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» [Master System] In its best moments Power Strike brings impressive detail. Not bad for a 1988 Master System release.
When Japanese developer Compile debuted its latest shooting game in 1988, it hit on themes that almost feel uncomfortably familiar today.
The game was Power Strike; a title that did impressive things in pushing its genre forward, while spinning a yarn formed from threads focussed on environmental decline, rogue computer intelligence gone awry, frightening advances in military technology, and the dangers of trying to manipulate and control too much of the world around us.
Compile’s cautionary tale of environmental maintenance supercomputer DIA51 turning on humanity and letting our climate cook isn’t wildly deep or elaborate – after all, narrative in shmups is mostly about establishing a hint of context and flavour before setting off into the bullet storm, where the players carve their own stories of high skill and dramatic scrapes with death. But the foresight Power Strike demonstrated – albeit fleetingly – played perfect partner to its somewhat visionary take on what 2D shooters could be. Before digging into the game Power Strike is, a quick clarification of its potentially confusing history (for more on the sprawling series that followed, check the What’s In A Name? panel on page 62). Power Strike, then, was first released to the Sega Mark III and Master System in Japan in February 1988 under its original moniker Aleste.
It would soon be ported to the MSX2 computer in the summer of that same year, beefing the game up with two additional stages, easier difficulty and an expanded plot with cutscenes. By December 1988 the warmly received shooter finally made its way to US and European stores under the name Power Strike. Gone were the additional stages and new romantic plot elements of the MSX2 outing, with Western gamers essentially getting a port of the original Master System build. Curiously, in the US, Power Strike was initially available exclusively through mail order, and only a very limited retail release followed. That mail-order edition in particular now easily clears the £250 mark in the collector space; an impressive sum for a Western port, but still a way off the £1,000-plus prices a complete MSX2 version presently courts.
It might be tempting to consider that MSX2 version as Power Strike’s defining release; it coming with all those enticing extras. But that port also brought excessive flickering and slowdown that – while deliberate or appreciated in many shmups – didn’t sit well in this particular case. Simply put, mome
