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Okay. Now I'm scared. This makes two feathers in Acclaim's hat (the other being Darius Gaiden). If they keep this up, I (and any other gamer that puts game play above graphics) will have no ultimatum but to bequeath Acclaim a small measure of respect (and when that happens, the apocalypse is upon us all).

What we have here is another very well crafted shooter. This time however we're dealing with a top-down vertical/horizontal shooter. Galactic Attack is actually the first "Layer Section" in Japan (the sequel being ported to the US PSX by Working Designs as "Raystorm").

The story is so cliché I'm not going to even bother getting into it. Suffice it to say, you're the Earth's only hope against an army of opposing ships. There are seven stages in this game. Each one flows seamlessly into the next. After beating a boss you keep flying right into the fray. No stage select, polling of your score, or fancy "eyecatch" sequences. Although you can't control which stage you go to next, each stage is long enough, and the challenge will kept you busy.

Galactic Attack offers a special Saturn mode, and an Arcade mode. The Saturn mode is a compressed horizontal shooter. The game takes up a little more then three quarters of the available screen size. There are two black bars on either side. Right off the bat, you'll be thinking "Gee I wish it was full screen". Well as a vertical shooter, that's kinda hard to do, but there is a remedy for those that are persistent. Arcade mode flips the screen on it's side to form a horizontal shooter. At this point the game takes up the entire screen. The catch is, in order for it to remain a vertical shooter, you must subsequently flip your TV/monitor on it's side. Some television sets don't take too kindly to this, so I suggest you be careful. I personally believe that even played a horizontal shooter, the Arcade mode is much better. If you do choose to flip your monitor on it's side you can also set the controls to reflect this change. So to recap there are three different ways to play Galactic Attack. Right off the bat, that's impressive. In the Saturn mode you can turn off the score and other displays by hitting the L button. It helps alleviate screen clutter. This is not allowed in the Arcade mode, but is unnecessary due to the much larger screen size. There are six levels of difficulty. Including normal, four different hard settings, and a very hard setting. All present a extreme amount of difficulty, including the normal setting. An easy mode for those that aren't whizzes at shooters is lacking. However, should you be in the league that appreciates difficulty, and believes it adds to replay value, then you will most certainly enjoy Galactic Attack. If not, then you may throw down the controller in disgust on more then one occasion. Enemies will literally swarm about the screen and shoot at you with great ferocity. The opinions also allow you to select whether or not you want to have your ship fire rapidly, or you have to depress the trigger after every shot (naturally you should select auto fire given the relentless assault of everybody and his brother gunning for you ^_^). You can also choose to save the option settings in internal memory.

Throughout the entire game you only have two weapons. Your guns, and homing lasers. Your guns can be powered up a total of four times. Power ups are obtained by shooting special enemies (usually red in color). The mechanics of your guns remain the same, but the damage they inflect increases. With this comes a change in the color of the projectiles. Guns are only effective against enemies that are the same altitude as yourself. Your homing lasers are interesting. They work based on the same principle as homing missiles. Since this is a top down shooter, you are elevated above that ground below you (or if you're in space, the void beneath you). You must lock on to ascending enemies and fire. Usually your homing lasers are powerful enough to do the job in one shot. Locking on requires no awkward manipulation of the controls. Your gun piper is fixed a certain distance from your ship. Just maneuver your ship so that you place the piper over the ascending enemy and you'll lock on. You can lock on to a maximum of 8 enemies at once depending on how high your lasers are powered up. You'll retain the lock until you fire, or the enemy flies off screen. After you locked on to the desired enemies, press B to fire.

The graphics are great for a 2D shooter. Again, depending on your tastes they may seem stale and dated. The playing field is slightly larger then appears on screen. You can pan a little to the extreme left or right (ala 1941). Nice parallax scrolling and rotational/panning effects. Especially when enemies below you, fly up to attack. Be sure to "ooo" and "ahh" at stages 2 and 6 (even though it's nothing more then upgraded mode 7). Colors are a little drab in some places, but not too bad for the most part. One thing you can expect not to see in this game is the slightest amount of slowdown. Even if there is a large quantity of objects on screen. No FMV or Polygons. Just good old fashion sprites. Even for the short but nice opening segment (after the two demos). Bosses are also nice. I'd have to say given the better panning and zooming aspects, this game exceeds Darius Gaiden in the graphics category, but only slightly.

Sound is standard shooter fare (the lock on tone for your lasers sound exactly like those used in the Macross shooter BTW). Nice lower base response on the larger explosions. Everything else is relatively hum-drum. There is a small amount of grainy radio chatter in English (but it's all pretty mundane). No better, and no worse then any other shooter.

Great Zuntata (Taito's in-house band) tunes throughout. Much better then Darius Gaiden. Is not such an acquired taste anymore. Techno (not hard core European Techno however) is the dominating force behind the BGM. I particularly like track 4 (stage 1 music). The music seems to fit each stage perfectly and remain in sync with the game. While not great, is certainly pleasant to listen to.

Control is, for the most part, dead on. No complaints, and nothing worth mentioning. You use only two buttons for the entire game, as well as the directional pad.

This is a wonderful shooter. I picked it up at Toys R Us for $15. And I'm still having fun playing it the day after. You would think that given the lower prices, Saturn software must be crap, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. As long as you emphasize game play over graphics, you will enjoy Galactic Attack. So far it's the best shooter I've played on the US Saturn. I'm interested to see how Thunderforce 5 and Soukyugurentai stack up.

Results
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Features, Funfactor,
and Replayability: 9.0

Graphics: 7.5
Sound: 8.0
Music: 8.0
Control: 9.0

Overall: 8.3