Heavy Unit

Heavy Unit comes from the Japanese studio Kaneko and is a horizontal shooter. The 1990 date on this entry belongs to the home conversion for the Sega Mega Drive; the arcade original is two years older, which was the usual gap for coin-op shooter conversions.

Shooters of the late eighties were built on a simple but deep principle. The ship flies forward, enemies arrive in learnable waves, and the player collects upgrades that a single hit takes away again. Losing your equipment is what makes these games tense: a mistake costs not only a life but the advantage you spent minutes assembling. The bosses closing each section cannot be overpowered: they run repeating patterns and the job is finding the safe spot inside one.

The Mega Drive suited the genre. Its processor handled large object counts, background scrolling was smooth, and the palette was enough for the contrast of dark space against bright weapon fire. The sound chip added the sharp metallic tone that belongs to this kind of game.

Home conversions of arcade shooters always had one problem: a cabinet is designed to beat you so you pay again, while at home the difficulty decides whether the game is enjoyable at all. Good conversions therefore retuned it, even if players did not always approve. A cartridge also placed no limit on attempts, turning an arcade test of nerve into something closer to practice at home.

Heavy Unit is one of the titles that fires up in the browser here — one click and you are flying.