Leger vs. Kuuga: Operation Code Vapor Trail (Mega Drive)

Data East is said to have done a good job in porting the arcade original to the Mega Drive. I would not know since I have not played the arcade version, but looking at some footage on YouTube certainly seem to indicate that this is the case.

Not that Kuuga: Operation Code Vapor Trail (I will leave it at Vapor Trail) really seems all to progressive, not even by 1989 standards, but at the same time it does not seem out of time comparing it to other 1991 shmups on console.

Picking one of three available ships, each one balancing out the ratio between fire power and speed, it just takes a couple of seconds until the concept of layers (at least visually speaking) is at work. Some tanks positioned upon a bridge which other tanks are passing under.

Certainly technically sound, even though some slowdowns are to be found at certain intense places, but very much generic in most aspects.

While a life bar, up to three hits to be taken before a ship is lost, is a rather rare sight to see... aswell as the rechargable shielding ship rotation to be activated when needed... the rest just goes off into more than familiar territory.

The military theme, combined with some sci-fi elements, is a done deal and so is the upgrade system where some different weapons can be picked up and powered up a few times.

However, only two weapons seem truly useful and that is the main vulcan (especially with the attack focused ship and fully upgraded) and the bombs (because when they explode the explosion eliminates the enemies projectiles). The so called defender, which rotates some kind of bubbles from the ship to the edges of the screen is hillariously underpowered and so are the missiles.

Each ship also has a unique S-Unit upgrade which not only gives some special firepower but also acts as a disposable smart bomb affecting most enemies on the screen.

While the environments are interesting, they often lack originality and some kind of presentation that makes them stand out from similar ones in other games.

You have the city, the forest with mountains and a railroad which huge offensive trains with cannons make use of, a desert with canyons, a stage full of water and boats aswell as the city at night.

Nothing out of the ordinary, besides some giant aircraft carrier converted for desert use and a, also giant, rocket chased into space where a defensive satellite is waiting to kill you, but it all looks good.

Besides the end of stage bosses you also have to deal with mid stage ones aswell, but the range of ordinary enemies is somewhat limited.

Nowhere is anything remotely close to being manic to be found.

At most some quite high speed projectiles fired at you makes for an acrobatic act of avoidance, but as long as stages are learnt, enemies are shot down before they pose any real danger and the upgrades are kept by not dying Vapor Trail is quite an easy shmup.

Out of the six stages, with the sixth one being nothing more than the final battle, it takes pretty much up until the third boss to be greeted with some harder stuff do deal with.

Maybe its the omnius boss music that threatens my nerves, music which by the way is rather inverted conceptually in that the stage music is the same all the way through while the boss music differes between each stage.

Good thing, thus, that the main theme is such a banger with a reccuring melody eeriely similar to Chris Hülbecks later soundtrack to Apidya on the Amiga (to be more specific, the theme of the first stage).

Coincidence?

I do not know.

Now, all of this comes together nicely into a generic but yet strangely fun to play package with good production values.

The balance of the difficulty may be somewhat off (depending on the choice of ship), some weapons rather useless, if there are some complex scoring system or dynamic difficulty to be found they are more than hidden away from the average player and everything just feels... like a nice but mindless little simple action romp to pick up and play not really bothering about nothing else than to shoot everything that moves and to do it in style.