Soldner-X arriving winter of '07 over the PSN

by Nick Doerr { Aug 22nd 2007 at 6:00PM }

If you have no idea what Soldner-X: Himmelsstürmer is, think back to the glory days of the original PlayStation, to when Square-Enix was still Squaresoft. They tried out different game genres, one of which was a horizontal space shooter called Einhander. The game meshed 2D and 3D in a really unique way and kicked a lot of ass. That's what nostalgia we get when staring at the Soldner-X screenshots, or those contained in our gallery below. The little power-up bar along the bottom is incredibly reminiscent of the Gradius games, too. Two of our favorite horizontal shooters combined into a pretty 720p, 60fps masterwork? We'll download.

Some of the key features in the title are standard fare: unlockable difficulties, power-ups, etc. There are a few tweaks to the genre to make it stand out, though. One of these is a "tactical" element system like chaining, berserker mode, and effectiveness systems. We could draw parallels all day, but to have these all in one place is a nice effort. We can't wait to see if the "over the top" boss fights really are insane. What do you guys think? Would this be a welcome change from the dual-analog shooters plaguing the PlayStation Network?

[via PS3 Forums]

Gallery: Soldner-X

Tags: sidequeststudios, soldner-x

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

gamingeek @ Aug 22nd 2007 6:32PM

Hellz yes! As long as it's a cheap download I'm all over it.

Don @ Aug 22nd 2007 6:32PM

This looks like a fun little shooter for the PS3. Great graphics for a game of this type.

apease @ Aug 22nd 2007 6:36PM

W00T! I love scrolling shooters, I'm all over this. I've been wondering when PSN would get one, too bad it's going to be a while before it hits.

julio @ Aug 22nd 2007 6:42PM

this looks great

Darkdrium777 @ Aug 22nd 2007 6:56PM

Why 720p? Can't the PS3 render this in 1080p at 60FPS? Even today's computers could make this run at more frames per second at 1366x768.... :| I hope they announce 1080p support soon, because it would suck pretty bad to have a PSN downloadable minigame at 720p only.

railven @ Aug 22nd 2007 6:57PM

I remember the rumors of Einhander 2 when Squaresoft was still making great games.

Ahhh the good old days. Well if you say it reminds you of Einhander, I'm sold! Any idea on price/launch (US)?

miglaugh @ Aug 22nd 2007 7:19PM

Reminds me of Section Z from the NES.

Zhabin @ Aug 22nd 2007 7:30PM

@5. I was wondering the same thing. Why isn't this game running in 1080p? All the other PSN downloadable titles have been 1080p...so weird that they decided to go with 720p on this one.

Consolcwby @ Aug 22nd 2007 8:50PM

If it's anything like Einhander, I'm in! 720p is good for this kind of game, I suppose we will see many games running in this configuration for the remainder of 2007. 2008 on the other hand... ;)

Nate @ Aug 23rd 2007 8:03AM

I'm with #5.... where's the 1080p love? No reason why a *side scroller* can't be 1080p.

John @ Aug 23rd 2007 10:59PM

Whoa. I am SO all over this. This, and whenever they bring 2d platforming to the ps3. Well, I guess that's sorta what Little Big Planet is, but I want a single-player, something like Jetset Willy II (one of the greatest games ever made for Commodore 64), but yeah I'm hyped, this is like Xevious on like a freakin million, or something.

John @ Aug 23rd 2007 11:09PM

It is SO sad to hear fanboys griping about lack of 1080p on a side scroller that they have not even seen in action yet.

First of all (I mean, where do I even start, with you people?), in the old days we had paralax scrolling-- we'd designate anywhere from 2-7 frames to pan in the background at various rates, giving the effect of 3d uh... paralax scrolling.

On current and even last-gen consoles, that was dropped, in lieu of a more realistic 3-dimensional space that the 'warrior' was 'parsing' through.

This takes more processor power, but since modern game machines (ps2 and on) don't have built-in 'paralax-scrollers' (God, I love the word, "paralax"-- I'm probably even spelling it wrong, let's check.... okay, parallax, shoot me), the hit in cpu power isn't so much, they use their 3d techniques.

But even so, because of the fierce timing needs of these kind of games, it's sort of like programming a first-person-shooter, and getting everything synchronized can be more tricky than you think, especially when developers are aiming for absolute 60fps.

So I can see why, early in ps3, developers, 'even for a 'game like this'' would tend to resort to 720p.

The only valid criticism I can see is from the folks who have to have 1080i or 420p... I hope that coders increase their sensitivity to this issue, although it might mean leaving off some effects, or something...

On the other hand, for a game like this, 420p is about what it would have been in an arcade.

I don't mind bigger pixels, because today's stuff does so much more, even at a lower resolution, that compared to the arcade games which we used to revere, it's still going to look fantastic, and besides... what's wrong with a little 480p love?

I wouldn't mind playing any game like this on a lower resolution, because that is the origin of games like this and at a lower resolution, for now, the frame-rate and effects and timing of input can all be guaranteed to be spot-on.