 Fsethe Maker Wanna play a fantasy themed top down action game? Would you also like to play break out, or arcanoid, or video-pinball? Okay that sounds kinda weird, but that's what the developers behind firestriker pulled off. It's like a video-pinball adventure game, not too far removed from stuff like pinball quest on NES. You play as Slater. No not that Slater, he's the last firestriker from the Kingdom of Wind, and he's called a firestriker because he has the ability to control the world's most powerful weapon, the triolight. Long ago, Archmage Wild created the Trialite to rule over the world's four kingdoms, and whichever kingdom could claim it would unite the four kingdoms and rule the world. The kingdom of wind won, but the mage evidently got bored with peace and conjured four monsters to overthrow the unified world, and the monsters summoned to beast that could turn humans into...storn? What? Anyway, the Trialite is the pinball thing you bat around with your sword, breaking apart everything in your path to feeding enemies and unlocking chests to collect power-ups and health. Each stage ends when you get the Trialite up into the next screen, but there are stages where you have to find an item hidden somewhere or just destroy all the enemies on the screen. What's fascinating here is the gameplay. Even in single-player mode, you control two characters. The red guy Slater is controlled by the D-pad, and he's free to move around just about anywhere he wants to, but the blue guy stays at the bottom of the stage and can only slide left or right using the L and R buttons, so he essentially functions as the paddle in the game like breakout. This is especially important because if the Trialite falls into a pit behind him, it's game over. You also get a game over if Slater takes too much damage from enemies. Bear in mind, however, in two-player mode, both characters can go everywhere, but you definitely want to have someone at least be kind of a makeshift goaltender to make sure nothing gets behind them. The further you progress in this one, the more chaotic the stages and the gameplay. It's a really interesting single-player experience trying to control both characters at the same time. I'm not sure what other game I could even compare this to. In addition to the pinball-style gameplay, there's some adventure game elements thrown in too, like unlocking new characters like the phoenix who is much faster, and you also earn extra heart containers when you defeat a boss. There's also a four-player compatible mode where you use the Trialite to play soccer. Yeah, who cares about the fate of the world, let's use this massive weapon to play soccer! But yeah, this game is pretty much just PONG as you can see, but it's pretty fun for what it's worth. So Fire Striker sounds cool, and it's definitely unique, but it's got some pretty major flaws. The main one is that the physics behind the Trialite are incredibly inconsistent. This thing varies in speed, direction, trajectory, it goes all over the place, whether you like it or not. It's unpredictable and unreliable. Not to the point that it breaks the game or anything, it's just really kind of a bummer. If they had been able to capture some better pinball physics here, this game really could have been great. But as it is, it can be kind of a bummer as you're sitting there trying to get the stupid thing to go where you need it to go. Also, Fire Striker has all of its levels laid out on a world map, and it gives the impression that you can go anywhere at any time. And yeah, you can still get into the stages and play them, but you can't beat them. You're locked out until you beat the previous levels. Why would the game let me do this if I can't even beat the freaking level? Again, not game breaking, just annoying. But what may be a game breaker for some people is that there's no battery save or password system here, and you gotta finish the game in one playthrough. But yeah, Fire Striker takes two completely different things and makes them work reasonably well. It's not perfect, but this is still an interesting play through. I really enjoyed the boss battles in particular, and getting into the zone while controlling both characters in single-player mode is something that not many other 16-bit games can offer. Yeah, the triolite physics kind of suck, and it can be tough to get a good feel for the game, but I'd still recommend this one. And don't be scared off by the price if you want to get the cartridge. You can get the Super Famicom version titled Holy Striker for much cheaper. Fire Striker is unlike any other game I've played for better or for worse, and it's certainly worth checking out today.