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A review of Project S-11 for the Chromatic
A big selling point of the Chromatic has been the extent to which ModRetro has promised to bring classic Game Boy titles back in physical form. Though a noble mission, in practice, most of the best Game Boy games are owned by famous gaming corporations that still exist and certainly aren’t going to authorize new print runs on original hardware when they’re doing everything that they can to push consumers onto digital markets. Which is how ModRetro came to be publishing such titles as Project S-11, which isn’t really a well-known classic so much as a game with a fairly unusual production history.
But before I get too deep into those details, how does Project S-11 hold up as a game? Pretty well actually, although fair warning, this is a fairly generic vertical shooter. This is an advantage in some ways. Having been developed in 1999 era Chicago, Project S-11 didn’t feel the need to adhere to popular Japanese trends of such space shooters becoming increasingly comically difficult to play by anyone except a dedicated fan with unreasonable reflexes. That being noted, I beat Project S-11 in only three tries, and I’m not especially good at video games in general, let alone space shooters.
The gameplay is fairly generic, as is the story. The most noteworthy aspect is that one of the many weapons you can collect kind of functions as a flamethrower subject to the whim of gravity- you shoot the bullets up, and they fall down to the bottom of the screen, allowing for some tricky shots to the great bane of vertical shooter players. Those blasted enemies that very impolitely insist on attacking you from the side or from behind so you can’t easily hit them. I certainly can’t swear that no other vertical shooter has had a weapon like this, mind you. I’ve played a fair amount, but certainly not all of them.
The real star of Project S-11 is the soundtrack, and this is where that production history comes back to relevance. Paragon 5, the studio that developed Project S-11, basically consisted of a bunch of Chicago teenagers who were really into the European demoscene. A full explanation of what this means is a bit much, although the short of it is, that the music in Project S-11 is ridiculously sophisticated. At a time when the larger studios had moved on to CDs, Paragon 5 was making a soundtrack with just four channels, or the equivalent to a 286 processor. And the music still holds up.
Now, granted that I just linked you the soundtrack, is there any reason for you actually play the game? Well, yes, actually, because in context, the Project S-11 soundtrack works to establish cadence and rhythm to the vertical shooting action. It also does a lot to sell the otherworldliness of the otherwise generic alien invaders who you’re tasked with fighting. Project S-11 is a video game centered around a highly specific historical moment, where despite the game’s crudeness, retro gaming wasn’t really a fully established concept yet. Sunsoft published Project S-11 simply because it was an excellent example of the vertical shooter genre being pushed to the limits, and that was their brand.
All of which is to say that Project S-11 has an excellent story behind it, one that vibrates beyond the otherwise generic play. It’s a game that’s a collector’s item, not because it’s rare (although it is somewhat rare), but because there’s a cool story behind it. This makes Project S-11 less nostalgia bait, and more a slice of history.
The post A review of Project S-11 for the Chromatic appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.
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