Nerdicus SNES Review #30: Big Sky Trooper

Title : Big Sky Trooper

Publisher : JVC / Lucas Arts

Genre : Action

Players : 1 Player

Release Date : 1995

Estimated Value (as of today's date) : $8-$15

You would think that when a game is released by Lucas Arts, everyone would hear about it. Well, in most cases that's true, but with this one....I didn't even know what the hell it was until I ran into it on my list of SNES games.

Lucas Arts is known for coming out with some of the most epic games of this generation. I could list out dozens that I've been obsessed with playing over the years, but there have been some hiccups. A few were misses...and a lesser few were major misses. I have never played this game before, so I'm not sure where it's going to fall into, but I'll give it a few hours worth, and make a judgement.

It's a game with robots, and slug monsters. How can this possibly go wrong?

This was one of those games where I really felt like Disney / Pixar should have made a movie out of it. I mean come on, you're a kid who has to face off against an army of Space Slugs lead by the Sultan of Slime. I'm not making this crap up. Even the stylized artwork of this game feels like it was pulled out of an animated feature.

So go, Pixar. Off with you! Make a movie based on this game! It's right up your alley. At least it seems like it would.

You start off by picking your gender - either a young boy, or a young girl. Not sure of their ages but they can't be more than twelve. This is turning into a middle-grade adventure, isn't it? Once you make your selection, your whisked away and yelled at by some psychotic looking military man part of the Sidereal Shock Troops (who you're pretty much going to be a slave for the rest of the game), who's ordering you to help them battle the Slug Army. Okay, first of all, what right does this guy have to just teleport you to his ship and order you to help. Talk about rude.

After a few tests, your transported again to your own personal ship...and here is where the game gets absolutely bizarre. Seems like the game is just meant more and more for younger kids the more you play it. So while you talked to some crazy general in the beginning, now you get to talk to your ship's computer, FIDO, who is a dog....*sighs* I don't know.....he helps you get missions, and navigate your ship to new planets where you have to accomplish these missions which usually involves rescuing people, finding ship parts, or killing a lot of slugs.

Where's the damn salt? Did you know beer also kills slugs? Okay, admit it...who killed slugs when they were younger by pouring salt on em...I know you did. You're a cruel and horrible human being (I did it too....)

Let's talk about the game play for a second, because I'm way too obsessed with talking about how bizarre this game looks. The game is separated into two main segments of gameplay. The first part of the game is an asteroid-styled shooter where you need to blow up a bunch of rocks, or enemy ships before you're actually able to land on the slug-invaded planet.

This is seriously just the atari game with ramped up graphics. The controls are absolutely horrendous though, and getting hit by one rock will send your ship flying from one side of the screen to the other. Do yourself a favor and just spin around in circles and keep firing. If you're lucky, you'll get past this crap-fest sooner rather than later.

The second one is top down, action styled game where you don a robotic suit and land on the alien planet to complete your missions. You basically just running around blasting slugs and whatever other creatures you meet.

You'll collect weapons, and items that'll help you kill all your enemies, but everything is just so damn big on the screen. It feels like the camera is zoomed in on your character, and you don't get enough of a perspective as to what kind of area you're in. It gets pretty irritating after awhile seeing a giant avatar.

The funny part is, you would think that these slugs are easy....after all they just look like little green blobs. Well they're not! Every damn enemy on the screen is insanely fast, and they bum rush you the first chance you get. Hell, you won't even have a chance to react half the time, and you'll find yourself dying on the first planet you land on. Until you get weapons upgrades, you forced to use a dinky little laser that is barely capable of putting a dent in a piece of cardboard. Just wait until you encounter the harder slugs....OH WAIT...there are basically no other enemies but slugs...SLUGS SLUGS SLUGS...OH MY GOD THE SLUGS.....

Thinking about it now, this game reminds me of a really crappy Zombies Ate My Neighbors....same concept really..but so poorly executed.

Basically, this is a rinse and repeat game. Go to a world, destroy a bunch of asteroids, transport down to the planet, kill some slugs, set up a relay to seek out new planets, and do the same thing. Keep doing this until you've cleared out all the slugs, and BOOM, you've beat the game. If you actually have the patience for doing all of this. I tried playing this game for a bit, but it got so boring so fast I just gave up.

I mean, you do get quests, and other crap to do from people or items on the planet after slugs are cleared, but do you honestly really care about it? No...it doesn't help that this game is a mixture of being overly childish and attempting to be a legitimate action game.

Herein lies the problem with this game. If you're going to do something like this, a la Zombies ate My Neighbors, you have to add variety. You have to alter the difficulty, and provide new challenges. You can't just do the same thing over and over again and expect to hold someones interest for more than a few minutes.

*Sigh* You've failed me, Lucas Arts....okay....I'll blame JVC on this one.

I think I'm only giving points to this game for the entertaining cartoony design. Other than that...BLAH.

Final Score (out of 5) :

Until next time, keep on gaming!