180. Taiyou no Yuusha Fighbird (Tamtex, Famicom, 1992)

Taiyou no Yuusha Fighbird ("Brave Fighter of the Sun Fighbird") is a vertically scrolling shooter licensed from a contemporary anime of the early 90s. It's a monster of the week, alien cop turns into giant robot anime show, so it translates pretty well into the structure of a video game. Each stage is broken into 3 parts, all presented as vertically scrolling shooter levels:

• Part 1: You can select from any of 5 vehicles that have different designs and weapons. Each vehicle's speed and shot power can be leveled individually. In this section you are completing some kind of goal like detonating a certain number of bombs, or picking up a certain number of capsules.
• Part 2: You control a big plane that has a charge attack. Through each of these segments, you slowly collect more weapons as the stage goes on and can switch between them at any time.
• Part 3: The plane turns into a giant robot that has a sword, but otherwise the same weapons as the plane. These segments end with a fade to black and a fight against a boss.

The first thing that struck me about Taiyou no Yuusha Fighbird is how easy it is. Enemies come slow and have easy-to-read patterns, powerups and health are abundant, and you can take multiple hits, so the difficulty is nice and breezy. I actually wish it was a little more challenging, but I also love a Famicom game that I can run through in about half an hour.

Presentation is also a highlight. When you pause to change vehicles, there's a nice anime style transitions where the word "Firebird" flies across the screen in stylized font. The robot shares most of its attacks with the big plane, but it also has a sword that shoots out a laser, and the windup on the sword swing is very nice. On top of that, the sword swing is also chargeable, and at the maximum charge level it becomes a firebird that cuts through all projectiles and causes huge damage. Another nice touch is that the game will tell you to transform into the robot but you have to press select to actually initiate the transformation.

4/5, a breezy anime scrolling shooter with nice variety