After getting a feel for the game, my goal was to break 100k points. I hit that goal with a high score of 119,340. My secondary goal was to get past the 4th level. I didn't quite accomplish that goal, getting as far as the alien saucers on the 4th level.
The game is a rail shooter that consists of the same level broken into 4 sections that cycles forever. The first section has you on the surface of the planet flying between gates, then "space hoppers" appear that you have to shoot down while also avoiding the gates, then you leave the planet's surface and have to shoot down flying saucers, and finally you have to destroy a mother ship. Nothing shoots at you, and you simply have to avoid the various enemies and posts. Colliding with anything costs you a life/ship, but does not refill your fuel. In addition to having to avoid all the hazards, there's a time limit for each level in the form of your ship's fuel supply. If you run out of fuel, you lose a ship and are sent back to the beginning of the level. Defeating the mother ship gives you an extra ship and refills your fuel supply. Nothing else refills your fuel supply or grants you an extra ship. With each level, the number of gates to pass between and enemies to defeat in order to advance to the next section of the level increases by 4 (starting with 7). The gates also get closer together and the planet's surface changes color. The mother ship always only takes one hit to destroy. While it has no gauge, you can speed up and slow down. The faster you go, the slower your fuel is depleted and the faster the enemies move. At full speed, things go extremely fast, especially the flying saucers. In order to have any shot at completing the 3rd level and beyond, you'll have to up your speed.
The graphics are good for the time, which is pretty standard for the system. Thankfully, holding down the fire button repeatedly shoots and you can have multiple shots on screen. That's really about all I can say on the positive side.
The only real issues I have are 1) if a gate goes off-screen as you approach it, it disappears, which makes it impossible to go between that pair of gates, and 2) not having separate controls for speed and moving up/down, with changing speed happening after you've moved your ship all the way up or down. I was surprised by the lack of a high score. I tried the keyboard controls and while you can use either the Q or Y buttons to fire, if you use Q, you can't simultaneously move. As for joysticks, be aware that you can use either joystick (the joysticks are like the Atari 2600 paddle controllers where two joysticks plug into the single port), so if you get some drift, it might be due to the other joystick being off-center. I tried a Genesis controller (which actually would be apropos given the game was developed by Sega), but it doesn't work -- regardless of what I pushed (d-pad or buttons), the ship only moved left.
The Speech Synthesizer peripheral is supported. It gives short warnings about what's coming at the beginning of the first 3 sections of the level. Other than the novelty of having speech in a game at home in 1983, it really doesn't add much.
While it's not a terrible game, there just isn't enough to it to have made me want to master it.
