And suddenly Silpheed was a 3D shooter on Android

Silpheed and I go way back, back to the Sega CD days when I was rooting for the bolt-on hardware to dazzle the world and silence the naysayers. While that dream scenario never happened I did get Silpheed, a dazzling shooter that I eventually realized was just playing out on top of pre-rendered videos. Then the series went silent for, oh, eight years and was brought back as a mediocre isometric shooter on PlayStation 2. Another six years and it was dredged up by Square Enix as a (sp)Ace Combat shooter on Xbox 360.

Given its history it seems only fitting that after four more years someone would pull Silpheed out of the box, dust it off and shove it onto another platform. The surprise this time is that SILPHEED Alternative is for the Android mobile OS. Sadly, any excitement the surprise reappearance caused in me was quickly blunted by its similarities to Project Sylpheed. It’s a 3D space shooter (in the Ace Combat vein) with on-screen buttons and a cluttered sci-fi HUD display. It’s also only available on the Japanese Android Market right now meaning I can’t even try the free Lite version. If someone ever ports it I’d love to give it a shot but even then this may be one of those rare apps that runs better on an Android tablet with a few extra inches of thumb space.