Astro Warrior (Sega Master System Review)

Astro Warrior
Developed by Sega
First Released December 14, 1986
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Yea, that’s not phallic-shaped. No sir.

Hey Cathy: don’t forget to “hit save” when you write reviews. I accidentally finished and deleted this one. It was a doozie, too. Would have won a Peabody. Alas. Anyway, three levels. Astro Warrior contains a whopping three levels. Three solid levels, mind you. Ones that totally lack environmental hazards. Astro Warrior is a shmup where enemies attack in clusters, then after you take out a couple clusters of one type, another type of enemy spawns. Then, after you beat one cycle of enemies on a stage, the cycle repeats a second time. Then you fight a boss. After you complete three levels, you repeat the process over, only the second time around, enemies who didn’t fire bullets at you now do. Oh, and ones who fired bullets before now fire a lot more. Astro Warrior feels unfinished. Even by 1986 standards, three levels is absurdly short.

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Having said that, shockingly, I enjoyed my time with it. Especially during the second, harder run through the levels. During the first cycle of stages, the game is too easy. Especially if you know what you’re doing. Power-ups are dropped when you destroy a dozen or so of the structures you pass over. I’d played Astro Warrior previously and remembered that most of my deaths were from colliding with enemies because I was moving too fast from gathering too many of the speed-ups. This time around, I only got the first one and skipped the rest. It made the game too easy. The final gun upgrade pierces all enemies, and when you combine that with two invincible options tailing you, it makes for a highly cheesable experience. However, once the game gets teeth on the second cycle of stages, it wasn’t bad. You can’t shake the feeling that Astro Warrior was rushed and lazy, but the enemies are nicely designed, the boss fights are VERY satisfying, and hey, it’s over with too quickly to get bored. If the difficulty kept ramping up after the second cycle of stages, I might have ranked it even higher.
Verdict: YES!