Bullet Ballet- Strikers 1945 Plus Portable Reviewed

Despite the videogame industry’s general apathy towards shooters, I still get an overwhelming sense of excitement whenever another shmup gets announced. I find the bullet-dodging, ship-destroying action curiously therapeutic, and derive a strong sense of satisfaction when a particularly difficult boss is defeated. Contrarily, I will occasionally reduce the difficulty to one of the easier settings, for an entirely different experience. Sometimes after a grueling day, spacing out with a solid shmup can be oddly revitalizing.

PM Studio’s recent addition to the Playstation Store, may not foster an inner zen-like tranquility, but will offer a significant challenge for fans of the genre. With only a single mode of difficulty, Strikers 1945 Plus Portable, offers a faithful, albeit diamond-hard diversion for PSP owners. As a recreation of the 1999 NeoGeo title, Strikers is a wonderfully faithful port, offering seamless ad-hoc cooperative play to compensate for the Playstation Portable’s single stick.

Although players can choose between the digital or analog stick from the options menu, I found that the nub offered slightly less hand cramp during extended durations with Strikers. Each of the six available ships offer similar mobility, but differ in loadout and size- while the Flying Pancake carries an awesome amount of firepower, it’s bulky size makes it particularly difficult to maneuver through thick bullet fields. 

Most of the time, gamers will be holding down the rapid fire button to eliminate the swarms of ground and air foes. Once specified amount of enemies are downed, a ‘super shot’ becomes available, radically increasing the amount of munitions released by the player. Additionally, the gamer has a limited amount of bombs, which instead of the full-screen devastation of the Raiden series, offers a squadron of bombers that provide a shield to the player. While gamers are only given a three ship sortie, Strikers does give the player an unlimited amount of continues.

Although Strikers is a port of a ten year old game, it offers a competent visual delivery on the PSP platform. Players may choose between three screen sizes, which range from the game’s original aspect ratio, to a screen filing full screen mode. Each allows the players to clearly see every pink, blue and red bullet launched toward the player, and wisely keeps vital player info confined to the borders of the screen. Players with a limited amount of room on their memory cards will be happy to know that Strikers takes up a scant 34 megabytes of space.