Retro Reboot SHMUPtember 2025 | D-Force (SNES)

US Release Date: December 1991

Developer: Isco Inc.

It's September. The summertime is over, the weather is cooling off, and that means it's the perfect time to blast off in your aircraft of choice to defend the Earth from an endless armada of invaders. Game Fix Show has a new website, so it's time to christen it with my #SHMUPtember, where I generally focus on space shooter games. It's a genre that's as classic as it gets, but it's not without some paltry offerings. Such as D-Force, evidence that a medium that's tough to screw up...can still be screwed up.

I never considered the Super Nintendo to be a powerhouse when it came to SHMUPs. There are certainly some good ones on the platform, like Gradius III, Axelay, and Space Megaforce. It just lies within the horsepower of the SNES; the slowdown can make or break these games. D-Force is definitely in the break category, but more than a handful of reasons beyond technical shortcomings.

In D-Force, you take control of an Apache helicopter fighting against a Middle Eastern dictator. Because 90's, I guess. This may have been peak Desert Storm. Really funny how so many video games used real geopolitical conflicts as bases for video games. But at intervals, you'll go from fighting your standard airplane and anti-air enemies who fires waves of Cheerios at you to a prehistoric or fantasy setting where you're suddenly battling dinosaurs. Okay, a part of me does appreciate that level of wackiness, especially with how spontaneous this occurs. the game goes from Twin Eagle to Legendary Wings immediately. This is pretty much where the enjoyment ends.

D-Force suffers from being incredibly monotonous, even by a space shooter standard. I've spoken with people that don't care for the genre, as the games can appear rather samey without pinointing any nuances between two different producers. Which is certainly fair, people's tastes can vary. But when I hear those takes on SHMUPs, in my head, the game they're describing is D-Force. With a pretty standard slew of weapon upgrades, plain missiles, and no real super bomb, there is absolutely nothing special about how this game plays. Your chopper goes down, and your weapon is set back on upgrade, so wait for another one to appear.

The enemy waves are modest, and with the occasional ships that appear behind you, I found that I can clear most of this game by just hanging out at the bottom of the screen and never letting go of the fire button. Amazing that Lightning Fighters was released a year before this, and while it isn't too dynamic, it's significantly more satisfying because there's inherently more flair and strategy to it. In D-Force, there's some stages where you can ascend and descend vertically, catering to the Mode-7 graphics. Other than getting out of the way of some enemy fire and some structures in later areas, this changes very little about how to approach situations. I mostly die because I'm distracted by something floating around in my room.

The visuals, this game is just ugly. The creature designs don't look all that impressive once you get past the dinosaurs, generally just looking like a decorative pasta art your niece made in kindergarten. Hot glue some treads to it, and you have a boss fight. Enemy planes can likely be found in a a discount bin featuring bootleg Macross toys. The stage layouts are passable, but they don't look crisp. Textures are choppy, overly blocky, and bleed into the foreground, leading to my vision being a tiny bit obstructed. I have bad eyes, sure, but having to refocus every handful of seconds because the water surface creates this strobe effect.

Even the controls are kinda fucked. The game is so overclocked, it's probably locked at 20 frames per second when the action picks up, so every movement feels incredibly imprecise and laggy. It doesn't help that this helicopter has one of the largest and least generous hitboxes I've ever witnessed in the genre. Thread the needle between projectiles? NOPE, that missile is gonna hit you. Slow-down sometimes helps me, depending on the game, but it's jarring here, and mostly annoys.

Even if you're a SHMUP enthusiast, you're missing nothing with D-Force. The challenge is platry and lacks any kind of satisfaction. The music and sound effects are laughably farty and amateurish, you'd think your Super Nintendo is being drowned. Controls aren't very crisp, and the lack of weapon variety means the appeal peaks pretty quick. D-Force needed significantly more force, but it sure plays like D.