Burning Soldier

Burning Soldier
North American 3DO cover art
Developer(s) Genki Co., Ltd.
Pack-In-Video
Publisher(s) 3DO
Windows
Director(s) Manami Kuroda
Producer(s) Hiroshi Hamagaki
Designer(s) Manabu Tamura
Programmer(s) Yoshinari Sunazuka
Artist(s) Manabu Tamura
Mika Urushiyama
Takashi Isoko
Composer(s) Haruhiko Nishioka
Takefumi Haketa
Platform(s) 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, Windows
Release 3DO
  • NA: 1 January 1994
  • JP: 25 June 1994[1]
Windows
  • WW: 3 April 1998
Genre(s) Rail shooter
Mode(s) Single-player, multiplayer

Burning Soldier[lower-alpha 1] is a rail shooter video game released in 1994 for the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer. It was developed by Genki and Pack-In-Video and published by Panasonic. Like many rail shooters of its time, it uses full motion video backgrounds with sprite-based enemies imposed on top of them, thus enabling much sharper, more detailed 3D graphics than otherwise possible while restricting interactivity such that the player cannot dodge attacks, only destroy enemies and solid projectiles in order to prevent attacks from occurring. The story involves a space soldier, stationed near Pluto, scrambled to defend the Earth against an alien race known as the Kaisertians.

Gameplay

Burning Soldier is a first-person, fully on-rails shooter. The player must aim a cursor at enemies and other hazards that appear on screen and shoot them before they hit the player character, reducing the character's health bar. If the player is unable to destroy an enemy before it fires solid projectiles, they can still avoid damage by shooting the projectiles themselves.

The player can also use a charge attack by holding down a button for approximately 1.5 seconds and then releasing it. The charge attack launches homing missiles at all on-screen enemies, but cannot target projectiles or bosses. Moreover, the player cannot fire while either charging or holding a charge.[2]

The game has 18 stages arranged into four missions, each of which ends with a boss stage. All stages are rendered in non-looping full motion video, including the boss stages; because of this, if the full motion video plays out before the player destroys the boss, the player receives an immediate game over regardless of how much health they had left. There are no extra lives, but the player has infinite continues, which allow them to resume from the beginning of the current mission.

Burning Soldier includes a cooperative two-player mode.[3]

Plot

In the year 2095 humanity is attacked by an alien race, the Kaisertians. The Kaisertians had colonized Earth tens of thousands of years before, but the civilization they established there was destroyed long ago by a massive flood. The player character is a strike fighter who pilots a mecha-style ship to repel the Kaisertian invasion.

In the first mission, the strike fighter is sent to destroy Indra, the Kaisertian flagship which destroyed the human colony on Mars. After he succeeds, Earth's defense forces return to Earth to attack the Kaisertian center of operations, Tokyo. In the third mission they proceed underground, where the main base is located. The strike fighter's final mission is destroying the core of the base.

Despite the game's Japanese origin, Burning Soldier has never been translated into Japanese. Both the Japanese and North American releases are fully voice acted in English, with no subtitles or story-based text of any kind.

Reception

Reception
Review scores
PublicationScore
EGM26 / 40 (3DO)[4]
GameFan228 / 300 (3DO)[5]
Next Generation (3DO)[3]
Video Games63% (3DO)[6]
Award
PublicationAward
GameFan (1994)Best FMV, Best Music[7]

Next Generation stated that "The graphics are fairly well done, and in its brain-dead, shoot-everything-that-moves way, it's not a bad game, but beyond that limited stimulus-response experience, there's not much gaming here." They gave it two out of five stars.[3] While he compared it unfavorably to Shock Wave, primarily due to the more simplistic gameplay, Captain Squideo of GamePro praised the game's cinematics, detailed enemies and explosions, atmospheric music, and hefty challenge when playing on the hard difficulty setting, calling it "a long, intense fight that'll test experienced rocket jockeys."[2]

GameFan gave Burning Soldier the 1994 Golden Megawards for "Best Music" and "Best FMV".[7]

Reviews

Notes

  1. ↑ Japanese: バーニング・ソルジャー Hepburn: Bāningu Sorujā

References

  1. ↑ "3DO Soft > 1994". GAME Data Room. Retrieved 2018-06-02.
  2. 1 2 Squideo, Captain (December 1994). "ProReview: Burning Soldier". GamePro. No. 75. IDG. p. 176.
  3. 1 2 3 "Finals - 3DO - Burning Soldier". Next Generation. No. 2. Imagine Media. February 1995. p. 90.
  4. ↑ "Review Crew - Burning Soldier". Electronic Gaming Monthly. No. 64. Sendai Publishing. November 1994. p. 44.
  5. ↑ "Viewpoint - Burning Soldier". GameFan. No. Volume 2, Issue 10. Shinno Media. October 1994. p. 32.
  6. ↑ Zengerle, Robert (May 1995). "Reviews - Real 3DO - Burning Soldier". Video Games. No. 42. Future-Verlag. p. 89.
  7. 1 2 "GameFan's Third Annual Megawards". GameFan. No. Volume 3, Issue 1. Shinno Media. January 1995. pp. 68–75.
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