battle squadron on the megadrive

my god where to start, there is so much to say about this game, OK I first played it round at my mates house before I had a megadrive, we used to do it on co-op shooting the shit out of everything, I think we did finish it eventually and got some crappy black and white outro with little non animating pictures and text underneath...it seemed pretty hard back then, now it still seems pretty fucking hard. anyway ignoring the bollocks back story the gameplay is simply this - its a top view shooter, you fly along the surface of a planet, and a planet being round you just cycle round and round over the same 5 minutes shooting the same areas over and over whilst collecting pick ups to make your guns bigger, however its not quite that simple (or dull) there are three caverns that you can enter each one with its own boss, once you have defeated the boss it spits you back out on to the surface to carry on flying round and round, once you have defeated all three cavern bosses you have beaten the game (unless it adds a 4th one on the surface, I cant remember). simple stuff, but really fucking awesome to play.....

The game was released by innerprise software back in 1989 on the Amiga, the reviews were positive so I am told so innerprise set about porting their first release to as many other formats as they could, one was the megadrive, and the version was picked up and published by electronic arts. Now what's so cool about this is that its the only E.A. game I own on megadrive, and yes the cartridge looks fucking weird, now back in 1990 EA was becoming a big player in the games industry with their PC games (yeah what the fuck did happen to EA anyway?!) sega being fucked by the massive sales of Nintendo's inferior NES machine needed people making games for its sytem. EA decided they wanted to make console titles but didn't want to be bound by the strict agreements used by nintendo or sega (or make games for the NEScause it was shit in comparison). the story goes that they went to sega and said we want to make games, we will manufacture them ourselves and we'll decide if they are good enough to come out on your system not you. Sega stunningly said yes.

the begining of an amazing story....

This may not seem like a big deal, but for those that don't know (which is probably none of you) this is how the games industry works, and why the same game on a PC costs you at least £10 less to buy. If I want to make a game for a PC/mac I write it press it and sell it, as simple as that. if I want to make a game for a nintendo/sony/microsoft console I have to go through hell to do it, here are the steps....first off I have to become a registered developer this involves proving to the company in question that I am good enough to make games for them, a time consuming and difficult process, for example around a year ago nintendo decided they had enough developers on the GBA and would not be issuing any more licenses....so if you don't have one you have to use legal loop holes to get around it, one is signing a game with a big publisher who do have a development agreements with the console manufacturer and borrowing their dev kits! I think its illegal, but everyone seems to do it. then you have to make your game which once finished you have to submit to the console people who play it and decide if its good enough for release on their system, with nintendo they used to have a mario club thing, and they would be very picky about game play, they have since stopped this and now they mainly just look for gameplay bugs before passing it and allowing it to go in to manufacture. So why would these companies let any old shit go through (as long as it doesn't crash!) surely they only want good games on their systems? well that's sort of true except....submiting a game for approval costs money, so when you get refused you have to pay that money again and again until approval, well surely they would want to keep in in that stage for as long as possible? well no because the money they make out of that pales in to insignificance when compared to manufacturing..you can not make a disc and write PS2 on it, every PS2 disc is manufactured by sony, every gamecube disc is manufactured by nintendo and every xbox disc by microsoft,they will charge you the earth for doing it, they exaggerate the manufacturing costs, only allow huge minimum orders, and make up a load more cost in a "royalty" which is a standard amount you have to pay per disc made for using their console for your game....when you see a game going really cheap new in a shop, this is the most likely scenario, they ordered 1billion or whatever the minimum order is, they sold 50 and had 1billion-50 sat in their warehouse, rather than go out of business they sell the rest of their stock off at a loss....so next time you buy a new game for £10 or something feel slightly guilty about it.

the planet surface (there were lots of annoying little homing missiles round here)

there is also another reason for the "we'll let any old shit come out" and that is that they can make even more money by selling their own games and if these companies ensure that their own first party titles are the best, and therefore get the most sales, yup its quids in again...and there is also one more slightly sinister reason, say nintendo or whoever has a new awesome coconut shy game coming out, and then acclaim submit another coconut shy game for approval, nintendo get to look it over and see that their game is worse and go back and rework it whilst acclaim wouldn't get the same opportunely with the nintendo title, also and even worse nintendo could just release their coconut game knowing that it is worse than acclaims and in order to avoid competition in the market place they can just keep sending acclaims game back to them and say shit like in the pause menu you say press start to continue, if you refer to our guidelines you will see that the correct term is "press start BUTTON to continue" please correct and resubmit for our approval, this way they can keep the gam out of the marketplace for a month or so and get theirs to sell better....now of course this doesn't ever ever happen...no no no, how dare I make such an insinuation.

so in short EA got around all that crap (they still paid a small royalty on each cart the manufactured) and that's why their megadrive/genesis cartridges and the boxes they came in look weird when compared to all other legally manufactured sega carts.

my god that was a bit of a tangent, so anyway another amusing thing about this game is that its the only game I own that features a photo and article about the coder in the booklet, its like an "about the author" in a book, basically martin pederson was 19 when he wrote battle squadron and is regarded as some sort of god in the text, then it tells you"watch for martin's and innerprise's work in the future, if history is any indication of things to come, we suggest adding a seatbelt to your favorite bean bag" sadly a search for mardin pederson turns up nothing, I wonder what happened to him, if anyone knows email me, its one of the great mysteries of the universe for me.

1-the entrance to the cavern 2-get ready text 3-a photo that came out wrong but looked nice

martin pederson looks like a girl, but he has some nice framed battle squadron art behind him, actually his hair style is of a particular style that I have been considering for quite some time.....to be fucking shit

find out about martin and how at 11 he "played programmer"....

martin's 80's dream girl, sorry to tell you this matin, but she's not real...


the UK cartridge with its 'funny' looks...

the "awesome" sleeve art....

the instruction booklet

the complete soundtrack (yes 3 tracks, that's all there is there might be a different piece when you complete the game, but I coolant be fucked to get there) originally by ron klaren but ported to the megadrive by c64 legend rob hubbard. his audio was ripped straight from my megadrive, check out the super weapon soundeffect at the end of the in game tune....

intro.mp3
in game.,mp3
game over.mp3

please don't post our images and MP3's on other websites or FTP servers, or we'll send martin pederson round to terrify you with his girlish good looks.
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