Starblade/Gameplay

Controls

 * Joystick: Use the analogue joystick to direct the gunsight of Geosword around the screen; it is not "reversed", and will move up and down normally.
 * Firing Button: Use this button to make Geosword fire lasers at its mostly-unnamed enemies; it will fire off three in succession before a short pause.
 * Start Button: Push this button to start the game; as with Assault which was released three years earlier, the game doesn't have a two-player mode.

Geosword (ジオソード)
The protagonist for this game; it is on a mission to destroy the mechanized planet weapon "Red Eye", which is approaching the second defense line of "Mother Planet", expected to be within firing range of its Wave Cannon within 35.24 hours. Once it has reached it, it must destroy the Power Stone inside the power reactor "Octopus", where all Red Eye energy converges and is its only weak point - and once it has done so, the game will state that you've succeeded in neutralizing Red Eye, and Operation Starblade has been successful, but a huge structure ("Iceberg") and two unidentified objects ("Commander" and "Sub-Commander") will then be detected, meaning that its new mission will be to neutralize "Iceberg". Once it has done so, it will be drawn into a final battle with "Commander" as its theme starts to be heard from the Yamaha YM-2151 (this will be the first time you have heard anything from it since the opening cutscene); once you've fired enough lasers at it to defeat it, it will explode as the game's ending theme starts to be heard from the Yamaha YM-2151 and it states that you have succeeded in neutralizing Red Eye, Iceberg and Commander, the enemy's chain of command is broken, all survivors are in disarray, and Mother Planet has escaped from the menace of Red Eye, thanks to its bravery. Its sensors will then indicate the current position of the "Mother Ship" (which will be the same as what they were after it had destroyed the Power Stone inside Octopus), input its position and compute the course to it before the unseen "King Raider", who will have spoken to it through the C140 several times during the game, says that they have accomplished the mission, and are returning to base now - and five of it will then fly off into the distance, as a sixth does a 360-degree turn and joins four more on their way back to three Mother Ships.