As soon as the game boots up, you know you're in for a good time. The title is flashing at you, with the typical start/continue option with little else. This is gonna be a game that's all about the game, no other nonsense needed. Upon starting, you get a nifty cut scene of your sub leaving the dock which is a nice touch, then it's straight into the waters to blast your way through til the end. Whether it be enemy subs, surface ships, choppers, etc. everything wants you dead (even bubbles!), as you'd imagine from a shooter. There's a lack of power meter, or any real heads up display for that matter. You get told how many lives you've got between rounds, alternatively can hit pause on the console and check your current and hi-score (as well as how many continues you got). Power ups exist in the form of collectables which will increase rate of fire and the like as you'd expect – but it's not til deeper into the game that you'll get more toys to play with, so to speak (such as lasering the heck out of the final boss).

To find out why these folk want to end you and you end them, its the classic case of go check the manual and/or back of the case for plot points. In the game you play the character Admiral Mikan taking control of the titular submarine, the purpose is to liberate the citizens of Balderia from the “meta-creature” before it causes any more destruction, as it did apparently four years prior. Good enough reason to go shoot things, right?

In terms of sheer playability, Submarine Attack has it in absolute spades. In terms of controls, you're encouraged to get power ups as the speed of the sub improves immensely, as previously alluded to. With the injection of speed, the game immediately becomes more responsive. It's a fairly clever mechanic to encourage the player to keep playing. The game isn't autofire off the bat, either. But that, too, can get rectified by way of power ups. That said, the game doesn't have the mad amounts of crazy enemy patterns to remember like the more bullet hell-style games within the genre, which the argument of it being an 'easy' title comes to play. But, the word easy is often given to dog on a game, which I certainly don't want to do. Why? Quite simply, I really like this. Plus, I'm quite partial to an “easy” game now and then. Not every cart you choose to fire up do you necessary want to batter your brains every five seconds. Sometimes you want to sit back and enjoy. That’s the kind of game this is, to me at least. You can play it, have some fun, finish it...Then a few months later do the same randomly. Original point before going off topic though – it plays very well indeed!