It's hard to believe, but Sega's awesome sprite scaling 'super-scalar' monster arcade machine, Galaxy Force II, will be 30 years old by the middle of this year. Released at the height of the hardware sprite-scaling ERA of the late 80s ... 1988!
Galaxy Force II Background
Galaxy Force was first released in arcades in 1988. Whereas Afterburner's 'double cradle' arcade cabinet allowed for forward, backward and left/right movement on two axes, Galaxy Force's cabinet allowed for more than 300 degrees of movement to the left and right and came in two varieties: a compact "Deluxe" version with slightly restricted movement, and a "Super Deluxe" version that added up and down movement as well. The more expensive Super DX version was a larger machine, requiring a wide area to be chained off for safety purposes. Since many smaller arcades were unable to accommodate this space requirement, the Super DX version did not see wide distribution. Its main board was called the Y-Board (a revision of the previous X-board), with three MC68000 CPUs. This hardware dropped the number of backgrounds, but it could display a larger number of sprites and had advanced sprite-scaling features. It was well-equipped for sound, with a PCM-enabled YM2151 chip (FM sound source). The game displayed at a 320×224 pixel resolution.
The cabinet was equipped with a throttle on the left to control the speed of your ship TRY-Z (your ship), and a control stick on the right for controlling its lateral and vertical movement. The original Galaxy Force ended after only four stages, but a sequel was released about two months later as Galaxy Force II which fixed a number of issues with the game, added two more stages, and allowed you to select your starting stage. Effectively all machines in operation were converted to II, so unmodified originals became rare.
Ports of Galaxy Force to the Mega Drive, FM-TOWNS, and the Sega Saturn were all based on Galaxy Force II, with only the international Master System port being an exception. Then in 2007, an M2-developed "Special Extended Edition" was released as part of the SEGA AGES 2500 series for PlayStation 2. This was not just an arcade port, but included the MegaDrive and Master System versions as well, as well as a "neo classic version", which featured enhanced graphics and sound options, widescreen, higher resolution on in-game objects and transparencies.
http://blogs.sega.com/2013/12/12/sega-3d-classics-–-galaxy-force-ii-interview-with-developer-m2/
A metric ton of magazine coverage that weighs just a fraction of the GFII Super Deluxe motion cabinet!
ACE magazine (Advanced Computer Entertainment)
Electronic Game Player
Commodore User
Sinclair User
Game Players
GamePro
Mega Play
Mega Play (actual MD version)
special mention - Battle Ace for the NEC PC-Engine SuperGrafx - often compared to Galaxy Force II -
EGM
opps EGM, that first shot on the left is actually Sol-Feace, not Galaxy Force!
Super Gaming
VG&CE
Sega Visions
Computer & VideoGames (UK)
Mean Machines (UK)
SegaPro (UK)
Mega Drive / Genesis OutRun - Galaxy Force ship easter egg
GameFan on the FM Towns / Marty port
Sega Saturn Magazine (Japan)
Sega Saturn Magazine (UK)
On PlayStation 2 - The first arcade-perfect port of Galaxy Force II.
some artwork!
Archived M2 interview on 3D Galaxy Force II
"It's not going to run." "Ok, then how can we get it running?"
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