Overview:

In what I’m assuming is the future, the titular Space Pirates have taken over a vessel and taken people hostage.  It’s up to you as a star ranger to put their nefarious plans to bed.  From the opening movie you’ll battle hordes of enemies across multiple levels and locales to take out the Captain of the Space Pirates and save the princess.  It’s also a full motion video light gun shooter game with one hit kills.  

Visuals:

This is using HIGHLY compressed video for the game so take that for what you will.  The sets and costumes are horrendously cheap looking but I assume that’s the charm.  Now, were they doing it because they thought it was funny or because that’s all they had, who knows, but over 30 years later it does make it a fun romp.  You do see the same videos over and over again because you will die often and the bad guys are on loop to extend levels.

Audio:

The audio ain’t bad for this game.  The voices sound muffled and distorted so you can’t really tell what people are saying but, like the visuals, it adds to the charm.  The gun fire sound effects get really annoying super quickly.  Especially the noise of you missing when you clearly hit someone.  I dreaded that noise.

Completion:

Holy shit!  I hate games like this.  One hit kills you and then you have to start the whole level over again.  This wouldn’t be so bad if you could memorize the patterns, but they’re on a random loop so you’re scrambling all over the screen at a glacial pace.  Before you know it, you’re on the left side of the screen with a pirate popping up on the right who already dumped two into your chest.  Rinse and repeat.  I was on the…factory [?] stage…for what seemed like 10 minutes dying over and over before I gave up.  I’m done.