Retro game review: Terra Cresta (Nintendo Entertainment System)

The NES was home to a large number of shooters, from innovative horizontal shooters like Gradius to classic overhead entries like Xevious. Many of these shooters were ported from the arcade to the NES, and today's focus is no different. Terra Cresta hit arcades in 1985 and was eventually ported to the NES, but not until 5 years later in 1990. Was the game far ahead of its time, or a simply a late arrival?

_{^{Image source: User World of Longplays on YouTube}}

Terra Cresta wears its arcade roots on its sleeve with shallow arcade shooter gameplay, which while not doing anything wrong, its certainly not impressive and by the time it hit stores in 1990 far more advanced shooters were on the market.

You begin the game by controlling your lone ship that flies vertically over an earth-like landscape populated with air-based ships and ground-based turrets and monsters. They all fire at you or try to crash into your ship.

The main feature of Terra Cresta that makes it stand out is the ship powerup system. Rather than collecting powerups from enemies you destroy, the game builds your firepower when you come across parts of your ship that are kept in ground-based bunkers. Destroy the bunkers and that part of your ship is released. You can power up your ship several times and with each addition, your firepower is increased and the size and appearance of your ship is increased. When you collect every part of your ship, you become a powerful and invulnerable phoenix for a short time.

Additionally, picking up these parts of your ship gives you the ability to split them into a wide formation that drastically increases the spread of your bullets for a short amount of time. You can split your ships up to 3 times before the ability to do this is restricted.

Enemy variety is pretty bland, with generic spaceship-shaped enemies in set swooping patterns, generic geometric-looking enemies and ground-based turrets and dinosaurs (for some reason they threw fire-spewing dinosaurs in here).

At the end of each stage you face an enemy boss ship which has far more firepower and can launch drones to attack you. Defeating it moves you to the next stage. Sadly, there's no ending to the game, as after you fight the 3rd boss the game loops back to the beginning.

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Terra Cresta is quite bland in the audiovisual department. The graphics are clear and feature a decent amount of detail, but the landscapes are incredibly dull. Throughout the entire game, you're flying over black space, brown/gray/green landscape or blue water. The number of colors and variety in the stages is really lacking and unimpressive. Enemy designs are also quite bland, with nothing standing out or memorable in the least.

Music and sounds are also pretty generic. Sound effects get the job done, but seem to be cookie-cutter effects without any personality. Music fares better, with a catchy theme song that uses several of the NES sound channels. The problem is that the only songs are the stage music and boss music. If you get tired of the stage music, you're in for some punishment if you manage to stick it out.

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Terra Cresta seems like a game that just game to the NES way too late. If this had been released in 1986 or 87, it would have seemed far more in line with other games of the era. By 1990, games like Gun Nac were out and were vastly superior to Terra Cresta.

With a relatively hefty price tag, dull presentation and generic gameplay its hard to recommend Terra Cresta, but hardcore shooter fans and NES collectors might still want to give it a look.

Current value:

Loose: $24.99 | Complete: $50.00

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