Nebula Fighter Shareware (Holodream Software, 1997)
0Nebula Fighter is a late DOS horizontal autoscrolling shooter. In the late 20th Century the world's terrorist organizations merged into a single organization so powerful that they took over the world. In 2010, an alien race called the Venishians visited Earth. One of their ships was captured and used to create a fleet to extend the terrorists' empire and conquer the Venishians. In the tradition of games like R-Type, the screen fills with enemies, and weapon upgrades further fill it with your own firepower. So much going on can make it hard to see the small enemy shots, but thankfully your ship has a shield, so it's not just one-shot kills. When things get really crazy, or when fighting a boss, the shield can be depleted almost instantly, so you can use a "smart bomb" to nuke the screen when you're in trouble. Destroyed enemies and asteroids release fire power boosters which increase the number of shots you can fire from any given weapon. Weapon upgrades, side-mounted rockets, and Retroid cannons that fire backwards can allow your ship to fire in all directions and destroy the many waves of enemies. The version numbers are odd because there was an "E3 Demo 1.2" before the 1.1 Shareware version. The shareware version replaced the male voice with a female voice for "Energy!", and added a verbal warning when energy is low and a notice an extra ship is collected, a boss energy gauge, a story to the Help section, and four extra levels. One Reality went out of business before the registered DOS version was complete, and all pre-orders were cancelled. It looks like there never was a registered version of Nebula Fighter, but eGames later published Nebulae Fighter Special Edition. There are 2 levels in the E3 Demo and 6 levels in the Shareware version.