Arcade Archives: Juno First

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This week;s Arcde Archives release is.. Juno First (Konami, 1983)

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Just one revision this time, nothing fancy. Preference Settings allow players to display an eight-digit score in-game (the normal score display only shows six digits) and adjust game speed.

At last, Juno First escapes from Game Room jail! Aside from some contemporary home computer ports including C64, Atari 800, DOS and MSX, the only arcade-accurate (sort-of) version of this one was Microsoft's Game Room which is real and can still hurt you so it's nice to have an Arcade Archives release for this. As for the game itself, this really doesn't look like a Konami game of the era- this seems really inspired, especially in terms of visuals and sounds, by American arcade games by the likes of Williams, especially Defender and Stargate, and it actually plays a little like that too, albeit with vertical scrolling, a vanishing-point (similar to something like Radarscope) and you save aliens for bonus points instead of humans. It takes a little time to get used to the idea of moving freely since your movement can be slightly slow, but once you adjust to it, this is a fun little shooter with impressive presentation (the starfield background really sells the perspective well), tense shootout gameplay as you try and wipe out all the hostiles without getting blown up and a rather neat warp button, limited to three uses per wave, that can get you out of a tight spot. If you're sore that there's no Western arcade games from the Golden Era on Arcade Archives, this might scratch that itch.