Vertical Force:

The year is 210 SE (Space Era). A battle that will either wipe humanity or machines from the universe has begun! Humankind has prospered beyond the wildest imagination of the earliest space explorers. Waves of human colonists have advanced to thousands of planets all ver the universe. Each colony built is provided with a caretaker computer and equipped with Android Industrial (AI) Drones to control the planet and mine resources. The materials collected are sent back to Earth. Now, something has gone terribly wrong and the caretaker computer of Odin, (planet #0326) has spontaneously reprogrammed itself. Instead of serving humans and sending minerals to Earth, it seems its new mission is to slaughter humans and make minerals of Earth. The corrupted caretaker, calling itself "Mittgard," has declared war on all humanity. His mechanical army of "AI Drones" is headed toward Earth, and he has equipped them with a ray that will render the strategic computers and weapons of the United Earth Army inoperative. As a result, wherever the army has tried to intercept the AI Drones they have suffered total defeat.

As luck would have it, a xena-archealogy team working on Ragnarok (planet #1562) has just made a most fortuitous find. Among the ruins of an alien civilization, a battle machine has been unearthed. Because of its alien design and construction, this battle machine is not affected by the Mittgard rays. The most fortunate stroke is that it is equipped with a device that allows it to reprogram some AI Drones and use them against Mittgard's forces. After taking possession of the Ragnarok battle machine, The United Earth Army has called on its number one flying ace, YOU, to rid the universe of the menace posed by Mittgard.

Amazingly this is an Arcade shooting game with a new plot we have never heard of before!

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Hahahaha!! Ok ok, so it's the same old story where you, the player, have to rescue planet Earth from total destruction. But the storyline does unveil the game's most strategically interesting component, the AI (Artificial Intelligence) Drones you can reprogram and control. They come in three types being: 
Laser, this AI Drone unit fires a Laser that can pierce the armor of enemy ships;
Wide Shot, this unit fires in several directions;
Repair, when enemies are near, the Repair Type fights by Ragnarok's side. When you are not fighting (read: shooting), it carries out repairs that restore your Damage Meter.

When Ragnarok collects an AI Drone, it will be automatically activated. If another AI Drone was active when the new one is collected, it will be placed into Reserve. Using the right directional control bad you can exchange active AI Drones with those in reserve (press left, down or right). And press Select to change AI Drone function between manual and auto. I would advise to not change the automatic function, because when on auto the computer will put a badly damaged AI Drone back into reserve when it hits the one energy mark. An AI Drone that has suffered damage can be repaired by putting it into reserve. AI Drones in reserve will flash while being repaired! An active AI Drone can even be set to self destruct! Like a bomb, the explosion will damage any enemy that's on the screen.

Other reinforcements you'll need to power both Ragnarok and the AI Drones up are the power-up items which are Laser, Wide Shot, and Shield. Each individual power-up can be collected three times for maximum power! Whenever you're hit your power up level will go down by one, both for you as well as the drone you're using at that time.

Ofcourse before you start the game you should set the difficulty level (set to hard for a real Arcade challenge!). And the controller configuration, where you have the choice of two types, whichever is best to your liking. But be warned for the Easy game mode, because after like five stages and played for 15 minutes you'll get to see 'END' without ending movie, so only set this mode for when you want to practice the easy game controls and get a hang of how to deploy the (maximum of four) AI Drones to the best of your assistance.

The game offers some ok quality but tiny 3D mid-stage scenes, but ingame other than some buildings & hazards that give off a 3D feel, everything is 2,5-D gaming as you're forced into a designated path where you can only choose your flightline altitude, as you press A to fly from the higher altitude level to the lower altitude level and so on, to evade and destroy enemies that come towards you from every direction.

Sound consists out of cool fast paced background tunes, but you'll find them hardly noticeable, because the sound effects are so plentiful and overruling and you'll be far too consumed by the gameplay to notice, which is after all a good thing.

In short: Hudson Soft's Star Soldier (arcade)shooter series is almost legendary and I don't see why the VB's version shouldn't be for fans. An endless stream of enemy fighters that will try to blast or ram your starfighter, make for a great game with a long lasting appeal if you're into arcade shooters like this one and have fast reflexes.

My opinion: At first you'll have to get used to operating and changing the AI Droids, but after a while it becomes a second nature next to the non-stop blasting of your guns. A fun game. Just don't be scared by the "kids-adults animated violence" rating okay.