A Retro-SHMUP That Soars
Earthion is one of those games that would benefit from a supporting documentary. It’s developed by Ancient, who are a story themselves. They’re a couple of brothers (Yuzo Koshiro and Ayano Koshiro), Tomo Koshiro and a small group of childhood friends, all developing games as a cottage industry. They were even managed by the brothers’ mum at one point. They’ve been churning out some of gaming’s finest sequels and ports for 34 years now: games like Streets of Rage 2, Beyond Oasis, Actraiser 2 and Fuzion Frenzy 2. And still, the Koshiro brothers are at the helm in 2025.
Earthion sounds like a dare or stunt. It’s been developed as a Sega Megadrive/Genesis game, and the plan is to release it on cartridge in collaboration with Limited Run Games in 2026. My mind boggles at that: this is a gorgeous looking game on modern hardware, let alone a system that was released thirty-odd years ago. We honestly can’t imagine how many monkey paws must have been used to cram it onto 16-bit.
The arrival on Xbox and other modern consoles is a prelude to the physical release, and – frankly – we’re going to be first in line for the pre-orders. Earthion isn’t just a stunning Megadrive title; it’s a stunning SHMUP full-stop.
What On Earthion?
It seems a bit churlish to start with the story, as it’s the only glaring problem that Earthion is lumbered with. It’s a generic tale of hostile aliens attacking Earth and humanity scrambling to reply. You play Azusa Takanashi, and you’re flying a YK-IIA that has been fitted with alien tech – a last-ditch attempt to win the war. As a story, it’s about as well-worn as it gets.
But who cares once you get to hop into the cockpit, do a barrel roll and enter the fray? Earthion whacked us around the chops with densely detailed backgrounds, player animations that have a whiff of Mode 7, and the boss design. It was clear, pretty much immediately, that this was going to be our favourite SHMUP of the year.
A Shooter That Stays In Fifth Gear
Earthion is not a formulaic shooter. There’s been an attempt to tinker with the usual gameplay loop. Green crystals tumble out of dead enemies, and those crystals are integral to all of Earthion’s systems. They increase the shield of your ship while simultaneously boosting the power and level of your weapons. Hoovering them up is essential for both survivability and power.
Conversely, getting hit by enemies reduces the shield AND the power of your weapons. Get hurt enough and hard-earned weapons can even fall off your YK-IIA, never to be seen again. It may sound punishing but it’s forgiving: you can survive a few hits before shields and weapons fall. We loved diving into bullet-hell for green crystals, as we could anticipate and accommodate for the loss of shields. But it punishes players who get hit in sequence without any green gems to compensate. Fall to low health repeatedly and it can be hard to reverse the trend.
Adaptation’s What You Need If You Want To Be A Record Breaker
Earthion stacks on top of this idea beautifully. I am in utter love with its upgrade system. Initially, your spaceship has room for two weapons that can be cycled through with the shoulder buttons (a negative is that shuffling weapons is more awkward than it needs to be). As mentioned, these weapons can be blasted off your fighter, so preserving them is a task itself. But, at the end of each level, there is an opportunity to snag an Adaptation Pod. This takes up one of the weapon slots but does absolutely bugger all. You have to stumble through and complete a whole boss battle with only one weapon AND do so without getting damaged enough for it to detach.
It’s a gargantuan ask, but a worthwhile one. Because a successful player can cash the Adaptation Pod in for big upgrades. Extra lives, more shield modules, increased caps to weapon levels, and extra weapon slots are all on the menu and it’s hard to pick from them. There’s little better than rocking up to the latter levels of Earthion with a fully pimped out shield bar, or five weapon slots.
And you’ll need the better upgrades. As you’d likely hope, Earthion is granite-hard on higher difficulty settings, but just about do-able on lower settings. We’re probably mid-tier SHMUP fans and we can complete it regularly on Easy and Normal but rarely on the higher difficulties. In all honesty, the challenge feels pitched perfectly. The only exceptions are one mid-game level full of hellspawn, and the endgame boss, which are all roadbumps. Hardcore fans get a Challenge Mode with an erratic mix of builds and some difficult combat sections.
A Feast For The Eyeballs
By golly, the levels are peak level-design. They never sit still. Mechs perform drive-bys in the background, forcing you to dodge clouds of cluster bombs. Levels crunch together like trash compactors, while others fill with organic matter unless you blast it away. The enemies are diverse, too, and barely repeat once. We’d recommend treating the first runthrough as a learning experience. You are bound to die due to the game tossing in something terrifying and new.
The bosses may not be overly memorable in character design – we’d fail to draw any of them from memory, other than a fleshy gorilla-thing and a weird candelabra thing – but they’re more about what they want you, the player, to do. One boss battle is several screens wide, requiring you to strafe to sections that open. Another is a pitched battle in a rain of missiles. They communicate confidence and puckishness, and are highlights of the experience.
Gah, we can see the end of the review approaching and we haven’t even talked about the soundtrack! Fans of Yuzo Koshiro’s work will be chuffed to hear that it’s sublime. Blast it open and it oozes ‘90s Megadrive. We occasionally get the urge to replay, solely because we want to hear Level 2’s soundtrack again (we should probably buy the edition with the soundtrack – it would be easier).
SHMUP Of The Year?
You can likely tell from our effusive praise that we loved Earthion. It’s a wonder in the Seven Wonders sense: we’re not sure how a Megadrive game can look this good and play this superbly. Ancient have made it all look so easy. We’re confident that Earthion takes the crown for best SHMUP of 2025, which isn’t bad for a 16-bit title.
Important Links
From the Legends of the 16-Bit Era – Earthion is a Brand-New Console Retro Shooter – https://www.thexboxhub.com/from-the-legends-of-the-16-bit-era-earthion-is-a-brand-new-console-retro-shooter/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/earthion/9N29HBKL2ZJ2/0010
