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This is a capture of me and a friend playing through Sky Force Anniversary for the Wii U. This is a downloadable title from Infinite Dreams. I'm player one (red ship) and Peter is player two (purple ship). We're playing on hard mode. By the beginning of this year I figured there wouldn't be any more Wii U games for me to get and that I would just have to wait for the Switch to arrive. However, a pair of excellent vertical-scrolling shooters got released on the Wii U eShop right before and after the Switch launch, which was really surprising. One of those titles was Ghost Blade HD, a bullet-hell-type shooter with a heavy Japanese influence. The other was this game: Sky Force Anniversary. Apparently, Sky Force was originally released back in 2004 for mobile phones, and it received some pretty good reviews. I had never heard of the game before though. In fact, I had no clue that the a Wii U port was even in the works. As I was getting my regular dose of Nintendo news around mid-March, I saw a list of the new releases for the eShop, including trailers for the week's new games. When I watched the trailer for Sky Force, I was impressed by the graphics and the gameplay, so I decided to download the game instantly. I was not disappointed. I probably spent three hours playing this game on the first day, and another two hours on the second day. I kept playing the game for at least an hour each day after that. It is incredibly addicting. Sky Force Anniversary plays like a typical vertical-scrolling shooter with the usual two-player mode as well. However, what differentiates this game from other shmups is its shop and achievement system. In order to progress in the game, you have to unlock new stages by completing achievements. There are four achievements to earn on each stage, and once you earn all four, you'll unlock a higher difficulty level with four more achievements. On certain stages I've already unlocked all four difficulty levels: normal, hard, insane and nightmare. Although the game has the typical weapon-fire upgrades to obtain during each level, you'll do most of your upgrades through the shop system that is similar to retro games like Super Off Road. As you collect stars in each level, you can use them to upgrade all sorts of things in the shop such as your main weapon or life bar. Certain upgrades, such as the laser and mega bomb, can't be used until you first purchase them in the shop. You'll definitely need the upgrades to complete the later levels and to obtain all the achievements. The shop and achievement system work in conjunction to keep you replaying levels over and over for more stars and achievements, and actually, it works quite well. The gameplay is solid, and I found myself constantly wanting to buy yet another upgrade. By the time I recorded this playthrough I had already fully upgraded my ship, so there were no more upgrades left for me to buy. However, at the beginning of each stage, you can still use your accumulated stars to fill your limited inventory with laser, shield and mega bomb uses (otherwise you start each stage without any special weapon uses available). So the stars still remain useful even after you've purchased all the upgrades. In this video Peter and I completed stages 1 through 9 on hard difficulty. We managed to complete stages 1 through 7 back to back in a single session, but stages 8 and 9 took us multiple attempts to complete. Recorded with the Elgato Game Capture HD60 and the Wii U's HDMI cable at native 1080p resolution and 60 frames per second. I'm using a Classic Controller Pro and Peter is using the GamePad.
