 When you hear of a company like LucasArts, of course you're first going to think of franchises like Star Wars and Indiana Jones, but they also had a hand in a few other oddball Super Nintendo games, stuff like Metal Warriors and Zombies 8 My Neighbors, safe to say they got to shoot everything that moves category down pretty well, so they tried to go for something a little more ambitious with their next SNES title, Big Sky Trooper. It's got some of the same elements in games like Zombies 8 My Neighbors, in fact it uses the same game engine, but there's a lot more going on in this game. Right off the bat, you start off with the LucasArts logo and some eyeball alien thing shows up and summons its supervisor, I guess, who then lets us know if there's anything I hate and will not tolerate its bones and advertising, and proceeds to destroy it, reminiscent of those Sega games whose characters interacted with the logo like an eternal champion. Needless to say, that little interaction there sets the tone for the rest of the game. Big Sky Trooper is an interesting and strange title. However, it's also one of those games where you start out and screw around for a while and eventually say out loud, okay what the hell do I actually do? Once you pick your character, male or female, the middle robot there is your game save, and you immediately get promoted to a 21 star general. Okay, off to a good start. It's up to you to lead the attack against the evil space slugs and the Sultan of Slime. They've taken over planets all across the galaxy, so it's up to you to get rid of them. But uh, how exactly do you do that? You're on your spaceship talking to this computer dog and you're eventually brought to a map that has you navigate from planet to planet, where the game transitions into an asteroid-style minigame where you're blowing up slugs. Oh come on, that can't be it, can it? Come on, dog, tell me what else I can do. It turns out you have to stand over the middle part of the ship here and press A. That'll equip your character with a mech suit and send you down to the planet's surface where you hunt down slugs. This is the main part of the game, and it's done pretty well, mostly because like I said earlier, it uses the same engine as Zombies 8 My Neighbors. It has the exact same pace and the feel of the controls that that game has, although the slugs are a bit quicker, so that takes a little getting used to. So yeah, it's just seek and destroy, and the number in the top right will tell you how many slugs are on each planet. All that equip the umplink and go back up to your ship where you'll be given a new mission, and you'll be doing everything from rescuing other people, finding upgrades for both yourself and your ship, and just generally exploring planets. There's a lot to Big Sky Trooper, lots of maps, mazes, puzzles, enemies. It just takes a little while to really get into it and understand what to do and how to do it. To the game's credit, it really tries to have a user-friendly interface, but if anything, it's like they over-explain everything here, and it causes more confusion, and in some cases they don't explain enough. For example, after you clear a planet, you have to put out a satellite relay into the planet's orbit, presumably to keep other slugs away. You just go to the viewport and press A. I'm not sure how you're supposed to know that, but oh well. The thing is, once you get into Big Sky Trooper and you get a better grasp of what to do and how to do it, it really is a lot of fun. It helps that the game is structured so well, too. Once you get introduced to new items and upgrades, you can backtrack to previous areas and access hidden stuff. However, I have to admit, some of the mazes are gigantic, and you WILL get lost, like this underground factory on Planet Tropicant, where you transport from place to place. This is the kind of maze that'll have you drawing your own maps on napkins you have laying around. It's not game-breaking or anything, but prepare to be frustrated. One other thing I should point out about this game is just the overall vibe, the art direction, the music, the story, the dialogue. Big Sky Trooper has the mood and atmosphere of a quintet game like Robotrek, or an adventure game like Super Adventure Island 2. I'm not sure there's another game that's made up of the same stuff as Big Sky Trooper, the closest I can think of is Ganpuru Gunman's Proof, a Super Famicom adventure game that stayed in Japan, but even that isn't as weird as this game. So yeah, Big Sky Trooper is a surprise. It's hard to get into it first. It can be tricky to figure out what to do. Cue the guy in the comments who says he was 4 years old when he played this and figured it out just fine. Congratulations on being THAT guy! And some of the mazes here can go on forever, and it can be easy to get lost, but this is another case where I'm not sure there's another game quite like this on the Super Nintendo, or any 16-bit system for that matter. It's an adventure game featuring item management, an oddball story, and lots of exploration. It's a peculiar game with a unique vibe, and yeah, it's tough to get into it first, but it's a pretty fun game once you give it a real chance. Go check it out.