"The best 'bordered' vertically scrolling shoot 'em up on the Saturn"

Yet again, I must question why oh why did this game not get released outside Japan?

The only reason I can think of is that Galactic Attack aka Layer Section had a lukewarm response from the British gamers, because the playing area was a bit small. After not selling a lot, they didn't release any more vertically scrolling shoot em ups like it in the UK.

There are loads of vertically scrolling shoot em ups for the Saturn, and this is one of the best without going into polygons. The playing area might be a bit small, but the basic rule for this type of shoot em up, is either turn your television on it's side (just about all restricted-playing-area-vertically- scrolling-shoot-em-ups have the option to turn the screen on it's side) or to play on a 28 inch television or above.

Out of all the non-3D shoot em ups I have for the Saturn, and I have quite a few, this one outshines just about all of them. The music makes up a great part of this game-it is very catchy!

The game is your basic shoot em up, where you can choose between four different propellor driven planes, except that this game has some of the most ridiculously huge unreal powerups I have ever seen!! Even Radiant Silvergun can't outshine these ones!

The game is improved by going to the options screen, changing all the text to English, and switching on the four extra 'planes' except these are not planes, they are fantasy fighters from another Saturn Game - Kingdom Grandprix!! - dragon, necromancer etc, again, with massively destructive weapons. Between them all, and lets face it, more choice means longer lastability, all 8 fighters have various advantages and disadvantages. They all have different main weapons, and the power ups are mad!!!

Even though you may not want to turn your TV on it's side, this game allows the screen to be rotated, without the joypad being rotated-if you see what i mean. This means you can actually play full screen, as a horizontally scrolling shoot em up, without having to rotate the pad as well!

The sound effects are brilliant, with a huge fanfare at the start, a cool arcade intro sequence and all the explosions and bangs you could want. One of the better ones, and generally still available at this time (Dec 2003) around the UK for about GBP50 or less. Oh, it's Japanese only don't forget.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 12/14/03