''Big Sky Trooper'' is a sci-fi action game produced by

JVC Musical Industries is a subsidiary of JVCKenwood that produces and distributes music, movies and other entertainment products such as anime and television shows in Japan. It is known as JVC Entertainment in countries where Sony Music Entertainment operates the RC ...

and

LucasArts Lucasfilm Games (known as LucasArts between 1990 and 2021) is an American video game brand licensing, licensor, former video game developer and video game publisher, publisher, and a subsidiary of Lucasfilm. It was founded in May 1982 by George ...

for the

Super NES The Super Nintendo Entertainment System, commonly shortened to Super Nintendo, Super NES or SNES, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan, 1991 in North America, 1992 in Europe and Oceania a ...

in October 1995. The game runs on the ''

Zombies Ate My Neighbors ''Zombies Ate My Neighbors'' is a run and gun video game developed by LucasArts and published by Konami for the Super NES and Sega Genesis consoles in 1993. One or two players take control of the protagonists, Zeke and Julie, in order to rescue ...

'' engine.

Gameplay

At the start of the game, the player chooses an

avatar Avatar (, ; ) is a concept within Hinduism that in Sanskrit literally means . It signifies the material appearance or incarnation of a powerful deity, or spirit on Earth. The relative verb to "alight, to make one's appearance" is sometimes u ...

, male or female. The evil Space Slug forces, led by the Sultan of Slime, have launched a

sudden attack ''Sudden Attack'' ( Korean: 서든어택) is a free-to-play multiplayer first-person shooter online game developed by the South Korean company GameHi. The North American service for ''Sudden Attack'' was terminated on January 29, 2014. A sequel ...

on humanity, quickly occupying the majority of planets in the galaxy, and forcing the Sidereal

Shock Troops Shock troops, assault troops, or storm troops are special formations created to lead military attacks. They are often better trained and equipped than other military units and are expected to take heavier casualties even in successful operations. ...

to recruit soldiers to counter the threat. After passing three "grueling tests", the player is made a "21-star general" and transported to the E.S.S. Dire Wolf, where they meet the ship's Flexible Interactive Digital Omnicomputer (FIDO, represented by a dog). From this point, the player receives various orders, from rescuing stranded agents on various cartoon-like worlds, retrieving upgrade parts for the ship and the player, and repairing various machines which help keep the universe running. The vast majority of the game, however, is spent hunting down and driving the Slugs off different planets; when arriving at an occupied world, the game switches to an overhead ''

Asteroids An asteroid is a minor planet—an object larger than a meteoroid that is neither a planet nor an identified comet—that orbits within the Solar System#Inner Solar System, inner Solar System or is co-orbital with Jupiter (Trojan asteroids). As ...

''-esque view, where the Dire Wolf must shoot down all enemies (beginning with small, weak ships, with larger ones featured later in the game). After this, the player dons a suit of

powered armor An exoskeleton is a wearable device that augments, enables, assists, or enhances motion, posture, or physical activity through mechanical interaction with and force applied to the user’s body. Other common names for a wearable exoskeleton in ...

and descends to the planet's surface to hunt down the Slugs. Once this is finished, any additional tasks (such as speaking to people, opening up passages to the different machines) can be completed, or the player can return to the Dire Wolf and head to the next planet.

Reception

A reviewer for ''

Next Generation Next Generation or Next-Generation may refer to: Publications and literature * ''Next Generation'' (magazine), video game magazine that was made by the now defunct Imagine Media publishing company * Next Generation poets (2004), list of young ...

'', noting the game's incongruous mix of cutesy graphics and storyline with remarkably complex gameplay and levels, concluded that "What exactly this game's intended audience is supposed to be, we can't figure out, but it deserves at least a small one." He gave it three out of five stars.

References

External links

* {{Use dmy dates, date=June 2017 1995 video games LucasArts games Science fiction video games Single-player video games Super Nintendo Entertainment System games Super Nintendo Entertainment System-only games Victor Entertainment games Video games about mecha Video games developed in the United States Video games with gender-selectable protagonists