Developer: Jaleco Publisher: Jaleco Release: 10/21/88 Genre: Shooter
The Famicom Disk System is interesting to explore in retrospect. As it was the primary source of Famicom software for a few years it built up quite a decent sized library. While many would later go on to be regular cartridge titles there remain a decent number of exclusives. Many of these are from genres that take advantage of disk system storage like adventure games. But one genre that saw no benefit was shooters as there are very few. Big Challenge! Dogfight Spirit lives up to one part of its name but is an otherwise forgettable shmup in a library with far too many.
Big Challenge! Dogfight Spirit places you behind the controls of an attack helicopter as you fly to hot spots around the world destroying bases that apparently belong to an evil organization. This is not explained until the ending, not that it makes much of a difference. Each of the game’s seven levels has two phases. You work your way through each level until you reach the end level boss which is always an arrangement of different turrets. Once destroyed you begin the escape phase. Despite the title you are not flying backwards through the level you just completed. Instead it is nothing more than a high speed shooting gallery with tons of power-ups that make it so easy I question why they this segment is even in the game.
Shooters almost always live and die by their weapon selection and here Dogfight Spirit comes up short. There’s the vertical shot that fires forward and backward but is mostly useless. The horizontal shot is the opposite but its bullets are so slow that it is worthless. The game loves to drop this weapon for some reason. The laser is decent and only suffers from its narrow beam. The wide shot is slower and more powerful but seems to be the rarest. My favorite is the three-way shot which is the equivalent of Contra’s spread gun. Dogfight Spirit is a slow build in that the first few stages are slow and you can get by mostly with the default cannon. The action does get heavy by the midpoint which highlights the deficiencies with the weapons. But even if they were better or more interesting this would still be an average game.
Ultimately despite the action picking up in its second half Dogfight Spirit becomes repetitive in short order. There are basically only four types of enemies: planes, tanks, mines that shuffle back and forth, and ground turrets. After about two levels you will have seen all of them and there is little variety the further you progress. The levels are a bit too long for my liking which exacerbates the problem. The escape sequence could have added a little bit of flare to an otherwise mundane game but in practice is nothing more than a high speed shooting gallery. Even though Dogfight Spirit is a short game it was a chore to play this all the way through, it is that generic.
Big Challenge! Dogfight Spirit does its best to live up to its name. The first few levels are easy as they are sparse with enemies. What few there are lack aggression. But when the difficulty spikes it spikes hard and not in a good way. The game is overly fond of its pop up turrets, to the point they are the majority enemy in later levels. They cluster them together and blanket the screen in bullets. A lot of times they attack from off screen. Between these and the variable terrain the game begins to feel unfair rather than challenging. It is manageable but could be better. You start with nine lives and they will drain quickly by the end. If the goal was to make challenging game they certainly succeeded. But it comes at the cost of being a game I want to actually play even beyond its difficulty.
In Closing
Big Challenge! Dogfight Spirit is an inoffensive shooter that does the bare minimum in the genre and nothing else. This is a painfully average game that offers nothing you have not seen before in a much better package. You would have to be real hard up for another shooter on the NES to settle for this one. At that point you might as well replay the much better offerings like Life Force or Gun-Nac.
