SNES EDF screengrab

EDF Week Part Deux

And so we march onwards, an unstoppable military force forging a path through fire and steel and bug blood and the shattered steel of a thousand thousand improbable alien death machines.

Or, more accurately, following in the footsteps of one or two anonymous guys with strange powers of resurrection, donning armour made of ‘Continues’ and ‘Retry’ and weapons made of incremental advancement. This is EDF.

But this hasn’t always been EDF. Let me take you back, back twenty years or so, back to the first great war. Let me take you back to the age of the Super Nintendo, or perhaps the Super Famicon if you were one of those hoighty-toighty ‘furriners’ the British tabloid press are so keen to write about. Let me tell you about Super Earth Defence Force (E).

The (E) is important. It designates European, and it indicates that you’re playing a ROM. Or, more strictly, I am playing a ROM so that you don’t have to. And this is important because it leads me to what is important about the first EDF outing: it is not a special game. It’s a perfectly ordinary title that does a lot unexceptionally but little wrong; it’s one of hundreds of perfectly acceptable but unmemorable shmups of the 16-bit era. You fly a little ship. You enjoy the delectable company of little drones that whizz around you or attach to your ship in order to boost your weapon power. You select different weapon times to fit the level you’re about to play. You dodge incoming fire and waves of enemies in predictable patterns. You take down lacklustre bosses. Yep, if you’ve played a Gradius or an R-Type game, you’ve played something better than this.

Rather than bang on about a twenty year-old game and its predictable design flaws, I thought it might be more fun to capture some video of me attempting to play the game. In this day and age hardcore shmup players and developers have moved enthusiastically into bullet hell territory, which in terms of design and challenge is far beyond something simple like Super Earth Defence Force. It’s also a type of game that appears accessible – typically featuring simple controls – but is a challenge to truly learn and master. And for these reasons, I thought the readers of Arcadian Rhythms might find it amusing to see just how terrible I am at Super Earth Defence Force, a dated and mediocre game.

Let the great experiment begin!

Shaun EDF SNES from Shaun Green on Vimeo.

If all else fails, select ‘explosion’. ‘Explosion’ will fix everything. And did you see how I killed a boss? It was a fairly pathetic confrontation in all honesty, especially after the difficulty I had with those flying turret things. Still, I hope you enjoyed this unprecedented and unadulterated footage of my exhibiting some hot, erotic sucking.

Coming up later this week: our first actual review of Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon (with takes on the game from three contributors) as well as my retro reviews of Global Defence Force and Global Defence Force: Tactics for the PS2.


Posted

in

,

by

Comments

9 responses to “EDF Week Part Deux”

  1. ShaunCG Avatar

    Sorry about those 25 second gaps in the second vid. That's a combination of weird emulator AVI recording, my lack of nous with free and open source video editing utilities, and the vagaries of the Fates.

    1. badgercommander Avatar
      badgercommander

      Wow, you weren't kidding about how rubbish you are. You should try Trouble Witches NEO! next, it is like 'My first Bullet Hell'.

      As for the genre, I am particularly fond of them, I own almost all of the Cave shooters on X360 that you can buy without having a Japanese console.

      Not sure if Super EDF is related to the rest of the EDF games by anything other than name. The weapon select is a nice idea but the actual game play looks very average up against the likes of Gradius and Thunder force that were out at the same time. Hell, Life Force on the NES looked better than that game.

      1. ShaunCG Avatar

        My excuse is that it's a left-rightly shmup, whereas all of my shmup experience is with up-downlies (Super Strike Gunner, Tyrian). Oh, and I had to use the keyboard as my 360 controller wouldn't behave with the emulator. ;)

        Trouble Witches Neo is probably a good one to try since it displays the hit boxes onscreen.

        The weapon select in SEDF is cute but I prefer the system in Super Strike Gunner, where you have a standard rapid-fire weapon that you can buff with upgrades (which you lose if you die, of course) but for each of the lengthy levels you select one special weapon from a pool. You can only select each weapon once and as you get more familiar with the game you know what to go for… e.g. this level has lots of ground units coming up behind me so the auto-tracking cannon is pretty handy. (Although sometimes you have to accept the impractical and just use the MegaLaser for the hell of it.)

        Yeah, I did initially wonder if perhaps Sandlot/D3 acquired the name, but thinking about it both EDF and GDF are pretty standard terms in Japan, since both are derived from the Godzilla series…

        Anyway, at some point I will try and acquire Monster Attack (EDF 1) to complete my collection, but since the assholes of ebay have declared it rare I don't see that happening any time soon. It's probably more or less the same as GDF anyway…

  2. Dylan Avatar
    Dylan

    Bullet-Hell: best name for a genre, in any art form, ever. I predict this statement will still be true once humanity finally dies off, and long after aliens have colonised the universe and invented new languages of such immense complexity and beauty we could never understand or imagine them.

    Don't care for the games at all though. Happier just knowing they exist than playing them.

  3. GordoP Avatar
    GordoP

    Well hello vague memories, I remember playing this at a friends house way back when!

    I am right on par with you Shaun, I'd do no better at any shmup.

    1. ShaunCG Avatar

      I'm not alone!

  4. guillaumeodinduval Avatar

    I knew you were bound to struggle by the 11th second; the moment you decided to NOT choose ATOMIC. Well, until you selected EXPLOSION… I bet ATOMIC makes it even easier!

    The first mission's song reminds me of Metroid a lot.

    1. ShaunCG Avatar

      I did select ATOMIC for my final life, simply because I had to… I'm glad I went with EXPLOSION though as it got me through the first level!

      The music is probably the best bit of the game, and happily you can play all the tracks from the options screen.

  5. […] way back in the day I shared a gameplay video of my attempt to play Super EDF on the SNES, and I was justly mocked for my appalling shmup skills. […]