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ヘビー ユニット
©Taito Corp. 1989
Release : 1989-12-22 (¥6600)
Hucard (3 Mbits) TP01004
Shooter / Horizontal
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Heavy Unit is a horizontal shooter and conversion of the arcade game
of the same name originally released by Kaneko and Taito in 1988.
The action takes place in 2013 and the player controls a mechanized Heavy Unit,
a powerful and heavily armed transforming battle ship. "LE TAU", the first colonial star
created by mankind is under attack by a race of frightening aliens and they must be destroyed.
The ship starts as a fighter-jet with a simple Vulcan gun and secondary missiles, but flying
pods release a variety of upgrades that give the player a chance to power-up. These upgrades
include Speed Ups (S), Power Boosters (P), Shield Units (B) and
Extra Lives (E). Additionally, a rare Transformer (T) pod turns the ship into
a powerful humanoid mecha. In this mode, the player uses a new set of weapons - the
Vulcan gun is replaced by a powerful plasma-beam and the missiles by homing-balls of energy.
However, the robot, although more powerful than the ship, has an Achille's heel and its larger
size makes it difficult to use in some situations. Heavy Unit consists of six stages
and is single player only.
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Heavy Unit was originally released as an arcade game by Taito in 1988
(picture on the right).
It was then ported to the PC Engine (version tested here) in 1989 and, although the
8-bit conversion is fairly close to the arcade game, various enemies and
especially bosses were redesigned. For instance, the first boss from the arcade game
wears a sort of human mask which reveals a scary jaw, feature entirely removed from
the PC Engine port. Additionally, the second boss looks more like a
skeleton-mammoth with wings (picture on the right) than the weaker 'four-legged chicken-like skeleton'
featured in the PC Engine version.
Heavy Unit was also ported to the Sega Megadrive in 1990 - this version
was developed by Toho and renamed
'Heavy Unit Mega Drive Special' (picture on the left). It also had
(arguably) slightly better graphics but featured drastic variations and differences in the level
and enemy designs. It is also a lot easier than the Arcade and PC Engine
versions.
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Game Staff (Copied from the end credits) :
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STAFF
Software Section
K. Oikawa
K. Matsumoto
T. Koyama
Design Section
K. Matsuoaka
Y. Mabuchi
T. Okamoto
H. Yokoyama
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Sound Section
T. Watanabe
S. Aizu
Management
A. Utoh
K. Oikawa
Game Design
H. Kaneko
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Produced by
Kaneko Co.,Ltd
and
Inter State Co.,Ltd
KANEKO
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Click on picture to enlarge |
S
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Option Screen (Difficulty & Player Lives):
At the title screen, press and hold Left and I,
then press Select. An option screen should
appear (picture on the right) where you can change the game's
difficulty (easy,
normal or hard) or change the amount of
lives from 3 to 5.
Sound Test Mode:
At the title screen, press and hold Left, I and II.
then press Select. An option screen should
appear (picture on the right) where you can play musics
from the game.
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LK
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Add your Pov here !
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P
O
V
s
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Heavy Unit could have been a masterpiece. Wait! I'm kind of
starting by the end here. Let me explain why I think this game could
have been a masterful classic. What makes Heavy Unit an unique
shooter is definitively its amazing and unique level design - like with
the classic R Type, each enemy has a purpose and the game doesn't
feature endless waves of enemy ships, but rather meticulously crafted
levels. As a kid, I clearly remember playing the original arcade game
and the frustration when trying to pass these robotic snakes from the
first stage. I was young, yes, but the game was brutally difficult and
this is where everything falls apart for me. The checkpoints don't make
sense and if you die, you can just leave the game because you start again so
woefully underpowered that you will most certainly die within seconds.
Heavy Unit is probably one of the most difficult and unbalanced
shooter available for the PC Engine system. You hit this point
of utter frustration way too quickly in this game and the amazing
level design is not enough to justify the ongoing struggle and pain
associated with the task of keeping yourself alive. Heavy Unit
could have been a masterpiece.
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