Review: The Legend Of Steel Empire (Switch)

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)We believe it quite impossible to be a shoot-’em-up lover and not have stumbled upon HOT-B’s cult classic Steel Empire, the 1992 Mega Drive-exclusive horizontal shmup that mesmerised players with incredible steampunk aesthetics, an epic soundtrack, and a stiff challenge. Far from forgotten, there have been in the past two re-releases/remasters of the game on console, one on Game Boy Advance back in 2005 and 3DS in 2014. Is this third HD revisit — based on the 2018 PC release — worth its price in coal or is it just a load of hot air? Strap in to find out.

The action takes place in a familiar yet bizarre post-industrial revolution civilisation during a great war waged between the nations of the Republic of Silverhead and the Motorhead Empire (no smirking in the back, now). In this alternate 19th century, the steam engine has become the world’s greatest invention causing military machine design to evolve into gigantic monsters of steel and fire that rule the land, the sea. and the skies. You take the role of a nameless Silverhead republican pilot onboard the aircraft carrier Rheinhalt. Despite being greatly outnumbered, the technology of Silverhead is more advanced than their opponent, evident through your choice of aircraft and the mighty ‘Imamio Thunder’ bomb devices that can cause devastating damage to the steel-dependent Motorhead military units.

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
Upon booting up the game the first thing to be assaulted is your hearing. While we often love the way retro game revivals stick true to their origins, the awful faux-film-camera noise that plays over the introduction is enough to cause a bad first impression. It is also worth noting that the sound levels of the game are all over the place. Left to their default settings one will hardly notice the fantastic soundtrack under your aircraft’s machine guns and constant explosions, which take over the entire audio spectrum. Thankfully, you can alter the levels manually, but we also stumbled upon some musical hiccups and instrumental distortion. Hopefully a patch can smooth over these audio glitches, which sound to us like an emulation issue with the Mega Drive’s sound chip.

With the audio issues duly noted, the visual aspect of this reboot is, thankfully, extremely pleasing. Developer Mebius wisely left the incredible sprite work of the original Mega Drive game untouched (including the several screen-filling mid- and end-of-level bosses) while adding richer background details and better explosions using lighting effects. We also quickly became fans of the new lighting effects triggered upon vulnerable enemy areas being hit, complementing the audio cue signalling that you are indeed hitting them in the right spot. The game keeps the original’s 4:3 screen ratio with added information interfaces filling out the rest of the play area. At a distance, a paused in-game screenshot could pass for an oil painting.

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)
While you will not find any revolutionary gameplay aspects that you haven’t witnessed in shooter games elsewhere, the solid core mechanics here from 1992 still stand the test of time. The single-player-only campaign is divided into seven increasingly challenging missions (mostly) of the horizontal scrolling variety. Prior to each mission, you must decide between two different ships that need a slight change tactics to effectively use. The Etupirka (this release uses the Japanese names) is a more traditional plane-like flying machine that provides better speed and a smaller hitbox at the expense of armour, while the game’s iconic Zeppelin sacrifices speed for better armour. While no choice will be decisive to the outcome of any mission, you’ll certainly not have a fun time piloting the Zeppelin on Mission 2’s rapid-scrolling escape section. It is up to you to discover which of the two craft is better suited to the level’s design and your individual playstyle.

The game uses the same three-button setup of the Mega Drive original, allowing you to fire either to the left or right of the screen, with several sections of levels throwing enemies from the rear or boss machines sneaking up behind your ship. The last button unleashes the limited Imamio Thunder bombs that will act as the tried-and-tested smart bomb, clearing the screen of enemy projectile fire (of which you will find many elaborate patterns) while causing huge damage to anything unfortunate enough to be on-screen, and hopefully preventing a life loss or Game Over. Controls are precise with no perceived input lag in either docked or portable mode, so frustrating player deaths are quite infrequent.

Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
The last notable gameplay element is the pickup system. You will find floating upgrade items showing up upon destruction of certain enemy cache units: Speed Up, Bonus Points, Life Recovery, Extra Bombs, Escort Option, and even the odd 1-Up. The most important item is the Power-Up pickup. For each third of these you grab, you earn a level out of a maximum of 20. Each increment comes with added firepower to your default machine gun and ground bomb quota. Just like back in 1992, we often found ourselves taking damage while risking picking these up as soon as they appeared just to see how much firepower we could deliver on the next rank. We won’t spoil why, but having a rank 20 pilot on the final plot-twisting marathon mission is rather essential.

Presentation is functional with minimal extras, offering a few menus, game options, sound levels, bonus gallery, and a few other bits. We certainly wouldn’t have minded seeing a few more in-depth production details like developer interviews or concept art in the package, but the minimum requirements for a package like this are present and correct.

Conclusion
The Legend of Steel Empire remains a faithful reimagination of the original release, even including the end credits gag. It will take a medium-skilled player less than an hour to do a complete loop but it is such a good time, that can’t be considered a fault. While it doesn’t quite enter the bullet hell pantheon of other shoot ’em ups on Switch, it is certainly worth the shelf space in your collection and might be the perfect excuse to dust off your arcade stick in 2024. Maybe one day down the line we’ll get a proper 16:9 sequel handled by the original HOT-B staff, but in the meantime, this is a welcome return for the original.