I can’t say I’ve put a lot of time into figuring out what I would name a spaceship if I had one, but I’m reasonably certain this would not be high on the list.
Starship Hector is a shoot-em-up game by Hudson, the folks behind Bomberman and Adventure Island. It was released on the Famicom three years earlier under the name Hector ‘87. It’s apparently spinoff of Hudson’s Star Soldier series, a somewhat unheralded franchise that occasionally got a new release throughout the 90s (plus one in 2008, surprisingly). I guess it was popular enough to get a spin-off.
To get the most important question out of the way first – why is the starship named “Hector”? Unfortunately, the manual doesn’t make that clear. It does, however, say this:
Sweet! I’m glad my purchase was literally perfect. Since we don’t know the full story behind the name, I’m just gonna assume it’s named after a noted lover of starships, 19th century French composer Hector Berlioz:
The game’s back story is pretty simple – the Starship Hector (that’s him above, presumably) returns to Earth to find that a 4th World War has decimated the planet, which is now run by biomechanical monsters. Naturally, your job is to kill them all. By shooting them with your guns!
There are six levels in Starship Hector and, surprisingly, there’s a mix of both vertical and horizontal scrolling levels. You have two weapons at your disposal – a laser-y bullet for airborne enemies, and a bomb that’s dropped on ground enemies and buildings. You have an unlimited supply of both, thankfully, as there’s a lot you’ll need to deal with.
As you can probably guess based on how most NES games turn out, it’s also quite difficult. You do have a health bar, so a couple of quick hits aren’t the end of the world, and there are these weird ‘faces’ on the ground that you can repeatedly bomb to get health pickups. That part probably sounds weird, but it’s true. Even with those things, though, collisions with enemy ships are still pretty much always lethal. It can be pretty rough. Fortunately, unlike a lot of difficult games like this, it’s fun enough to make you want to keep playing – it controls well, moves quickly (though a critical mass of projectiles certainly slows things down), and it looks and sounds pretty great.
Another thing I really enjoyed about this one is that enemies are creatively designed and enjoyably weird. I’m gonna refer to the manual again for the details on some of these, because they’re crazy:
Apparently one of the bosses is also named Hector. I didn’t beat this one, so I can’t say for sure that there isn’t a Batman v. Superman moment at the end and all the ships choose to get along.
There’s also a great “time attack” sort of mode, where you have either 2 or 5 minutes to just score as many points as you can. That’s a bit more frantic, and it’s a great thing to have in the sort of game that’s typically fairly bare bones. Apparently Hudson put this in a handful of shooters at the time to serve as practice for their “Caravan,” a set of traveling tournaments. Neat.
While likely not an absolute top-tier option, Starship Hector (aka Composers vs. Aliens) is definitely an unsung gem among NES shooters. It’s a solid and fairly cheap pickup ($10-12, usually), and worth seeking out if you’re into stuff with spaceships.
Next week’s game is a sports title, but not one that we’ve covered before (I think – don’t quote me on that). It also has one of gaming’s weirdest guest characters! I hope you’ll be back to read all about it.