It's time for Retro Reboot to dive once again into the world of 8-bit superhero action. After dabbling in the action platformer madness that is the very snug, but very difficult Batman and the Uncanny X-men, the video game equivalent of trying to eat dry ice, time to take a look at the only game starring the Silver Surfer...uhh...Silver Surfer. This was going to initially be a part of #SHMUPtember, but it ended up on the bubble, as I wanted to bring a little more attention to a various degree of shooters. Silver Surfer is notorious for being one of the most difficult games on the NES, if not all time. And yeah, it is. If this game were any harder, it'd be in a week-old Panera Bread baguette.

Silver Surfer was released in 1990 and developed by our good friends Software Creations, once again exhibiting how incredibly mixed their library of games are. It's a space shooter that is definitely way more unforgiving than your 1941 or Tiger Heli. The discussion of whether Silver Surfer is a bad game BECAUSE it's too hard has some merit, yet unlike Battletoads, I would more likely put this back in my NES and try to beat it than place it on my shelf. It's not the only SHMUP to be incredibly tough. One hit kills are in Legendary Wings, and that one gets incredibly stubborn in the later half. Once you die and lose your power-ups, bedlam ensues. With Silver Surfer, there's three key factors I find that make this game so brutal, I'll go over these in kind.

Silver Surfer Is An AWKWARD Target 

 Unlike starships you generally man in a shooter, the Silver Surfer is a man on a board, giving him one of the most cumbersome hurt boxes I've ever dealt with. It's so tricky to navigate tight spaces and threading the needle on incoming projectiles is nearly impossible.

Silver Surfer alternates between overhead and horizontal scrolling stages, the vertical levels I find to be a little easier to deal with. The silver spheres you collect in the overhead stages flank the left and right of you, providing solid cover, even if Surfer is still a giant bullseye. In the side-scrolling portions is like guiding a giant Tetris L-Block through a series of table saw blades. AND your silver sphere is underneath you, making your trajectory very bizarre. This just totals up a lot of unintentional deaths that pile up, and the image of a beaten and anguished Silver Surfer just sums up how perfectly this game defeats you.

No Auto-Fire

If the human thumb could develop its own set of six pack abs, Silver Surfer is P90X (is P90X still culturally relevant??). Providing an NES Max or an Advantage isn't on hand, there's a lot of mashing the fingers will be doing to the fire button. In a SHMUP, you just have a notion to constantly shoot. With zero ammo limitations, do you have a reason to ever stop shooting? Especially in a game where enemy ships fly at you in the most exaggerated patterns and with such blinding speed. The hand can get tired, but thankfully your projectile can be powered up, but one death and you're back to zilch. 

Almost Every Enemy Sustains More Damage Than Surfer

As I said, dying in one hit isn't the worst thing, this is common in SHMUPS. In Silver Surfer, I'd wager 90% of enemies take roughly three or four shots to take down. Even those ever present line of ships or monsters that fly in super fancy patterns. Not quite bullet sponges, but more formidable than one would like to tend with. 

I wouldn't put Silver Surfer in a really high tier when it comes to shooters. It's one of the better developed Software Creations releases, and has something about it that keeps me coming back to it, when in all technicality I should stop playing it before I turn completely into cartilage. Graphically, it looks alright. Maybe the greatest letdown is the bosses have these interesting looking Mega Man style icons during the stage select screen. When you actually reach a boss after two full stages of Hell that's mathematically equal to cleaning a garbage disposal clogged with razor blades barehanded, the bosses are usually tucked into a tiny corner at the end of the screen unmoving as projectiles are thrown at you. Some stages can be very disorienting due to color palette or an overabundance of patterns. The Emperor's second stage has pipe framework in the background and it's total stress on the eyes trying to distinguish any of the tiny projectiles hurtling towards you.

The week before, I talked about DuckTales' music supervision being one of its memorable traits. Silver Surfer's composition is just phenomenal. When it comes to 8-bit tracks, the composition in this game is a borderline technical masterpiece. Complex and energetic, its otherworldly sci-fi ambience and electrical shred metal combines to make an intoxicating theme.

It's difficult to really recommend Silver Surfer. It's not a bad game from a technical standpoint, it plays well enough and is devoid of glitches. There might be some very random things like pouring lava from the ceiling that I can't tell is patterned or not. The challenge on it is cranked up to such high degrees that casual play is almost ruled out. Still, Silver Surfer has a status on the NES for being a tough nut to crack and requires the utmost patience to improve in.