| Vertical Force | |
|---|---|
 North American cover art | |
| Developer(s) | Hudson Soft |
| Publisher(s) | |
| Director(s) | Hitoshi Okuno |
| Composer(s) | Shōji Tomii Minoru Endō |
| Platform(s) | Virtual Boy |
| Release | |
| Genre(s) | Scrolling shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Vertical Force[a] is a 1995 vertically scrolling shooter video game developed and published by Hudson Soft for the Virtual Boy. It was released in Japan in August 1995 and North America by Nintendo in December 1995. The player controls a starship, the Ragnarok, that must destroy a malfunctioning supercomputer on a human colony planet before it wipes out all of mankind. Gameplay is similar to Hudson's Star Soldier series, featuring power-up items that increase the player's abilities and parallax scrolling. The player can move their ship farther into the background to avoid enemies and obstacles in the way.
Development was directed by Hitoshi Okuno, with music composed by both Shōji Tomii and Minoru Endō. The team originally planned to make the game a third-person rail shooter in the vein of Space Harrier, however the thought of similar games being released for the console later on instead caused it to become a vertical-scrolling shooter. It was shown off at the 1995 Winter Consumer Electronics Show under the working name Shoot'Em Up!. The game received mixed reviews from critics; some praised the game's 3D effects and detailed graphics, while others criticized its lack of originality and for enemy bullets being hard to see due to the console's limited color palette.
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