Game 29: The Adventures of Star Saver

I'm sick of adventures. Can't I just stay home with a nice cup of tea, a terrible show on the television, and a snuggy? Apparently not. As far as I can tell, there are an infinite amount of games starting with "Adventure." It's endless.

Anyway, here are the Adventures of Star Saver, one of the least fun games I've ever played for this damned project. It's just so...ugh.

But we'll get to that, I suppose.

The Adventures of Star Saver was published (and developed?) in 1992 by Taito, known for such arcade hits as Space Invaders and Violence Fight. A company called "A Wave" was also involved, which is nearly impossible to google thanks to there being many articles with sentences like "a wave of destruction" or "a wave of delicious burning molasses." I guess they made a wrestling game called Astral Bout for the Super Famicom and I'm not sure I could care any less.

Star Saver is not a wrestling game, although it's equally baffling and meaningless. Here, look at this intro:

Why do they both have guns?

From what I can tell, two people are abducted by aliens. One of them is converted into a mech, and the other is beamed inexplicably onto the ring of a planet. The two people meet back up and chase after the aliens, possibly to convert the person back from being a mech.

What's unsettling here is that gun bro leaps into the mech which is, I guess, also a person??? Like, hey, if some sort of magic converts me into a living refrigerator, do not put food in me! Likewise, if I get converted into a sentient mech, I really don't want you to pilot me! I will pilot myself, thank you very much, you can hang back if you need to.

Rectangular bullets - an ever popular choice

Right, so the game. It's a platformer, but you can also shoot, and sometimes you can fly just a little bit, but once you fly a certain amount of times you can't anymore. Also if you jump into a bit and you have a bow and arrow, you'll get grappling-hooked back onto the nearest platform. Sometimes your gun shoots three ways instead of just one. The first boss is a big mushy brain metroid

Squish

It's a really miserable experience, honestly. The mech has the incredible power of "slowing the game down really badly when it shoots," and often times enemies will literally appear from nowhere to kill you. There's a neat conceit when you take damage - your mech disappears but the little dude gets to keep going. Of course, he's much weaker and slower to shoot so it just makes the game that much more miserable.

There were some bright spots, like this nice dog:

Good puppy

...who attacked me once I turned my back:

i still love u pup

Weirdly, most of the platforms look like glitch art.

Oh, right, also there are evil music notes?

But god it's just so ponderous and random and very very mean. Once you run out of lives, that's it! Game over, start from the beginning. Screwwww youuuuuuu

What the hell is even going on here?

I wish I had something funny to say about this game! It's honestly just too boring to exist. I hope it stops existing.