Hellfire

Hellfire^[a] is a 1989 horizontally scrolling shooter arcade video game originally developed by Toaplan and published in Japan by Taito and North America by U.S.A. Games.^[1] The first horizontal shoot ’em up title to be created by Toaplan, the game takes place in the year 2998 where a space matter known as Black Nebula created by robot dictator Super Mech spreads and threatens to engulf human-controlled galaxies, as players assume the role of Space Federation member Captain Lancer taking control of the CNCS1 space fighter craft in a surprise attack to overthrow the enemies with the fighter craft’s titular weapon.

Conceived by Tatsuya Uemura during his time working at Toaplan and developed in conjunction with Truxton, Hellfire served as an experiment to translate the company’s shoot ’em up gameplay style in a horizontal format but faced a problematic development cycle and went through various changes before its eventual launch to the market. Initially launched for the arcades, the game was then ported to the Sega Genesis by NCS Corporation and published worldwide by Masaya, Seismic, Tectoy and Sega between 1990 and 1992, while a PC Engine Super CD-ROM² conversion by NEC Avenue was also published exclusively in Japan on 12 April 1991. Each version of the title features various additions and changes compared with the original release.

Hellfire was met with positive reception from video game magazines since its release in arcades, though some critics drew comparison with Irem‘s R-Type due to its gameplay style. The Genesis port was also met with positive response from reviewers, while the PC Engine Super CD-ROM² was received with a similar response. Its engine would later be repurposed into Zero Wing.

As of 2019, the rights to the title is owned by Tatsujin, a company founded in 2017 by former Toaplan member Masahiro Yuge and now-affiliate of Japanese arcade manufacturer exA-Arcadia alongside many other Toaplan IPs.

Gameplay – Hellfire

Hellfire is a science fiction-themed horizontally scrolling shoot ’em up game, where players assume the role of Captain Lancer taking control of the CNCS1 space fighter craft through six increasingly difficult levels, each with a boss at the end that must be fought before progressing any further, in a surprise attack effort to overthrow Super Mech, his army and the Black Nebula space matter as the main objective.^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5]^[6] As far as horizontal scrolling shooters go, the title initially appears to be very standard, as players control their craft over a constantly scrolling background and the scenery never stops moving until the stage boss is reached.^[4]^[6]

A unique gameplay feature is the weapon system;^{[2][3][4][5][6]} players are equipped with four main weapons at the beginning that can be upgraded by picking up “P” icons and switch between them by pressing the change button, with each one shooting at a fixed direction no matter which way players move.

Other items can also be picked up along the way such as speed increasers and “B” icons that grants a number of points, which are crucial for reaching high-scores to obtain extra lives.^[2][4][5][6] The Genesis version introduces the titular main weapon as a bomb capable of obliterating any enemy caught within its blast radius, as well as a shield and a satellite “option”.^[4][6][7]

Depending on the settings in the arcade version, the title uses either a checkpoint system in which a downed single player will start off at the beginning of the checkpoint they managed to reach before dying, or a respawn system where their ship immediately starts at the location they died at.^[6]

Getting hit by enemy fire or colliding against solid stage obstacles will result in losing a life, as well as a penalty of decreasing the ship’s firepower and speed to his original state and once all lives are lost, the game is over unless the players insert more credits into the arcade machine to continue playing. Although there is an ending, the game loops back to the first stage after completing the last stage as with previous titles from Toaplan, with each one increasing the difficulty and enemies fire denser bullet patterns.