Title: Final Exerion
System: Nintendo Switch (eShop)
Price: $14.99
Release Date: 09/21/2023

Story

From the developer behind the shooter throwback Quad Fighter K, Happymeal revives one of the earliest Jaleco IP with a sequel forty years later. In this game, aliens have come after earth, and it is up to a lone pilot who embarks in a familiar spaceship, to stop them! This game actually has a plot, unlike the original game, and each stage is preceded by a comic-style cutscene.

Presentation

Considering the original Exerion launched forty years ago, almost anything Final Exerion could have tried with a presentational style would have looked way better than the original 8-bit title, so seeing Happymeal go for a 16-bit look here made sense. You have way better, prettier sprites, much more variety in the backgrounds and enemies, and even some decent visual effects.

It doesn’t force itself to be a pure 16-bit experience, as there are definitely several aspects that would have never worked on a real SNES, but it generally looks to be a pretty game, especially considering the original was made in an era of Galaga clones. You even have a small amount of border options to choose from, including a super cool one with a mock arcade instruction card, though unlike the original game this is not in TATE mode.

The music might just be the biggest surprise in Final Exerion, as nearly every song is flat out amazing. The original game had no music outside of the Famicom port’s title theme, so Happymeal just went all out and gave Final Exerion an energetic and jam-packed soundtrack, with so many awesome tunes. The redbook audio vibes really reminds me of something I’d hear from a PC Engine or early Saturn title, and I honestly feel that this soundtrack should be made available as a standalone purchase.

Gameplay

Final Exerion is a vertical shooter, taking place across 13 stages as you use the fighter ship to shoot down all the enemy waves! In the original game you had a slower, two-piece shot, and a rapid fire singular shot to alternate between, and it was barely anything more than a Galaga style game with scrolling backgrounds. Still, it was a fun gameplay loop and good for scoring, and Final takes that core concept and really goes to town trying to modernize it.

Now the fighter ship is powered by the Cell system, which charges up automatically and when fired, will unleash a major airstrike that will clear out the current wave of enemies or deal major damage to bosses, before depositing one of several powerups. The singular shot from the first game is one of these, but you now have some others such as options, a plasma field, a thunder laser, and a spread shot, each representing a letter in EXERION.

Of course, these secondary weapons are still finite, but now they also serve as a secondary hit point, so if an enemy hurts you, you’ll lose the weapon but at the cost of being able to live a bit longer, and likewise, you can discard your weapon entirely to unleash the Cell attack, either to gain the bonus points from doing so, or to save yourself in a pinch if a wave is giving you trouble.

Each stage now ends in a boss fight, and these are pretty OK, though some of them drag on a lot longer than I’d like. If you end up running out of your secondary weapon, the default weapon can make these fights a real bore, so some later bosses end up being an endurance match as you wait around for the Cell meter to refill, with some of the final bosses being outright absurd, even on the easiest difficulty.

The final levels also feel a bit padded, since they threw in a boss rush of all things to the game, which I wasn’t really a fan of, and one of the last stages has the dumb idea of throwing in a wall you can ram into on the sides of the stage, which just makes that level feel downright cheap considering the game still plays and feels as slippery as the original, and the rest of the game not doing that sort of nonsense really makes it come as a jarring difficulty spike.

There are a couple of bonus stages that feel more like the original game though, and those were a nice break from the action, which makes me wish there was some sort of bonus caravan mode focused strictly on scoring. Alas, you just have the main 13 stages and three difficulties, with the latter two offering online leaderboards, and Easy being just a way to see the full game, normal being the default, and hard mode adding extra bullets upon an enemy’s defeat, which makes the already tough game even more crazy, especially since on this setting you can easily miss the deployed powerup from the Cell attack, making things even more dangerous. While you only have the main stages and leaderboards, I had lots of fun playing for score, as there’s a local high score per difficulty, along with online leaderboards for Normal and Hard, so there’s definitely some replay value here.

Conclusion

Ultimately, Final Exerion is a super fun throwback to a very early Arcade classic, and a lot of aspects about it I like a lot. From the godlike music, the fun scoring mechanics, and the cool take on the powerup system, it works pretty decently as a scorechaser and the online leaderboards are fun to tackle as a result.

However, the difficulty options are all over the place, and some later stages are flat out set on destroying you at all costs, with ridiculous parts such as certain bosses that soured my enjoyment on the back half of the game. Having a Boss Rush or walls to ram into in a Galaga-esque game is just never, ever fun.

Still, I really liked the gameplay loop and for playing for the leaderboards, this is still a game I’ve come back to often during the month I’ve dabbled with it, and considering how much it evolved from a 40 year old concept and made something more modern out of the idea, I really do have to give Happymeal some props. It isn’t as solid as their last shooter, but Final Exerion is a hidden scorechaser gem you don’t want to miss!

I give Final Exerion a 7 out of 10.