Burning Angels

Burning Angels was published by Naxat Soft in 1990 for the PC Engine, a console that ranked among the strongest shooter platforms in Japan. The genre made up a substantial part of its library, and Naxat Soft contributed several titles to it.

The hardware suited shooters well: fast redraws, plenty of moving objects without slowdown, and a colour palette that allowed distinctive backgrounds. Games on it were not afraid to flood the screen with fire, and players navigated that traffic by learning the small hit area of their ship rather than watching its whole outline.

A 1990 date means the title arrived when Japanese publishers were producing shooters at such a rate that they differed mainly in detail: the weapon upgrade system, the behaviour of support modules, or how punishing the final stretch was. Craft mattered more than novelty of premise.

The catalogue lists a side view. PC Engine shooters were built with both horizontal and vertical scrolling and both were commonplace; what counts more is that this is a game of reflexes and of memorising where enemies appear.

Naxat Soft is remembered among collectors today largely thanks to its console output for this very platform.

Shooters on this console also carry a practical advantage for players today: a run is short. Reaching the end takes around half an hour, so the game can be attempted without setting aside a whole evening, and repetition pays off visibly because the layouts are learned by heart.

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