2026-08-17 · blog
Air Fortress (1987) — The Shoot’em Up That Finishes on Foot, Inside the Fortress
Episode 30 of "Today Is Release Day": Air Fortress, released on the Famicom on August 17, 1987 under HAL Laboratory’s own label, priced at 5,300 yen. The first half is a side-scrolling shooter in which you fly a lightship to the fortress airlock; the second is an action stage where you move through the interior on a jetpack, destroy the core and escape. Energy and items collected in the first half carry straight over to the second, and inside the fortress every shot — bullet or bomb — pushes you backwards, so firing in the opposite direction is how you travel fast. That near-zero-gravity handling is the game’s great quirk. The North American version came out through HAL America in September 1989, and Nintendo Power, VideoGames & Computer Entertainment, Computer Entertainer and Germany’s Play Time all left reviews of it. As for HAL Laboratory, the company that published this cartridge filed for composition five years later, on June 22, 1992.
