Crisis Force is an overhead shoot 'em up

Shoot 'em up

Shoot 'em up is a subgenre of shooter video games. In a shoot 'em up, the player controls a lone character, often in a spacecraft or aircraft, shooting large numbers of enemies while dodging their attacks. The genre in turn encompasses various types or subgenres and critics differ on exactly what...

 video game published by Konami

Konami

is a Japanese leading developer and publisher of numerous popular and strong-selling toys, trading cards, anime, tokusatsu, slot machines, arcade cabinets and video games...

 for the Family Computer

Nintendo Entertainment System

The Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America during 1985, in Europe during 1986 and Australia in 1987...

 in Japan. This game features two player simultaneous play, similar to Life Force. It also has the ability to switch among three different ship configurations during play. The game is divided into seven stages, each with an end of level boss.

The game was released at the end of the Family Computer's (Nintendo Entertainment System) lifespan and the more powerful Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) was already in retail. Konami had originally planned for a European and US release but the SNES/SFC were already in release.

The game is well known, in some ways, for pushing the graphical capabilities of the Famicom, mainly because of the use of simulated parallax scrolling (between the use of five layers).

Storyline

The story begins with a force of robots who descend on Tokyo City, in the year 199X, and begin to destroy the city. The protagonists are a boy and a girl who pilot a blue and red fighter craft and battle through seven stages.