Last Resort

About Last Resort

Last Resort (1992) is SNK's dark, R-Type-like Neo Geo shoot 'em up, made by former Irem staff, with an indestructible drone that can lock in place or orbit the ship.

Last Resort in Depth

The player fights through five stages, twice, destroying each end boss by hitting its weak points. The ship is a cyber jet that, once it collects one, is accompanied by an indestructible robot drone. The drone shields the ship from small projectiles, much like the Dino 246 drone in Pulstar and Blazing Star, and doubles as an extra weapon with multi-directional fire that can be launched at enemies. It can be toggled between staying fixed in position and rotating around the cyber jet. Power-ups upgrade the jet through three levels of three types of firepower and increase its speed.

In the future, mankind has developed the technology to colonise space, but a mysterious computer virus infects the main computer running humanity's first space station, turning its automated defences against Earth and persuading other humans to join its side. Its attacks on Earth become so frequent that the planet's only hope lies in advanced spaceships with great firepower. Critics have compared the game to R-Type, and others its visuals to the 1988 film Akira.

Making Last Resort

SNK developed and published Last Resort for the Neo Geo arcade and home platforms, and Game Machine listed it as Japan's thirteenth most popular arcade game of May 1992, while RePlay placed it sixteenth in North America that month. It was ported to the Neo Geo AES and Neo Geo CD and has generally been well received. Consoles Plus called it a reference shoot 'em up for the Neo Geo, and Hobby Consolas praised its graphics, music and two-player mode while missing an extra stage, but EGM's four reviewers panned the AES version, finding its impressive graphics and sound undone by crippling slowdown and a very short length, unforgivable given the console's power and the cartridge's price. Ultimate Future Games praised the Neo Geo CD version's "opera-style rave soundtrack" but found it short. Nintendo Life later compared its dark atmosphere to R-Type and Armed Police Unit Gallop and called it one of the best Neo Geo shooters, though it found the two-player mode broken. It was re-released in SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 1 and Hamster's ACA Neo Geo series.