In the game, the player pilots a starship called the Final Star, while shooting various enemies and destroying enemy structures for points. Unlike later vertical scrolling shooters, like Toaplan's Twin Cobra, the Final Star had only two levels of weapon power, and no secondary weapons like missiles and/or bombs. Each stage in the game was named after a letter of the Greek alphabet. In certain versions of the game, there is an additional level called "Infinity" which occurs after Omega, after which the game repeats indefinitely. In the NES version, after defeating the Omega target, the player can see a black screen with Tecmo's logo, announcing the future release of the sequel Super Star Force. After that, the infinity target becomes available and the game repeats the same level and boss without increasing the difficulty.
Reception
In Japan, Game Machine listed Star Force on their December 1, 1984 issue as being the fourteenth most-successful table arcade unit of the year.
Star Force was ported and published in 1985 by Hudson Soft to both the MSXhome computer and the Family Computer in Japan. The North American version for the Nintendo Entertainment System was published in 1987 by Tecmo. Although the NES version is the same Hudson port that had been released for the Famicom in Japan, Tecmo made alterations to the graphics, music, and control, and increased the difficulty of the game. Also, despite the U.S. arcade version being titled Mega Force, Tecmo decided to release the NES version under the original name of Star Force. Star Force was also ported to the SG-1000 by Sega, X68000 by Dempa Shimbunsha and mobile phones by Tecmo. In 1995, along with two other NES shooters, the Famicom version of Star Force was remade by Hudson Soft with minimal upgrades for the Super Famicom as part of the Japan-only release of the Caravan Shooting Collection. The same version was also included in Hudson's compilation of NES shooters in 2006 in Hudson Best Collection Vol. 5. The original arcade version was later added to the compilation titled Tecmo Classic Arcade, which was released for the Xbox. In 2009, the arcade version was made available for download on the Wii Virtual Console for 500 Wii Points as one of the four initial offerings for the "Virtual Console Arcade" category of the Wii Shop Channel.
