Developed and published by Capcom in 1993
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With the same quality visuals and attention to detail that's a staple of most Capcom arcade release, Eco Warriors gives the CPS1 hardware a chance to flex its muscles in the horizontal shmup arena.
Your ship's special weapon, welded to the fuselage by a rigid metal arm, seems rather impractical and certainly wouldn't do much for the overall aerodynamics, but it does suggest that R-Type was something of an influence when it came to designing the game mechanics. The weapon can be rotated both clockwise and counter-clockwise around the outside of your ship, providing 360 degrees of covering fire, as well as absorbing enemy projectiles. The weapon can be swapped out by collecting 20 power crystals, which causes a supply droid to show and drop a weapon upgrade cannister for you to collect; I gave each of these a good workout, although I stuck to the auto-laser toward the end because of the damage output, plus it gave me a chance to rest my trigger finger!
Sadly, despite the lush visuals and solid gameplay, Eco Warriors is kind of forgettable. It doesn't really offer anything new that hadn't been seen in other shooters, and while this is purely down to personal taste, I'm not a massive fan of the cartoon art style - the bio-mechanical horrors of R-Type are much more my thing.
00:00 Attract mode/intro
00:55 Stage 1
02:59 Stage 2
08:20 Stage 3
13:34 Stage 4
18:16 Stage 5
25:15 Stage 6
32:00 Stage 7
39:14 Ending
#ecowarriors
#capcom
#retrogaming