Crisis Force (NES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
336A playthrough of Konami's 1991 vertically-scrolling shoot 'em up for the Nintendo Famicom, Crisis Force.
Played through the hard difficulty mode.
Crisis Force (クライシスフォース / Kuraishisu Foosu) was only released on the Japanese Famicom, much to the dismay of many shooter fans since the game had already seen coverage in gaming magazines. Thankfully, the entire game is in English, so non-Japanese speakers will have no problems playing it whatsoever.
Konami really went all out on this one. The game makes use of the same VRC-4 chip as was used in Gradius II, allowing for massive amount of variety in the graphics, and smooth scrolling in every conceivable direction. And while it's certainly nowhere near as difficult as the Gradius games, Crisis Force puts up quite a stiff challenge on hard mode, especially in the final two stages. It also has a few neat innovations in its gameplays - at the press of a button you can transform your ship into 3 different forms, each with different ways of attacking, and the bomb attack changes based on which form you are in. There is a final fifth form that appears when you collect five of the blue gems, and it'll give you a big boost in attack power and allow a couple of hits, not to mention looking really cool - the ship looks a bit like it's being powered by an electrical storm.
The graphics are completely incredible here. Canyons open up beneath you, fire tears up big chunks of the scenery beneath you, and the heavy use of parallax does wonders for the screen's sense of depth. The enemies are all pretty well-designed too, and some of those boss fights are unbelievably awesome to look at. The music is equally as worthy of hyperbole. It was done by Matsuraba Kenichi, who did the music for Castlevania II, The Lone Ranger, Contra Force, and the SNES TwinBee game, and Crisis Force's soundtrack is just as good as those in his other games.
Of course, given that the NES really can't do half of what the game is attempting to push through it here, flicker and slowdown run rampant. That can be a real boon at times, though - when stuff starts really flying, you'll appreciate how helpful the slowdown can be in helping you navigate the bullet patterns. It doesn't negatively impact the game - at least not in my opinion - and NES fans are hardly strangers to seeing the system strain enough break a sweat.
If you like old-school Konami and its shoot 'em ups, this is one of the crown jewels on the NES. It sits very comfortably next to Gun Nac, Gradius II, Summer Carnival as one of the best and most impressive shooters that ever graced the system, and it's certainly among Konami's best 8-bit titles.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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