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The year is 1995 and home gamers
in Japan are gagging for some hot arcade shooting action. So along comes
Taito with their awesome Layer Section for Saturn.
Layer Section is in fact a conversion of Taito's arcade hit Ray Force.
For some odd reason it was renamed for the Saturn and then renamed again
to Galactic Attack for the western market . Anyway, back to the game.
Back in it's day Layer Section was one hot game. It was the first
shooter to really use the Saturn's 2D powers with it's manic parallax
scrolling and scaling levels coupled with loads of beefy sprites with no
slowdown what so ever. These days Layer Section is looking a little
dated but not enough to make it look poor. It can still turn a head or
two with it's 2D magic and still manages to looks better than it's 3D
sequel.
Layer Section is one hell of a tough shooter though that will having you
pulling out your hair. You really do need to plan out your areas and
keep track on what comes from where if you want to survive in this game.
It really is that hard. In fact it's one of the very few shooters I
can't complete. Actually I think it's the only shooter that I can't
complete.
Fans of Taito's sound team, Zuntata will love the soundtrack featured in
Layer Section. Pure classic Zuntata space music. Many people slated the
soundtrack but I find it to be very good. Wonderful spacey music and
great explosion effects.
A word should be mentioned about the game modes. If you play in Saturn
mode the game image is vertical with black boarders to the left and
right of the screen. This is to keep the original arcade screen ratio.
The problem is though that this mode is missing many special effects
that makes Layer Section stand out above the rest. Why these effects
such as line scrolling backgrounds, raster effects and even some
transparencies have been removed I don't know. So I recommend playing in
Arcade mode. This mode will fill the entire screen but you will need to
turn your TV on it's side to get the full arcade vertical experience. Of
course not all TVs can do this so Taito have very kindly added a pad
rotate mode. What this does is change the controls so that you are now
essentially playing a horizontal shooter. Best of all Layer Section
works really well as a horizontal shooter. I find it a far better game
in this mode.
You should be able to find the Japanese copy of Layer Section quite
cheap these days. Probably one of the few Saturn shooters that can be
bought for a cheap price since most of them go for quite a bit of cash.
A true recommended classic ! Buy it now.
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