Uploaded July 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago

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Solar Striker is a shmup released for the Game Boy back in the 90's by Nintendo, one of the only shmups the company ever made. It was produced by Gunpei Yokoi, the creator of the Game Boy and also the man responsible for Super Mario Land, which happens to have some shmup levels.

This is a pretty basic vertical shmup, but it is effective as a simple, early Game Boy game. It's not very hard for experienced players to get a clear quickly, but you do not have continues so you need to 1CC the game to beat it. It is pretty forgiving upon death, as you only go down one power level after dying. Extends come every 50,000 points, so you'll get plenty of lives. The bullet speeds are not too fast either and the patterns are not crazy, though the Stage 4 boss has a slightly tricky pattern but once you get the hang of it, it's not bad. The game is also kind enough to have autofire by default, which not every home shmup had even in 1990.

Graphically, it's pretty good for early Game Boy. It's certainly better looking than Super Mario Land but obviously, later Game Boy games would exceed it quite easily. The music is simple but fitting. The scrolling is pretty slow, but that shouldn't be a huge surprise considering the system.

As far as this run goes, it was a clean one until the Stage 4 boss, where I did take a hit. I also took a couple of deaths in Stage 6, but still finished with plenty of lives to spare. This 1CC did not take many attempts since I'm an experienced player at this point. However, for casuals, this game may provide some challenge and may make for a good first time 1CC.

Played on Sameboy (standalone) with the monochrome LCD shader. It's an amazing emulator.

00:00 Intro
00:18 Stage 1
02:51 Stage 2
04:54 Stage 3
07:42 Stage 4
10:27 Stage 5
13:33 Stage 6
17:30 Ending

#gameboy #shmups #1cc #solarstriker #retrogaming #classicgames #nintendo