I don’t have strong memories of Blue Wing Blitz sixteen years later (I do remember playing it on a scorching Summer spent in Kyoto in 2007), but I would have bet a brownie this must be the kind of game @Kimimi has written something about on her blog and now y’all owe me a free brownie.
Vysethedetermined also has a good gameplay sample video with accompanying description on his channel.
Click below for the description:
“The sky is looked up at far and people consider what.” - Passage from the manual of Blue Wing Blitz. Ah, blitz. It’s an appropriate term for this game, as it consists of swift military offensives with intensive aerial bombardment.
Squaresoft was one of the main (and key) supporters of Bandai’s ill-fated line of WonderSwan handhelds, and it’s where they made various ports/upgrades of some of their popular games. However, to a slightly lower extent, it’s also where Squaresoft took “gambles” by releasing unusual or unique games that won’t be found on any other systems. Their first original title, Wild Card, took playing with cards to a whole new level, and their next original title, Blue Wing Blitz, took the militaristic theme of Front Mission (unsurprisingly, as largely the same team worked on BWB) but altered the strategy formula and deals with aerial warfare and aircrafts. Neither game sold particularly well (it’s stated BWB sold about 20,000 copies in its first year).
While the game features well-presented cutscenes and stills with an overall decent but simple graphical interface (with characters being designed by Nobuyuki Ikeda) and a decent soundtrack (composed by Kumi Tanioka) it was actually a pretty involved handheld strategy game that probably deserved a little more credit. Blue Wing Blitz tells the tale of a 16 year old rookie pilot named Keid, who was enlisted into a rebel force unit for his raw potential, to stop an expansionist group known as the Ordia Empire, who is attacking other regions to monopolize power. Along the way, he is trained by a female senior pilot of the same age known as Payer, and the two go on to defeat their enemies, causing them to surrender or join their cause.
The game takes place on various floating continents (more the reason why the game deals with aircrafts) where you’ll fight primarily with planes and anti-air facilities. There are different missions that range from protecting facilities to lasting a certain number of turns and there are several strategies one can take in the game. Some of the things that make the game interesting is limited ammo per mission (where you can also equip support abilities in place of ammo, such as radars to improve aim), Gas (which must be refueled), and actual combat (where you’re offered a certain amount of turns to deal damage and can use different aerial manuevers to minimize/maximize damage). Characters move on the “X” shaped areas and various units can stand on one space. One character, Havilan, is invaluable as he is very powerful and doesn’t need to refuel at facilities.
There are about a couple dozen missions in the game and various crafts to pilot and items to use. It’s pretty challenging in some spots too and is a pretty neat game to add to your WS/WSC/SC collection if you’re into strategy games. It’s loosely compared to Advance Wars. This video goes over the first two stages. Enjoy.
