Game:

StarCraft (1998)

Duration: 14:11

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"The Day 3 - Dragon Force" is the third officially released title by the once-popular Korean development team, "Mirinae Software" and the second officially released title within "The Day" series (also known as "For the Day"), with the first game originally being planned for MSX back in the late 80s, but was cancelled (causing the confusion of the game's titles with "The Day 2" being "the first"). While none of their games were "genre-defining" and usually borrowed or copied various aspects from prominent video games from Japan and the West, they released some noteworthy releases for Korean PC owners back in the day, most which (if nothing else) featured awesome soundtracks.

Released in 1993, The Day 3 is your largely typical shmup where the war has brought the world towards the breaking point and things have gotten out of hand to the point where you utilize a team of talented pilots who have to save the world from alien invaders, and borrows some elements from the "Thunder Force" series (if the name didn't at least allude to this somewhat). Playing as Jeong Kihyeop with his balanced "New Type FX-19SX Taemiru Fighter", Jennifer Lee in her slow but sturdy "VF-27 Blackcat Stealth Fighter" or Siegfried Reutz in his strong but fragile "A-174 Gladiator", you fly through six levels swarming with non-stop enenmy activity until you face a giant, intimidating boss at the level's end. Besides each pilot having different stats, they all share a group of weapons and sub-weapons as well as three different "Options" (which can either spin around you or follow your moves in a "tail" fashion"). Characters can switch through their weapons and adjust their speed at will.

The graphics on one hand are pretty good for a DOS game of the time with a variety of enemy crafts, nice explosions, and smooth scrolling backgrounds... but on the other hand, the graphics flicker on various setups and there is no (or little) speed regulation like some of Mirinae's other titles, which means the framerate is always inconsistent depending on the number of moving objects and on-screen firepower, so even if one level moves at an acceptable pace, others may move too quickly. The audio is nice with some spoken dialogue and good sound effects, and supports Adlib, Soundblaster, and two types of Roland sound setups (we use a different set-up for this video as the Adlib music has been uploaded to YT already). Tunes like "Grand Work Buester", "Neo-Seoul Attack" and "Raspujin" are particularly nice. The weapons and gameplay are fairly unbalanced and stages are too long IMO, but it could be worse; in general, you can see some effort was made.

This is a video of the game in action. The gameplay starts at 3:17 or so. Enjoy.