Super Earth Defense Force (SNES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
205A playthrough of Jaleco's 1992 shoot 'em up for the Super NES, Super Earth Defense Force.
Played through on the normal difficulty level.
Super E.D.F. was a game that I overlooked for a long time. It was released just after Christmas, so it wasn't like I was going to be able get it anytime soon. Besides, I was already playing Darius Twin, and Gradius, R-Type, and UN Squadron were all already on store shelves when this came out.
That's not to say it's a bad game. It's not bad at all. But in typical Jaleco fashion, the timing of its release sucked and the game didn't stand out at all next to the impressive shooter line-up full of big names already on the system.
It's a typical horizontally-scrolling shooter that was adapted from a Jaleco arcade title, and it looks and sounds fairly nice. The graphics are bright and colorful and the mode-7 background effects are pretty neat (just check out the set-piece in stage four!), but the ship designs are pretty generic overall and the game slows down *a ton* when too much stuff is going on - it's not quite as bad as it was in Gradius III or Super R-Type, but it's not too far off, either.
I really liked some of the music. Even though is sounds super corny using the Nintendo's stock instrument samples, some of the themes do become ear worms after awhile - the stage 5 music is a good example of that. And that funky slap bass on the weapon select screen is pretty sweet.
The gameplay is about what you'd expect, but Super EDF has its own little surprise take on its weapons system - you get your choice of 8 weapons at the beginning of the mission, and each has several fire modes, but there's a catch: you only get access to the better firing modes as you level up your ship. Some of the more powerful weapons are beasts at level 5, but are utterly worthless at level one, so there's a good incentive to play as well as you can, and to know which weapons are most effective in which stages. It's a short game, but the added bit of replay value is appreciated.
Super E.D.F. was one of those games that was "good enough." It wasn't trying to compete with the AAA releases, and it played well enough to be enjoyable. It was the type of game that you bought on a whim knowing nothing about it and ended up being pleasantly surprised.
I certainly enjoyed it.
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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