| Astro Robo SASA | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Mass Tael |
| Publisher(s) | ASCII Entertainment |
| Japanese title | アストロロボSASA |
| Release date(s) | |
| Genre(s) | Action |
| System(s) | Famicom |
| Players | 1-2 simultaneously |
Astro Robo SASA is a rather unique game for the Famicom. It involves a man (and a woman in the two player game) in an armored suit that carries a big gun. While this gun can be used to shoot things, it's primary purpose is blast players in to the air by producing a massive kick-back whenever the gun is fired. By pointing the gun down at the ground and firing, the player is propelled off the ground. Continual bursts lift the player higher and higher, and firing left or right, or even up, send the player flying in the opposite directions.
Your seemingly one and only goal is to recapture the energy pods that power your gun. It's a rather self-fulfilling prophecy: You wouldn't need to collect those pods if you never fired your gun in the first place. Pods can be locked away behind barriers that you must shoot to destroy. Of course, every time you shoot at something, the gun propels you further away from it, forcing you to fire back in the opposite direction to correct your position. In addition, you'll need to pay attention to things like gravity and current, and avoid all the random objects that move about the screen and drain you of precious energy.
The first of the game's 16 stages start out easy enough, but the difficulty rapidly increases. You'll soon learn that holding on to as much energy as you can throughout each stage is vital to your ability to survive the later stages. Enter with too little energy, and you may not be skilled enough to get through the stage without running out of energy, which ends your game. Astro Robo SASA is a deceptively difficult game. A game simply entitled SASA first appeared on the MSX with a similar, but slightly different premise.
Sasa (and his partner Nana) must reclaim all of the energy capsules stolen from him by some unknown force. He must make it through the various traps that his enemy has set up for them, and arrive all the way to the location of a black hole in outer space where the final capsules are hidden. Even if Sasa completes his mission with one single unit of energy left, he will succeed. If he ever runs out of energy, he fails.