Quick Review: Super Galaxy Squadron (Classic & EX Turbo)

I’ve played a handful of shmups for this blog. It has always seemed to me that shmups are one of the harder genres to innovate in, as it follows set conventions that are difficult to deviate from. That’s not to say that shmups can’t still be creative and interesting, nor that the ones who don’t try to reinvent the wheel are inevitably boring. Today’s game, Super Galaxy Squadron, is a vertical shoot’em up available in two flavors: Original and Improved.

Your daily dose of pew-pew
in a nice 16-bit package.

The original Super Galaxy Squadron is a vertical shmup and about as basic as it gets. There is a story of course – the standard space-warring fare with an enemy race and lots of pew-pew-ing. Fourteen different playable ships, each with personal stats regarding attack power, maneuverability, etc. Each ship also has its own main weapon, secondary weapon (both shot with the Z key), and finally a hyper weapon (which is activated by pressing Space), which is charged by picking up the blue bits dropped by enemies destroyed on the screen. You can improve your ship’s main and secondary weapons by grabbing power-ups often dropped by enemies – be careful, however, as upon getting hit by a bullet your ship will lose some of its upgrades, though thankfully they’re easy to pick up again as they will be floating around the area where you got hit. The hyper weapon also has the additional bonus of destroying a lot of enemy bullets on the screen as well.

But if you know anything about shmups, there’s nothing very new here. The story in SGS Classic is given to you through text on the screen between levels, while your ship flies in space.

Animated cutscenes? Nice.

How to sum up most SHMUPS out there.
"Think you can stop us? We have ten million ships!"
"We have just one ship, but it shoots a million lasers per
second. Bring it on."

It’s with EX Turbo, available along with Classic upon purchase, that things get interesting. This game doesn’t change a lot of elements regarding music or graphics in the game itself; however, it creates animated cutscenes rendered in beautiful pixel art to present the story. It also adds a new gauge to the gameplay, one that fills up alongside the hyper weapon gauge, by collecting the blue bits. That one allows you to slow down time in order to avoid bullets more easily, particularly useful against the bosses. Especially the last boss, which is literally just a sphere – never before have I hated a ball more. That thing took me 40 tries and 2 hours to kill off, good thing I was playing on Casual difficulty and had infinite lives. So yeah, there are also difficulty settings in that one. Oh, and it also includes three more playable ships.

How to have a sphere kick you ass for two hours?
Play Super Galaxy Squadron.

Bullet Hell? Always Space Hell.

I didn’t care much for the Classic, though I liked the EX Turbo version enough to beat it. The ability to slow down time was extremely helpful, to the point where I can’t imagine being personally able to beat the game without it – that says something about the game’s difficulty, I suppose. It’s also a very short game, only six levels. The 16-bit music is an absolute treat to listen to, and the pixel art is great (especially some story shots in EX Turbo). If it came down to me, I would recommend only the improved version, but both come in the same package for roughly 10$. It doesn’t do a lot that would set it apart from other shmups, but it’s good.