Soul Star
From Sega Retro
Soul Star | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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System(s): Sega Mega-CD | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Publisher: Core Design (US, Europe), Victor Entertainment (Japan) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Developer: Core Design | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Distributor: Time Warner Interactive (US) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Genre: Shooting[1][2] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Number of players: 1-2 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Official in-game languages: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Soul Star (ソウルスター) is a Sega Mega-CD third-person shooter developed by Core Design. The game makes heavy use of the Mega-CD's sprite-scaling capabilities to achieve a pseudo-3D effect. Full-motion video cutscenes are used for briefings, available in multiple languages for the PAL release.
An upgraded Sega 32X version, known as Soul Star X, was once in development but was never released.
Contents
Story
The Myrkoids, an ancient alien species with a cold and unified mind have descended upon many star systems, stealing and draining every planet of their resources and destroying them in the process. Following the destruction of his home system, Bryk Hammelt, the last from a noble warrior race known as the Cryo-Commandos, sets out in his morphing starship, the Aggressor, to hunt down and eradicate the Myrkoids from existence, who have arrived at the Soul Star system to repeat their same process of planetary extermination.
Gameplay
The game is a shooter that is primarily played in a third-person perspective behind the ship. The player's ship, the Aggressor, transforms into three different types of vehicles depending on the stage.
The first mode is the Sub-light Strike Craft, which controls similarly to rail shooters such as Space Harrier. The ship flies through space or over a textured planetscape, while shooting upcoming enemies from the front or behind and collecting power-ups along the way. The player does not control the ship's movement through the stage but can maneuver it along the vertical and horizontal axes with the D-Pad. The Strike Craft fires its weapon with , which can be held for rapid-fire, and switches the current weapon with .
The second mode is the Turbo Copter hovercraft, in which players can freely roam in 360° environments akin to Core Design's own Thunderhawk. In this mode, players are tasked with eliminating primary targets within the area, which are displayed before the start of each level at the mission briefing screen. The player has a map in this mode with enemy targets and the direction of objectives marked. The Turbo Copter moves forwards and backwards with and and turns with and . It changes its altitude by holding and pressing or and moves sideways by holding and pressing and . The Turbo Copter fires its weapon with and switches the current weapon with .
The third mode is the Combat Walker mecha, which controls similarly to the Turbo Copter. The player again must eliminate targets in an area and has a map to assist with locating them. The Combat Walker moves forwards and backwards with and and turns with and . It activates its thrusters, allowing it to dash forward along the ground, by holding while pressing . It hovers by holding , which can be used to pass over obstacles. The Combat Walker fires its weapon with and switches the current weapon with . It targets its weapons automatically.
The Aggressor has shielding, indicated by a red strip in the top-left corner, and engine power, indicated by a green strip in the top-right corner. The ship loses shields when it takes damage from enemies, but it automatically exchanges surplus engine power for shielding, extending the life of the ship at the cost of maneuverability. The player loses a life when the ship runs out of shields. The game ends if the player runs out of lives, but it can be continued from the beginning of the current stage if the player has a continue remaining.
The game also has a two-player cooperative mode, where the first player pilots the spaceship while the second player acts as a gunner aiming at the enemies. The second player can transfer energy between the Aggressor's shields and engines by holding and pressing or . Player two can additionally select the Torpedo weapon with or the Robotic Assistance Module (RAM) with .
Items
Items appear as colored spheres. Shoot at the sphere to transform it into a ring, then fly through the ring to collect the power-up.
Weapons | |
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Red spheres give the player a special weapon, which is identified by the letter on the item in the ring. | |
Power | |
Green spheres increase the engine power of the ship. | |
Shields | |
Blue spheres replenish the shields of the ship. |
Weapons
Some weapons have unlimited ammunition but others are limited.
Stages
The order of the stages depends on the difficulty level chosen.
Planet Leira | ||||||
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Myrkoid Warpship | ||||||
The difficulty level of the game is selected in this stage: after destroying the primary computer in the center of the stage, there are three warp gates that players can activate, each representing a difficulty level (indicated on the map at the top of the screen) and a set number of levels to go through. The player only visits every planet on Hard difficulty.
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Planet Twingha | ||||||
Planet Guha | ||||||
Planet Bulkan | ||||||
Planet Gigun | ||||||
Planet Metafus | ||||||
Myrkoid System | ||||||
Production credits
- Programmed by: Mark 'Mac' Avory
- Graphic Artist: Roberto Cirillo
- Music & Sound FX Composed and Produced by: Nathan McCree
- Intro and End Sequence: Billy Allison
- Story & Game Design: Roberto Cirillo, Mark Avory, Guy Miller
- Vocals: Yvonne Varnier, Guy Miller
- Creative Manager: Guy Miller
- Produced by: Jeremy Smith
- Producer: Toshiyuki Nagai
- Director: Gaku Sato
- Assistant: Ryo Misawa, Kohji Ishizeki
- Thanks to: Takeshi Minagawa, Takashi Kimura
- And Special Thanks to the Following Heroes...: Adrian E. Smith, Mark Price, Simon Phipps, Darren Price, Troy Horton, Jamie Morton, David Ward
Magazine articles
- Main article: Soul Star/Magazine articles.
Promotional material
- Main article: Soul Star/Promotional material.
Physical scans
Sega Retro Average | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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82 | |
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Based on 30 reviews |
Mega-CD, PT |
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Technical information
ROM dump status
System | Hash | Size | Build Date | Source | Comments | |||||||||
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? |
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642,159,504 | CD (EU) | T-115035-50 | ||||||||||
✔ |
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601,733,328 | CD (JP) | T-60184 | ||||||||||
? |
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641,806,704 | CD (US) | T-115035 |
References
- ↑ File:Soulstar MCD JP Box Back.jpg
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 https://sega.jp/fb/segahard/mcd/soft_licensee.html (Wayback Machine: 2019-06-10 17:56)
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 11
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 136
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 ', "" (; ), page 92
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 100
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 18
- ↑ File:SoulStar_MCD_JP_SSCredits.pdf
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 25
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 100
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 128
- ↑ Digitiser (UK) (1994-12-09)
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 80
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 1
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 48
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 64
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 20
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 39
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 98
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 27
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 88
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 12
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 96
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 114
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 94
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 140
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 103
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 41
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 68
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 92
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 52
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 58
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 28
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 85
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 11
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 62
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 34
- ↑ ', "" (; ), page 67
Soul Star | |
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Main page | Magazine articles | Video coverage | Reception | Promotional material | Technical information
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