I will always have a soft spot for Side Arms. Anyone that owned one during its time will remember how lonely it was to be a Turbo Grafx fan. While Sega and Nintendo fans traded games left and right you were luck to find a single person who had even heard of the system. A lucky twenty dollar bill saved me from enduring a few more months of Keith Courage. That money went to Side Arms, a game I had never heard of but took a chance on. My courage was rewarded with a solid port of a frustrating but great arcade game.
Side Arms was released in the arcade in 1986 and bears more than a passing resemblance to Section Z. The control setup is similar, with both buttons allowing you to attack the left or right. Both feature mobile suits and free flight in an open environment. However Side Arms is completely a shooter. The Turbo Grafx version captures a lot of what made it great but is sadly missing two-player coop. That would have gone a long way toward reducing the already high difficulty. However high challenge aside Side Arms is still perfectly playable and only suffers against the high competition in its genre on the system.
Side Arms has four primary weapons, each with their own quirks. The three-way shot is exactly what the name suggests, although its shots only fire forward. The shotgun provides a wider bullet spray. However its range is short. To make up for it shotgun blasts can destroy bullets. Bits provide two option like…bits that rotate around your mech. It’s the closest the game has to a shield but it isn’t that great. The laser is the most powerful, able to take chunks out of a boss’s health with a single shot. But is has an incredibly slow rate of fire. Each weapon can be upgraded three times and with the rate power-ups drop max power is easily achieved.
In the arcade weapons dropped from seemingly every enemy. That has been retained here but in addition you can switch weapons at any time. This is a huge addition that drastically alters the way the game is played. Aside from speed the most powerful secondary weapon is α. The α calls in another ship that merges with yours to create a super mech. This mech fires in eight directions at once and acts as a one hit shield. Like the other weapons is does have a drawback. Your increased size makes you an easy target. But it is worth it as you’ll need all the help you can get.
Side Arms is not an easy game. You have a ridiculous amount of firepower at your disposal yet it never seems good enough. Unlike other shooters such as Gradius that features wide open spaces Side Arms is built around navigating tight passages. The environment is just as dangerous as the enemies, forcing you to switch frequently for the best chance at survival. Enemies come from all sides and the game features both horizontal and vertical scrolling. There are times when it seems unfair; the aggressive snake like enemies take a ridiculous amount of damage and appear regularly. And the game could have used a life bar. But you respawn immediately although you lose all your weapons. The game is so generous with power-ups you’ll actively avoid them.
What really puts Side Arms over the top in terms of difficulty is its limited credits. You only have two continues to get through this nine level beast. That is not nearly enough in my opinion. Extra lives are rare and death comes frequently. In the arcade it makes sense; you can simply put in another quarter. But at home it is unbalanced. Side Arms would be a stronger title if the odds weren’t so heavily stacked against you.
As one of the earliest Turbo Grafx-16 games Side Arms is a solid port. It helps that the arcade game wasn’t exactly a looker either. In fact in that respect the game is average. Most of the game is spent flying against drab space backdrops. The initial cityscape is probably the most interesting in the entire game. It is also repetitive; you’ll face the same few enemies in every stage. Worse yet the game recycles the same three bosses with no changes. You are not buying looking for a technical showpiece, I’ll put it that way.
In Closing
Side Arms is a solid arcade port so early in the system’s life. As much as I like it Side Arms is a second or third shooter option for the system though. It is perfectly fine but there are stronger options available.
