Star Force is… a game. Released in 1984 in arcades (over here as Mega Force) by Tehkan (which later became Tecmo), it gained some notoriety in Japan for its 1985 Famicom port from Hudson. It may seem a bit mundane by today’s scrolling shmup standards, but 1985 was a different time for consoles. 

Without wading too far into the weeds, Star Force is considered a fundamental of the evolution of the Famicom. It was even referenced in Retro Game Challenge as part of Star Prince. It made it cool to press buttons really fast when Takahashi Meijin became known for his 16 presses per second. It was just big in Japan, for some reason. The 1987 NES version trumpets “over 1 million sold,” even though it’s a separate port created directly by Tecmo.

Super Star Force: Jikūreki no Himitsu is something else. It was done in house by Tecmo, rather than through Hudson. It was released in 1986, and takes things in a unique direction. The cartridge landed in my Famicom collection at some point as a cheap pickup, and if I hadn’t watched the episode of Game Center CX featuring it (season 14, episode 5), I probably wouldn’t have realized that it’s more than just a standard shmup.

OUTATIME

On the surface, Super Star Soldier just looks like a rudimentary vertical shoot-’em-up. The background is intangible, the enemies get dumped in at semi-random intervals, and the graphics are representative of the time period. The low end. In fact, it looks worse than Star Soldier. If you’re an extremely uncurious person, you’re just going to watch the background keep looping while you ignore the obvious doorways.

But you’re not uncurious, and you’ll soon fly over one of the square icons and press “B.” Inside, you’ll find hint-giving NPCs, shops, time portals, and dungeons. Shooting enemies yield “Time Pieces,” which are Super Star Soldier’s only currency. You use it to buy items from shops and, perhaps more importantly, go back in time.

You start in the year 2010 DA (“Dimension Almanac”). Your first jump takes you back to 1608 DA. If you find the time portal in 1608 DA, you travel back to 1301 DA, and so on, and so forth. However, the goal is not to just travel back to the dawn of time. You actually need to gather… things. MacGuffins. Uh, Time Stones, apparently, which are different than Time Pieces. There’s one in each time period, and they’re found within the dungeons, because dungeons are where people typically keep their important rocks.

However, it’s not as simple as finding the dungeon on each level, getting the stone, and moving on. Before the dungeons will even show up, you have to destroy something in a prior time period, which will change the future and reveal the dungeon. I think there’s actually a story to all these things you’re changing, but, uh… I really should find a translation or something for this in case the NPCs tell you what’s going on. I’ll be right back…

NASTY IN THE PAST-Y

Oh, that’s way better. There’s maybe not a tonne of backstory given to you through the game. It’s probably all in the manual. But there are at least NPCs telling you what to shoot to change the future. That eliminates some of the cryptic stuff, but not all of the cryptic stuff.

Anyway, when I talk about dungeons, I mean the kind you find in The Legend of Zelda. They’re on-foot sections where you walk around as a little dude. In fact, like The Legend of Zelda, you can drop bombs, which are pretty much only useful for finding hidden doors. But the hidden doors aren’t marked, and the possibility of a hidden door isn’t obvious.

So, like, you just have to bomb everywhere, because there are important items hidden in secret holes.

It’s neat! The concept that you need to alter that timeline to unlock things in the future is a great hook. It’s unfortunate that it was applied in such a simple fashion. It’s actually a good strategy to, at the start, go back in time as far as you can, create your paradoxes as you go. Just mess with the timestream without understanding the possible ramifications, and then jump back to 2010 to work your way back through the dungeons. It’s not always as straightforward, but it will streamline your search.

LOST IN TIME

The simplicity of Super Star Force is its worst aspect, as well as part of its charm. The scrolling backgrounds are basic, the enemies come in different shapes and move in different patterns, but they’re just kind of dropped in your path. The enemies in the dungeons suck. The dungeons themselves are essentially just mazes.

The cross between action-adventure and autoscrolling shmup is very similar to The Guardian Legend, but… I want to say “not as good,” but it’s more like 1986 and 1988 were practically an eternity apart in terms of game design. Super Star Force really demonstrates that. 1986 was the year of Zelda, Metroid, and Kid Icarus. This was sort of the state of the art on Famicom. It took a big swing, and this was how it came together.

Actually, scratch that. Its worst aspect is the fact that there’s no way to save. No password system. It takes a while to get through, and you have to do it all in one sitting.

I still think it’s fun to play, though you might want to have a guide to reference, at least to figure out how the items work and maybe what walls to bomb. There’s a decent amount of variety. But, most importantly, I just have a lot of fondness for it. It’s fresh. It permeates this atmosphere of discovery. It smells like the kind of game that I should be playing plopped on the floor in front of a CRT screen. Just blips and bloops, a droning soundtrack, a looping background, and the promise of secrets to plumb. Any shoot-’em-up can push you across a background, this is the only one I know of that lets you mess with the time-space continuum just so you can go into some caves.

7/10

This review was conducted on an RGB modded NES with a Honeybee Famicom adapter and a cartridge version of the game. It was paid for by the author. The fan translation for testing purposes was done by GAFF Translations.