Space Manbow 1989

Is it still worth playing?

An ancient defense system awakens as a huge battleship, and a pilot flies a fish shaped ship to destroy it, in this 1989 scrolling shooter from Konami for the MSX2. It began as an adaptation of the arcade game Thunder Cross, but the team remade it several times and redesigned it from scratch around the manbow fish. The main weapons are a needle shot and a spread wave, and up to two Options fire regular bullets. An energy bar fills from orange orbs, unlocks stronger weapons when it reaches a threshold and drains over time, but it does not reset on death. The soundtrack uses Konami's SCC sound chip and was composed by Tsuyoshi Sekito and Yuji Takenouchi. Checkpoints are sparse. It is the only Konami shooter made for the MSX2. An energy bar that survives a death still keeps a run going after a mistake.