Starblade

Simply Red

Your mission against Red Eye is reminiscent of Luke Skywalker's flight to destroy Vader's Death Star, right down to the voice of the pilot directing your fire and calling out direction maneuvers.

Since you have only one weapon, an omnipotent laser, and one fire button (A, B, or C), and your pilot steers for you, you can concentrate on blasting serious amounts of enemies. And we mean serious!

Red Eye will throw everything but the kitchen sink in your direction in a nonstop onslaught of shield-weakening, plasma-pulsing bogies.

Hot Hints

1. Listen to your pilot's cues. He'll let you know when you're about to change direction.
2. Onslaughts of red rockets can bring your shield down to zero in no time flat.
3. Don't lose your firing cursor at the bottom or edges of the screen. You can wind up hitting nothing while the enemy toasts you.
4. Hold down the fire button for rapid fire.

Overview

Polygon and 3-D modeled graphics. Digital sound. Vivid color. And enough scaling and zoom to get you airsick.

That's just the beginning of Namco Hometek's Starblade, a first-person deep-space Shooter that you can't help but compare to Star Wars arcade-style games.

Starblade drops one player behind the laser controls of the Geostorm FSF fighter for a virtual-reality-type battle against the forces of the evil Red Eye, a mechanical death star about to fry your Mother Planet with the Wave Cannon, a star-powered device feared by all the Federation of Planets.

You face a number of missions against Red Eye. As lead gunner for the Federation Star Fleet, you have two objectives: Blast everything that moves — and stay alive.