapon. Any time you grab the appropriately marked power-up you’ll be immediately switched to the indicated weapon, and since the item dropping enemies are often grouped together with dangerous ones, its very likely you’ll knock weapon options out of them you might not want at the moment, including a potential downgrade back to the default shot. They way they move through the air is possible to dodge but the power ups do favor floating towards you, meaning amidst the dogfights you will have to sometimes avoid losing your high power weapon for an extra layer of challenge. Only when you encounter the item that actually steals an entire life from you does it feel like a failure to dodge will do real damage to you though, so most of the time it’s a matter of preference on whether you try to dodge a power-up or not.
The bombs similarly have a group of alternatives tied to the item drop system. The basic bomb is abundant and good for eliminating the enemy vehicles that are either on the ground or fly low, but if you want a better chance of hitting them the Triple Bomb power-up sends many dropping at once to try and ensure accuracy. The Missile and Napalm focus on bigger and stronger explosions, but the final bomb type is the most interesting, the Hyper Ball appearing rarely, coming in low quantities, and able to essentially clear the screen and almost one-shot bosses. You do lose bombs and power-ups if you die, but things like the incredibly powerful Hyper Ball incentivize staying alive greatly. More importantly, even if you do lose your weapons to a death, the item-dropping enemies are usually pretty abundant and your default options aren’t terrible. Speed up and shield power-ups even increase your chances of lasting longer, the craft already fairly zippy to start but the shield giving you the chance to survive enemy shots instead of going down the first time one hits you. The shields are mostly reserved for later stages though, but they do help alleviate some of the climbing difficulty since they aren’t too rare once they begun appearing.
Aerial Assault only has 5 levels to conquer, but it tries to make the most of them by making them all feel distinctly different. The first stage has you flying over the water, the planes attacking you in the air supplemented by island-mounted weaponry, submarines, and battleships. Stage 2 takes you above the clouds where enemies can come from any part of the screen’s borders, and the land stage that follows mixes in tanks and anti-aircraft forces to supplement the bad guys in the sky. The final levels shift away from the relative realism found in the enemy vehicles and weaponry to embrace science fiction more, but the most important part of the five levels is that the game continues to throw out new enemy types with each stage, never settling into recycled designs. The attack patterns can be similar across the enemy forces, but there are foes that focus on flying in together, others that track your movement to try and ram you, foes who focus either on filling the screen with fire or aiming at you, some that drop mines on death, and others that will call in other enemies until they’re destroyed. There is plenty of variety to be found in the opposition and your movement is definitely just as important as the weapons you’re using to fight them, many areas having parts where you can only survive if you’re able to weave around the dangers you can’t shoot down.
The bosses include that skillful maneuvering as part of their fight design as well even though most of them are relatively stationary. The bosses in Aerial Assault are large powerful foes that can’t be taken down by simply firing on them wherever you can land a shot. Whether they’re a bomber plane, mountain fortress, or laser weapon, these bosses are covered with smaller weapons that all open fire on you, the player needing to figure out what they’re up against and safely avoid the shots as they pick off each gun one by one. Some pack additional tricks as they lose certain tools, but part of the fight is deciding between what’s easiest to destroy and what’s most important to destroy, a death potentially going to slow the game down as you won’t have a chance to get any new weapons if your perish. The game on the whole is definitely challenging and focuses both on quick reactions and caution, and while Easy difficulty does deny you a proper conclusion, the higher difficulties make the short game still thrilling because of the need to keep on your toes. There are even minibosses that mix together the durability and multiple weapon types of the boss designs with the mobility of regular foes, these serving as good midpoint markers and often given you the best impression of how strong you really are as the best weapons can make quick work of these enemies.
Unfortunately, while there is much to like about Aerial Assault’s design and a lot of work went into the right areas, there are two flaws that end up dragging down the experience. The first is encountered almost as soon as the game begins, the enemy bullets hard to make out against some backgrounds. Weaving around the enemies and their shots is important to maintaining your power and not running out of lives and continues, so the hazy pink and white design of the starting shots and the blue bullets on blue backgrounds of later stages can blindside even an alert player. Not having the proper time to see something or deliberate obfuscation can occur in small doses elsewhere, such as the cloud level having its lower portions covered with clouds while fast enemies fly out of them almost undetected, but these ambushes and minor visual problems can’t compare to the one thing that does truly reduce the game’s quality: Aerial Assault has a few moments designed just to screw you over. A short shoot ’em up can usually be overcome through persistent play, the player learning the layout of stages and how enemies will appear and attack. However, there are certain moments in the game that aren’t completely consistent, the case I could most obviously identify being the diagonal green lasers in the final level. If you have held onto a strong weapon or the Hyper Ball bomb up until this point, you can very well lose it to these laser beams that don’t follow a set pattern, the game seemingly containing a few moments designed to strip away any powerful weapons in an instant as it loses confidence in its own difficulty. You can still soldier on to beat the game and maybe find good weapons after these moments, but some are placed close to bosses on purpose, denying you the reward for using your skills to carry strong powers deep into the game.
THE VERDICT: Aerial Assault has so much going for it, but it chooses to taint the experience by adding unnecessary difficulty to a game that otherwise provided a great degree of challenge. There are plenty of unique enemy types that attack in different ways and mix together dangerously, overcoming them with the many different weapon and bomb types providing a good sense of player power without invalidating the challenge they pose. However, by deliberately setting up moments to weaken the player and having visual problems that can lead to accidental failure, Aerial Assault adds unfortunate hitches to otherwise enjoyable and appropriately difficult play.
And so, I give Aerial Assault for Sega Master System…
An OKAY rating. I really wanted to rate Aerial Assault higher because in many ways it does deserve it. It does plenty of things right when it comes to diverse enemy design, providing frequent chances for power-ups, and almost balancing its difficulty in a way where the strongest options require the greatest effort to keep and exploit. However, the team at Sega decided to undo a lot of that work by forcing moments upon the player that are focused more on luck rather than skill or learning the game, and coupled with other minor issues like the visibility problems in some stages, it really doesn’t feel like it can be called outright Good. The green lasers definitely stand out as the face of the game’s most glaring issue, and these even completely obliterate the shield that otherwise helps alleviate some of the smaller enemy placement or shot problems, so other than the obvious choice of having the lasers and similar hazards be reworked, making the shield take equal damage from all danger or placing it a bit more frequently could help mitigate the moments that don’t feel like they stem from the game’s otherwise decent difficulty balance.
I still feel like Aerial Assault does deserve a recommendation though because of what it does right. You might have to take a few blows on the chin to enjoy the better areas of its design, but it’s quite nearly worth it because it’s so close to being a better game.