Review: Action Fighter

Action Fighter

Platform: Sega Master System Release date: 1986 Features: 1player, 2players (alternating) Developer:Sega

“Get ready to play a starring role in the incredible world of international espionage. You receive five different assignments. All action-packed. And all extremely dangerous. Your secret weapon? A vehicle that transforms into a dozen different deadly devices. Your high-speed motorcycle can turn into a customized car and then into a sound-barrier-breaking jet plane. All in a matter of seconds. The real test? To know when to use which weapon. Because the wrong machine, at the wrong time, can prove fatal.” Action Fighter is one of those games that probably made a lot of sense to game designers of the 1980s. You control a transforming flying sports car that can destroy jets, helicopters, tanks and submarines. The sheer preposterousness of this idea surely speaks volumes of the gaming experience that waits (and perhaps the gaming public of the day?). Combine that with the improbability of a sports car actually having the trunk space to contain the arsenal required to destroy the number and variety of enemies in the game, and you’ve got yourself another arcade shooter waiting for you to press start. Action Fighter was developed and published by Sega for arcades and ported to the Sega Master System in the year 1986. Action Fighteris an overhead shooter that combines gameplay mechanics of ground vehicle combat games and air combat based arcade shooters. The game consists of five stages laden with enemy vehicles to shoot or avoid, with each level concluding with a boss-fight.

First and foremost, let me get this off my chest now before it takes over the review. Action Fighter has to be the most difficult game on the Sega Master System I have encountered. It is simply ridiculously hard and I’m assuming Action Fighter is extremely difficult as it was an arcade game. I can see it sitting at the entrance of some late 1980s arcade, a new game with motorcycles and planes and a transforming spy car at your control. Young punters were more than likely attracted to it, wanting to master this new game before anyone else... But no one could do it. So, I’m assuming, the challenge was on. Kids probably challenged other kids to try and beat this game, wanting to at least witness someone beat it. I can literally hear the gasps of excitement now as children were amazed when they saw level 2 for the first time... whether or not any of these 80s children saw the conclusion of Action Fighter was not recorded in history, though I’m sure Sega was toasting the game as more frustrated children pushed another 20 cent piece into the machine to have that one last desperate attempt at success... Amazingly, Action Fighterseems to have that same appeal when translated to console.

Action Fighteris a top-down shooter, gameplay will shift between racing-shooting, and flight-shooting. This simple alternating blend of two arcade shooting genres makes the game somewhat addictive. During ground based combat, you are able to navigate a motorcycle through vertically scrolling streets, with enemy vehicles swerving past or around you. With one button you are able to shoot these vehicles out of your way. Completion of these ground based levels is helped by roaming ‘Sega Trucks’, where if you navigate your vehicle into, you are awarded power-ups such as double fire and rockets. Also laden throughout the racing levels are ‘Letter-Based’ pickups (ranging from A through to F). Collecting these will allow the player to transform their motorcycle into a sports car, which is a little less manoeuvrable than the motorcycle, however players become less prone to exploding upon scraping another vehicle on the road. Once you reach a particular point of the level, the sports car will have wings and jet engines magically added and all of a sudden, you’re airborne and thus begins the air combat segment of the game (note: unlike the game blurb suggests, you don’t have explicit control of this metamorphosis, you simply need to have the sports car and reach the end of the ground level). Navigation plays a lot like other vertically scrolling arcade shooters of the day, with enemy planes of wide variety and movement capabilities scrolling downwards to impede your progress or destroy you. Now in plane mode, you are able to drop bombs on enemy tanks and boats below you (which becomes a crucial feature in some later boss battles).

The boss battles are often the most difficult segments of the game as it takes an extreme level of navigation and shooting intuition to avoid destruction. The variety of the bosses range from ground based tanks, to helicopters to submarines, surfacing from the ocean to be bombed, and impregnable once concealed. All the while you are often outnumbered and being shot at from many different positions by enemies simultaneously. A detracting point from the game’s playing experience is no matter what vehicle you are controlling at the time, one collision or one shot from an enemy will destroy you. Comparing how many hits you are able to take with the sheer amount of moving, shooting and manoeuvring impediments laid out before the player, you’ll soon realise that the odds of success are really tilted against you. However as Action Fighteris an arcade shooter translated to console release it retains a points based system. Destroying enemy vehicles and collecting flags in flight combat will allow the player to accumulate a score. Once a certain score is reached, an extra life is awarded.

Action Fighteris simply designed. Graphically the environments in the game are a little uninspiring, and the ground based enemies often repeat in large numbers. Thankfully the design breaks up the monotony of moving vertically by changing the style of play with the airborne sequences. This too does become repetitive after time. Despite obvious difficulty increases with subsequent levels, visually there is not a lot that separates the levels from one another. Playing through a level knowing how easy it is to die combined with repeating environments and enemies creates a despairing thought that the game is actually impossible, and despite how good you get, it might actually go on forever. The vehicles and enemies is where the graphics are spent, and your sprite is on the same level of design quality as your foes. Whilst the design is simple, the design is clear and vehicles are appropriately outlined making fast-paced navigation all the more easier.

Musically the game is particularly repetitive, with a single repeating score throughout the game. The sound design of the vehicles, weapons fired and explosions however is well appropriated to their corresponding in-game actions. With a game such as this where the core concept is to shoot and dodge and do so as fast and as constantly as possible, I feel the music (like the levels) could have been mixed up a little, just to create that tension and focus from the player and to actually make the player feel as though they are getting somewhere by changing the locale of the next level both visually and sonically. Action Fighter is another monotonous arcade shooter from the 80s. However the sheer monotony of its visual, sound and gameplay design is broken up by the alternating combat style segments of the game. Conquering Action Fighter is less like playing a video game and more like entering a state of a concentrated trance. You’re entire visual and responsive being must be invested in the experience otherwise you will lose, and lose, and lose. Action Fighter is a game of simple design, its basic control scheme and ‘shoot and dodge’ mechanics reflect that. However it is very fast-paced, it is frenetic, and never before in a video game has a series of enemies been so well placed to ensure your one-hit-death demise.

Action Fightercomes with my recommendations because of the effect it has on people. It makes you frustrated, it highlights your navigation incompetencies, and more often than not, you’ll die very quickly. This thusly makes the game the perfect ‘life for life’ style arcade shooter. Without knowing, it is the perfect party game. With its highs and lows, should you put this baby on with some mates around, I can guarantee that you’ll be comparing one another’s progress by the end of the night. Simple to play, a lot of fun once you get into a groove of play, the game is only let down by its visual, sound design and its difficulty. It could have done with a little more variety to set itself apart from other titles of the day, yet ultimately satisfies players as an unconquerable challenge. Leave me a message once you’ve beaten it, the children of the 80s want to know the ending.

Words by ColdBain