Vanguard II is part of the second wave of old SNK arcade games turned into Minis. The original Vanguard was in the first wave and was a childhood favorite of mine. It was even better than I remembered, still one of the best scrolling shooters around. I actually didn’t realize there even was a Vanguard II until recently. There’s a reason why the game has such a low profile.

Vanguard II bears only the vaguest resemblance to the original game: it’s a shooter, you fly a spaceship, and you’re attacking something. It’s really more of a combination of Time Pilot, Xevious, and Bosconian, and it doesn’t seem to contain even a single feature of the original Vanguard. Instead of winding your way through a vast enemy complex, Vanguard II has you flying over a large floating fortress, from a top-down perspective.

You control your ship’s movement in 8 directions (like in Time Pilot). The first goal is to destroy a given number of stationary targets, called “pods.” A crosshairs is displayed where your ground attack weapon (missiles) will hit (as in Xevious). This is some distance from your ship. As your ship only rotates in steps of 45 degrees, the crosshairs jumps quite a bit when you turn, so it makes aiming at the stationary targets quite tricky.

Once you have destroyed the required number of pods, you can then attack the central core of the base (the base-attacking is where the Bosconian resemblance comes in). Unfortunately, you aren’t given directions to it, so you have to find it first. Since the base is symmetrical, it’s not that hard to find, but an arrow would have been nice for the larger levels.

Actually getting in to blow up the central core is the hardest part of the game. All the while as you play the game, you are constantly attacked by enemy ships. These come in small groups. They don’t shoot at you; instead, they ram you. Your only defense is to shoot them first. Alas, your ship can only shoot forwards (a downgrade from the ship in Vanguard, which could shoot in 4 directions).

Beyond the enemies, you also have to cope with the base shooting at you. It’s not that big a deal early in the game, but after the first level, the central core takes pot shots at you. Its aim is quite accurate and you can’t really dodge it and attack at the same time, because shields cover most approaches, and only the corners are clear to shoot through. You essentially need to make a suicide run and hope you get the central core before it gets you.

As with all the arcade classic Minis developed by G1M2, you have a variety of options for the emulator: changing the controls, number of lives and bonuses, saving the game state and so forth. Thankfully, they also added the “Immortal” option, which gives you an infinite number of lives.

The graphics are almost very nice. Things are very nicely detailed and not at all blocky. The catch, though, is that everything is very bland-looking, in terms of color. Everything is drab and flat—tan instead of brown, olive instead of green, and lots of shades of gray. Unfortunately, this makes everything blend in. It can be hard to tell enemy ships from the base, and your bombsight often gets lost in the pods or pipeways.

There isn’t much in the way of sound effects, just noises when you shoot something or get shot. Indeed, it seems to sound exactly like Xevious.

Vanguard II’s concept can be fun if done well. We’ve actually seen it in the Mini Metara, and Will Wright’s first game, Raid on Bungeling Bay, used it as well. But Vanguard II just doesn’t execute it all that well. It’s not terrible, but it’s not nearly as fun as it could be, and the pace is far too languid.

It also doesn’t take anything at all from Vanguard. Why they called it “Vanguard II” is beyond me. Ironically, Bosconian featured some things from the original Vanguard (the synthesized speech and multidirectional fire).

Still, using the Immortal option included by G1M2 takes a lot of the frustration out; you can die a lot but still make progress through the game’s levels. There isn’t a lot of variety in the bases, but it turns into a somewhat fun time-waster, not unlike how Marvin’s Maze did, just not as fun as Marvin’s Maze.

5/10