ININ Games has teamed up with developer Mebius to bring retro-minded gamers Legend of Steel Empire, a complete remake of the Mega Drive hidden gem “Steel Empire”, also known as Empire of Steel or Koutetsu Teikoku in Japan. This remake comes shortly after pre-orders opened for Steel Empire Chronicles by ININ’s physical game outlet, Strictly Limited Games. That particular game collected all the original games released under the Steel Empire umbrella, including the Mega Drive/Genesis original, the GBA game, the NES game Over Horizon (its spiritual predecessor), and… the Steel Empire Remake. Yes, the game we are going to review here and which is released on it’s own as well.
We will come back to that specific curiosity later on. Why not first look at the source material.
Steel Empire
The original Steel Empire was released worldwide in 1992 under slightly different names. The horizontal shooter stood out from the crowd thanks to its steampunk aesthetics and linear but story/mission-based progression. The steampunk look was entirely different from the gazillion space- and military-based shooters that came out in droves on the system around that time. As I mentioned, the fact that it wasn’t a port of an arcade game helped the narrative, and progression seemed more fleshed out. Also, the difficulty was more tuned towards console gamers. Still, the game is quite a handful, but managed to let the player ease into the game quite well. You can hone skills during the course of the levels, meanwhile building a substantial story in between, which revolves around a war between the Silverheads and The Motorheads over control over resources in an alternative 19th century.
Silverhead’s Top Gun
You are the hotshot Silverhead pilot sent on missions that could turn the course of this alternative history. You can choose between one of the two Silverhead’s best aircraft to take these missions head-on. On your way, you are helped by various power-ups and health power-ups that are dropped by supply balloons. The Motorhead land and air force have a huge number of different crafts to take you down, and the steam-powered bosses’ crafts have to be taken down bit by bit to complete your missions.
Not a quarter muncher
Steel Empire featured quite a few features lacking in most arcade conversions of the time. As the original games of these conversions were out to get your lunch money, gameplay was aiming to get you a “Game Over” screen as soon as feasibly possible, without breaking the illusion that you are actually good enough to make progression. Without the will to redesign these games, the developers who’d port these games generally just upped the continue count to give you a bit of a fighting chance to reach the end. Without the burden of an arcade origin, Steel Empire had a bespoke approach to difficulty. Your ship has a vitality meter, giving you a good number of hits to endure before crashing into the ground. The vitality meter can be topped up completely or just a bit by picking up the heart power-ups.
Steel Empire also has a level system that increases your firepower during the course of the game. The best thing about this is that, even if you die or lose all your lives, you will not lose any of the level progression you made up to that point. The game’s designer, Yoshinori Satake, even explained in an interview that this was done to help unskilled players.
The Remake
So, the original Steel Empire is a well-regarded 16-bit shooter. But what did Mebius add to the mix? Obviously, it looks different. Even though the original is liked for its unique and stylish visuals, the Mega Drive color palette combined with the somewhat flat backgrounds and somewhat choppy movement are completely redone. The remake adds a coat of luscious new pixel art, complete with a lot of details in the parallax scrolling background. All the ships and other sprites are reworked, down to the bullet and missile sprites. It still retained its original appeal, though. In my opinion, some tough but right calls were made by sticking to pixel art, but a different kind of pixel art.
The gameplay has been tweaked as well. While missiles and torpedoes are a pain in the butt in the original, in the remake, you can destroy them, giving you a bit more space to move and control. The vitality bar is a bit more forgiving, and power-ups do seem to give a bit more extra vitality. There aren’t any restrictions regarding continues as well, while the original had only 2 continues. If you are a newbie or weren’t able to beat the game as a kid, the remake has you covered.
Another welcome improvement is the much smoother ship and bullet animation. The OG Steel Empire’s weak point, in my opinion. The game created many ‘unforeseen’ deaths due to its huge movement jumps when changing direction. This has been fixed completely.
Difficulty
The difficulty underwent some retooling as well. The default “Normal” difficulty has been retweaked to be very accessible, to the point that I could beat the game using one continue. Although I have played the game throughout the last 15 years quite a bit, I can’t say I’m particularly good at it. The remake was way too easy and becomes pretty dull quite fast by default. Fortunately the hard difficulty reminded me the game’s original default difficulty, with the added benefit that you can destroy the missiles in the remake. At this difficulty the game comes alive and gets pretty ‘sweaty’. The diehards can try the Extra Hard level that unlocks when finishing the game.
Legend of Steel Empire vs. Steel Empire Chronicles
We end with the big question here: why does this release exist? Doing a bit of research learned that this release adds nothing to the game that is packed in with the Steel Empire Chronicles release. The big difference is that Legend of Steel Empire has a digital and retail physical release for €/$ 29.99 (available everywhere), while “Chronicles” only is available for pre-order with a limited release (3,000 units) through Strictly Limited for €/$ 39.99. As we all know, ININ and Strictly Games are one and the same.
So, we are confronted by another ‘Rayz Collection’-situation which is utterly confusing and redundant. Adding the unreliable delivery windows of Strictly Limited Games to the mix makes you question your decisions even more. To be honest, to the point that you just rather do not want to deal with this attempt to exploit the FOMO trend.
Another fine ININ Games release
This release on itself is another great ININ Games release, though. Steel Empire was a solid game on it’s own that stood the test of time quite well, but adding all these improvements blew new life into it. The question of course is, how much game time do you get out of it? It has limited replayability without additional features and a online leaderboard, my personal drive to dump in more time generally. But that is about the only complaint I have. ININ Games still seems to be able to pick the right IPs and projects to port, remaster or remake, making the correct choices every time they need to pick one of these options at hand to breathe new life into the IPs of publishing rights which obtain.
Mebius managed to blow new life into the once cult classic and hidden gem Steel Empire, completely overhauling graphics and gameplay without damaging the original game. You do need to play it on hard to get a satisfying, robust and entertaining run with this game, which is only limited by a lack of additional features like online leaderboards or a boss run.
Pros:
- Greatly reworked pixel art graphics
- Reworked gameplay mechanics does the game a good service
- Solid source material
Cons:
- lack of features and online leader boards
