UN Squadron, or Area 88, as this title is known as in Japan, is a horizontal shooter, originally written by Capcom for the Arcade, and ported by US Gold to the Atari ST. For the uninitiated, Area 88 is originally a Japanese Manga series, and later a few Anime series. Only Capcom's arcade release had the name change to UN Squadron, while the other mediums kept the original title with their US releases. Also of note, the manga was one of the earliest translated manga releases in the US.
NOTE: A trainer was used for making this capture.
I like the Atari ST port, for the most part. A majority of the arcade content appears to have ported over to the system, and does look quite nice. The controls are decent. 2 player gameplay is supported. What do I dislike? Using the same music almost exclusively throughout the game!
All 3 characters from the arcade are present in the port, as expected, and I just had to choose the A-10, which has a pilot from Denmark. The A-10 is probably my favorite military aircraft, and is still in use by the US Air Force today! While I have not played the arcade version of UN Squadron in a few decades, I did play both it and this port back in the day, and I was happy with the job that was done overall back then. I think a lot of care was taken in bringing the art used in the arcade over to the port, and the graphics work well in my opinion. I just wish more care was spent on the music and effects side.
My overall thought? UN Squadron is not a groundbreaking game in the genre by any means. I am sure many people would call it mediocre at best. I enjoy the game, and I also enjoy the setting, and the craziness employed by Capcom with some of the boss choices. I think the game is worth a play, but your mileage may vary.
Capture info -
This video was captured on April 10, 2019.
Game was played on an Atari 1040 STf, TOS 1.4, 1MB, equipped with a CosmosEX from Jookie.
A Best Electronics ST Monitor to VGA cable was used, connected to an OSSC 1.6 (processing the video in Line4x mode), with the output being captured by a Startech USB3HDCAP.
Video was edited with Shotcut.
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