Stargunner

Apogee always released good flying shooter types. This one follows in the wake of Major Stryker, Raptor, and Zone 66. On the market in 1996, it features fast-paced action, good replayability and good graphics, all with an unrelenting difficulty that's sure to have you cursing your way through the first episode on the easiest difficulty. Tip: When you're at the buy screens, press F2 to save your game. Make a save for each level so that you can come back if you mess something up. You'll be glad you did.

 

Gameplay: 7/10

Fly your ship through a 2D plane of explosions, spaceships, and extra explosions collecting powerups, credits and points. Unique, no, simple, yes, but it does feature a buy screen where you can purchase upgrades to your ship and get it working the way you want. You can stack two extra guns of your choice, two orbiting moons that do various things, and install engines to keep your speed up. All of these features become apparently necessary, as you're not going to get anywhere without upgrading. Once you beat the stage, you face a boss, which is usually just some unimaginative spaceship with some weak points you've gotta hit.

 

Graphics: 9/10

 They're real good and they work very fast. Everything flying around you gives a great feeling of chaos and it takes a fine-tuned player to get used to its insanity. The enemies look good, the levels are okay, and your ship changes as you upgrade it. Cool. The enemies and bosses could have been cooler though, minus a point.

Sound: 8/10

There's some rockin' digitized music, entertaining digitized speech, and a punch of pew-pews. It does add a lot to the overall experience. Repetitive after a while, so I'm dockin' 2 points.

 

Overall: 8/10

It's an awesome addition to your freeware collection. You'll be playing it again and again as you discover the best weapon combinations for your play style. The story doesn't exactly keep you feeling gripped, but it does give you some sort of premise as to what the hell you're doing on this planet. Apogee went and gave the game away for free starting in 2005, which is quite generous of them, considering how great the game is. Check out the link below for some more information on a great game that time forgot!

http://www.3drealms.com/stargunner/

Major Stryker

Back in the shareware days, I used to have a few 2-D shooters like this. Raptor, Zone 66, and of course the one I'm writing about, Major Stryker. It arrived in early 1993 from everyone's favorite producers, Apogee Software. It featured this neat 3-D triple background scrolling thing, some sweet EGA graphics, and awesome digitized sound for us folks with the soundblaster. It starts after World War III, humanity is in turmoil, and some aliens come through a wormhole to take out your civilization. Expect mass frustration, broken keyboards, and everybody in your neighborhood hearing you yell "I'm never playing this game again!"


Gameplay: 8/10
Furiously hard. You control Major Stryker, I guess he's a  remaining member of some elite strike force or something, on a mission to blow up a few alien planets. You can move up, down, left and right on your little 2-D plane of existence, tap ALT to rapidly shoot some missles, hit space to drop a bomb, and more. The powerups do stuff like raise your fire rate, increase the number you can shoot, and shield you. The ship will go down in one hit, unless you have a powerup, which at that point you'll just lose all your neat stuff. There's an angering amount of enemies that are constantly barraging you with their flashy red things, and you're supposed to be able to dodge all this and destroy them all at the same time.  If you don't pick up the first chain of powerups by destroying the first and second wave of enemies in the level, it's going to be pretty tough to get it going from there. That's my experience with it, at least, if you die you might as well restart. In actuality, this sort of challenge is what keeps me playing this game, but -2 points for making me tap ALT so much.

Graphics: 7/10
The game plays pretty well, the levels are pretty cool looking, my only problem is there's just too much stuff going on at once. Extremely hard to concentrate when so much stuff is happening. I had to take away 3 points for that, but otherwise it's colorful, fast, and fun.

Sound: 8/10
The digitized sound is one of the best parts of this game, hearing those explosions and bumpin' the music just fits so well. The tunes are a little lame though, so -2 points. Could have done better but still great.


Overall: 8/10

Major Stryker rocks. It's a really good example of how games of the time had new innovations that we take for granted today. It was 2006 when Apogee made the bold decision to call the game freeware. Come to think of it, I knew this game was ultra hard when I was a kid, but it seems even more difficult now. Maybe you can get somewhere I didn't? Link below secures the download.
ftp://ftp.3drealms.com/freeware/strykerfw.zip