Caliber.50
From Sega Retro
| Caliber.50 | ||||||||||
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| System(s): Sega Mega Drive | ||||||||||
| Publisher: Mentrix Software | ||||||||||
| Developer: Dragnet | ||||||||||
| Original system(s): Arcade boards | ||||||||||
| Developer(s) of original games: Seta | ||||||||||
| Sound driver: Visco/Kazuo Okabayashi | ||||||||||
| Genre: Shoot-'em-Up | ||||||||||
| Number of players: 1 | ||||||||||
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Caliber.50 is a top-down run-and-gun video game originally released in arcades as Cal.50 before being brought to the Sega Mega Drive in 1991. The Mega Drive version was only released in North America, although Visco had plans at one stage to release a Japanese version.
Contents
Story
Captain Addis of the United States Army must rescue his fellow soldiers twenty years after he failed to retrieve his men during the Vietnam War. He must now re-navigate through the Ho Chi Minh trail in order to liberate his captured comrades-in-arms.
Gameplay
The game is an overhead run-and-gun. Players control a United States Army pilot, Captain Addis, who was taken as a prisoner of war in Vietnam in 1972. Addis must escape the prison compound by battling enemy soldiers with guns and grenades. Addis moves in any direction with the D-Pad. He shoots his gun by holding 
and throws a grenade when is released. The gun has unlimited ammunition but grenades are limited.
There are two control schemes for aiming the weapon. Using Type A, Addis rotates left with 
and rotates right with 
. Using Type B, Addis always fires in the direction that he is facing.
Addis' health is indicated by a health bar in the top-left corner of the screen. The health bar has multiple levels that correspond to the strength of his weapon. A blue health bar is the lowest level and the weakest weapon (the machine gun), a red health bar is the second level and a stronger weapon (the rocket launcher), and a yellow health bar is the highest level and the strongest weapon (the flamethrower). He loses a life if he depletes his blue health bar but revives in place if he has extra lives remaining; the game ends if he runs out of lives.
The game has three difficulty levels (Easy, Normal, and Hard), and the player can set the amount of lives initially available.
Items
Items are found in crates or dropped by enemies.
| Crate | |
|---|---|
| Destroy to release items. | |
| Power Up | |
| Collecting shells restores a small amount of health, which also increases the weapon firepower at certain thresholds. | |
| Hand Grenades | |
| Gives Addis 10 hand grenades. | |
| Ultra Hand Grenades | |
| Upgrades Addis' grenades to more powerful Ultra Hand Grenades. | |
| S | |
| Grants Addis temporary invulnerability. | |
| A | |
| Upgrades bullets to penetrate through objects. | |
| L | |
| Increases the range of Addis' weapon. | |
| K | |
| Destroys all on-screen enemies. | |
| Gives Addis the maximum strength weapon and 99 hand grenades. |
Missions
| Stage 1 | |
|---|---|
| Stage 2 | |
| Stage 3 | |
| Stage 4 | |
| Stage 5 | |
Versions
The Mega Drive version is severely watered down from the arcade original, not just in terms of graphics and sound, but also gameplay, as the controls need to be mapped to three buttons. The arcade cabinet used special joysticks which could be spun around to rotate the player. To compensate, there are fewer enemies on screen, and the player is given a life bar.
Production credits
- Producer: Tetsuo Akiyama
- Original Works: Seta Ltd.
- Story: David Owen Miller
- Director: Yasuhisa Itoi, Don Gabacho, R. Lopez
- Game Design: Masaharu Ohno
- System Programming: Masaharu Ohno
- Game Programming: Takanori Kohno
- Character and Graphic Design: Kuma San, Do. Kodama, Taketoshi Furuya, Makoto Ida
- Music Composition and Arrangement: Kenji Yamasaki, Kazuo Okabayashi
- Sound Effects: Masaharu Ohno, Kazuo Okabayashi
- Game Box and Manual Design: Creative Juices
- Proudly Presented by: Mentrix Software, Inc.
Magazine articles
- Main article: Caliber.50/Magazine articles.
Promotional material
Physical scans
| Sega Retro Average | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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46 |
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| Based on 9 reviews | |
| Mega Drive, US |
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 Cover
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 Cart  Manual  PCB |
Technical information
- Main article: Caliber.50/Technical information.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Electronic Gaming Monthly, "January 1992" (US; 199x-xx-xx), page 26
- ↑ https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.video/c/-IGGiuWZUz0/m/4ptF8N4PpX8J
- ↑ File:Caliber.50 MD credits.pdf
- ↑ GamePro, "16-bit Video Gaming: February 1992" (US; 1992-xx-xx), page 13
- ↑ 1700 igr dlya Sega, "" (RU; 2001-xx-xx), page 41
- ↑ Beep! MegaDrive, "December 1991" (JP; 1991-11-08), page 39
- ↑ Cool Gamer, "9" (RU; 2002-10-13), page 46
- ↑ Joystick, "Janvier 1992" (FR; 199x-xx-xx), page 112
- ↑ MegaTech, "March 1992" (UK; 1992-02-20), page 30
- ↑ Sega Pro, "May 1992" (UK; 1992-04-16), page 42
- ↑ Sega Pro, "April 1993" (UK; 1993-03-11), page 64
- ↑ Tricks 16 bit, "Tricks Sega Gold 800 igr" (RU; 1998-03-20), page 9
| Caliber.50 | |
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