PrinceWatercress plays Yamato (SG-1000)

Are you ready for another arcade game on the SG-1000? Because I sure am.

Longplay

Yamato is a game that first saw action in arcades before being ported over to the SG-1000 in Japan and select European regions.

Left and Right let you move the ship around and aim, which you can also do with Up and Down. You have two target reticles. The cross is for your machine gun, which you will need to fire to get rid of the planes, and the diagonal lines are for the bombs, which you'll need to shoot down the subs and ships. Button 1 lets you shoot the machine guns, and Button 2 shoots the bombs.

As you fight enemies, enemies will fight back. The black things with the white trails that travel towards you are torpedoes, and you do not want those to touch your ship. The missiles from the subs and ships will move diagonally, but the ones fired from the planes will have a brown trail and will move diagonally until they are lined up with you; when that happens, they travel straight down. These missiles also have a diving sound when they fire, too. If a missile hits you, you lose a life. If you lose all your lives, the game is over. A word to the wise: don't stay in the corners for very long, as you can get trapped there by the missiles.

Your score will be in the top of the screen, and your current lives will be in the lower-right corner. To the right of that is your current round and the amount of targets that you've shot down. When you've shot down sixteen targets, you'll go to the next round. As you go from round to round, the time of day goes from day to evening to night and back to day, and the enemies and missiles will get faster. The planes' missiles will get crazy fast when you reach Round 6.

You'll get an extra life at 10,000 points, but it is the only one you get. Also, it is possible to take a hit and keep going, but if you take a second hit, you're down for good.

For some reason, some ships will catch on fire and will require a second bomb to destroy. At least you get points on both hits. Also, the ships and subs give more points than the planes do, despite the fact that the planes are the most dangerous enemy of the three due to their missiles.

This is a pretty simple yet fun arcade game. Sega is known for their arcade games from the mid-to-late 1980s, but there are some fun ones from the early 1980s and this is one of them. The graphics are easily identifiable, you'll constantly hear barrages of missile fire, the gameplay is pretty addicting once you have it figured out, and the action can get frantic before you know it. If you come across this game, give it a shot.