Shoot-‘Em-Ups make the metaphorical meal of any consoles dish; you have your meat in the shape of the Platformers and Third-Person-Adventure games, then the veg of Puzzlers and those with a little RPG element to increase the flavour and the bread and butter is the old First-Person-Shooter but the real central part, the bit that everyone expects as part of their meal - the spuds if you like, unchanging but needed – are the Shoot-‘Em-Ups. Everyone has played one, but I can’t think of many people that consider them to be the biggest or best part of a console’s release line up.

            Nanostray is Majesco Entertainment’s offering to the NintendoDS plate, and it’s the second of hopefully many Shoot-‘Em-Ups to be released on the NintendoDS. Majesco are a small US games developer and publisher that has been running for 19 years, producing a good repertoire of games over many formats and are now embracing the handheld market with open arms, making this title for the NintendoDS and planning a big budget release for the PSP in the coming months. It’s easy to see a lot of potential in this company for the future.

            Now Nanostray as it stands is set as the standard Shoot-‘Em-Up, as in you progress in a spaceship through a vertically scrolling screen; blasting - with your ship’s massive laser cannons - many alien spacecraft of varying shapes and sizes. A traditionally advised advancement on the previous Shoot-‘Em-Up release on the NintendoDS, Space Invaders: Revolution, clarifying the distance the genre has travelled since conception.

The firepower is of course the main part of this game and this is where Nanostray makes its first adaptation within the genre. Through the Touch Screen there are four different guns to utilise, all with very different capabilities. The first is a straight-forward shooter, the second is two side-mounted cannons, spaying bullets horizontally, the third shoots forward but with an added homing ability and the last one is a bolt of electricity, homing and constant. Each gun has a secondary function, available through the B Button, these are different for every gun, but they increase your firepower immensely, enemies that at first seem like armoured tanks, are soon decimated with a few blasts from these handy backups. You do have to use them strategically though as they only have a certain amount of power, which is governed by a bar to the left of their control buttons, extra power can be obtained by destroying designated Waves of enemy ships and collecting the blue “Coin” that appears afterwards. If you don’t kill things, you don’t get more power to kill more things – adding an additional element of strategy to the hectic blasting.

            The level design is very good, pre-set routes take you sweeping over and through buildings, satellites, desert landscapes and even lava pits. The alien spacecraft comes thick and fast, but there’s always a brief break when the pattern of attack changes or when new enemies or obstacles appear, allowing you a quick breather or to change to one of the other weapons, a process that takes a little getting used to because of the placement of the controls on the Touch Screen, something that could have been avoided with a placement of the shoot Button on the Touch Screen as seen in Space Invaders: Revolution. There are quite a few modes available in the title - starting with the now traditional Story Mode, as it’s from here that everything else gets unlocked. Each Level you do in Story Mode will unlock it in Arcade Mode, allowing you to redo it as many times as you like, though you get only three Lives, as opposed to the five seen in Story Mode, with which to complete it with. As you go though Story Mode you will also unlock challenges, these are Levels from the Story Mode with set objectives, varying from getting a certain score to getting through it with just one ship. There’s also a Multiplayer Mode which allows two people to go through a level co-operatively whilst trying to beat each other, the quickly accessible options at the beginning of each level allow you to customise the game how you like. Being a Single Card Download, it’s used with the NintendoDS Download Play option, making the Multiplayer Mode by far the biggest selling point of this game.

            There isn’t anything lacking from Nanostray, the graphics are at the very high end of the Shoot-‘Em-Up genre, enhancing the gameplay and the enjoyment at the same time, the 3D aspect they have integrated into this 2D game, the fact you have to fly over and under stuff, gives it a better standing than many games of its ilk. Even masters of this genre, the makers of R-Type have yet to truly master the 3D element within a 2D game. The sound although not quite to the 3D level, also enhances the gameplay, the spectacular explosions made all the better by a spectacular boom.

            It is obvious that there has been a lot of work gone into this title, from the way the ship moves to the intricately designed levels, everything has had a lovely smooth comb over. Admittedly there are faults with Nanostray, little tiny niggles you briefly notice whilst in the middle of a high intense battle, like small amounts of slow-down during the moments when everything kicks off, but this is where the comb over effect really helps, you do notice the faults, but only at the same time that you notice a thousand brilliant things about the game, every little quibble just gets washed away as the next wave comes in. A very promising title from a very promising developer, well worth every moment, hour and day you will spend enjoying it.