4D Warriors for Sega
Before the developers of this game became known as Banpresto, and before the company was absorbed by Namco, it was used to be known as Coreland way back in the early 80’s (and before that it used to have the name Hoei Sangyo), and acted as a subcontractor for different companies such as Sega and its other divisions. Sometime around 1985, Coreland merged with Sega to create an arcade space shooter that was to be included in bundled packages along with Sega consoles for easier marketing. The result was 4-D Warriors; an obscurely mediocre side scroll game that was of a common trend at the time. Yet, this game had a brave concept to it. It was original in its sense of theoretical physics ‘translation’.
The 80’s wasn’t particularly filled with ideas of alternate universes in the science fiction sense. Few people barely understood the concept. There were some books and movies about it here and there, but nowhere near as prolific during the 90’s and the current era. Few video games touched the parallel universes and ‘wormholes’ idea mainly because of the lack of scientific theory to back it all up, but this game weathered it all, as if it had nothing to lose. There was certainly nowhere to go but up.
Although it never really achieved prominence, nor any minor cult following, it did receive slightly above average praise from older gamers who remember the game as a footnote to happy moments of their childhood. Recent nostalgic authors credit 4-D warriors for its weird and yet, surprising identity as a cordial arcade ‘shoot-em up’ game.
Gameplay
4-D Warriors lets the player control an astronaut/warrior/rocketeer type of character traveling through different dimensions by way of wormholes or just simply gaps in reality.
Six different dimensions are contained within the game. The player starts in a reddish area inhabited by a motley assortment of baddies. Dodging and shooting at big blue aliens and green whatnots is purely traditional arcade pleasure. There are also crystals that can be found within the area. The player can pick these up to gain a variety of power-ups; apparently, there are three forms.
Flying over the red area and upwards lets the player enter another dimension that is of a bluish type of environment. This blue area is where you fight the first boss. When the player has inflicted enough damage on the boss, it will begrudgingly escape to the red area. There you can kill it and happily move on to the game’s next level. If the boss is not in the level, it is replaced by different sorts of beings that somehow act like the ones in the red area, but look a little different. To return to the red area, simply fly over the top of the blue area and you will be teleported.
Hints
There are some things that happen in the red area that is almost dependent of the laws of chance, i.e. Quantum Mechanics. Pay attention to these details and you will find out that these phenomena act like teleporters to other dimensions.
First, two objects, shaped like green diamonds, come out of a hole that opens up randomly. If these objects manage to capture you, you will then be teleported to another dimension where there’s a clear blue sky and some clouds. There you will encounter a sort of round blue object and two hugely monstrous eyeballs on the ground that try to shoot at you with bullets. Shoot the blue circular object while trying to avoid the bullets from the eyeballs.
Second, a big monster jumps up from below and gobbles you up. Thankfully, it doesn’t chew its food. You travel through the monster’s wide alimentary canal.
Lastly, a pair of mirrors comes up from behind, bouncing and jouncing and traversing across the screen. Your capture leads to another teleportation to either one of two possible places. The first is a wide hall passage colored in bluish-green hues. It is full of gigantic heads of stone and huge goblets. There are also various masks that float about. The other is a plain filled with spheres that look like oranges while blue pyramids populate the area.
Game Cheats
There are no known game cheats for this one. Vague arcade games such as this probably did not fully interest the developers or programmers to incorporate codes.