Vertical Force

Vertical Force is a vertical-scrolling shooter video game. The player controls a starship, the Ragnarok, and must destroy the malfunctioning supercomputer on the human colony planet Odin before it annihilates Earth. The Ragnarok must shoot down oncoming enemy fighters and avoid their projectiles and other obstacles within the stages. The Ragnarok can also sustain multiple hits before being destroyed.

Some enemies will drop power capsules that can be collected to strengthen the Ragnarok's abilities, such as a wide shot, a piercing laser, and a shield. Collecting additional power capsules will increase the abilities further, such as making the projectiles stronger or the shield be able to take additional hits.

Vertical Force was developed and published by Hudson Soft for the Virtual Boy on August 12, 1995 in Japan. It was later released in North America on December 1, 1995, where it was published by Nintendo. It was Hudson's only other game released for the system, alongside a port of their PC Engine puzzle game Panic Bomber. It uses a red-and-black color scheme for its graphics, just like all other games for the console, alongside parallax scrolling to simulate a 3D effect.

The development team originally planned to make the game a third-person rail shooter in the vein of Space Harrier, however the thought of similar games being released for the console later on instead caused it to become a vertical-scrolling shooter. It was presented at the 1995 Winter Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, under the working title Shoot'Em Up!. The game was directed by Hitoshi Okuno, and composed by both Shōji Tomii and Minoru Endō.

Vertical Force received polarized reviews from critics upon release; while some praised the game's 3D effects and detailed graphics, others criticized its lack of originality and for enemy projectiles being difficult to distinguish from the background, which many attributed to the Virtual Boy's limited color palette.

Electronic Gaming Monthly criticized the game's graphics for making it difficult to tell where enemy projectiles are, while GamePro disliked its unimpressive enemy designs and lack of originality. Next Generation was the most critical of the game, lambasting its confusing stage layouts, poor 3D effects and uninspired gameplay, alongside it being hard to spot enemy projectiles due to the system's limitations. Jeremy Parish similarly found the bullets hard to track due to hardware limitations, calling it "sloppy" compared to Hudson's Star Soldier series, although noted it was a decent effort in transitioning the Star Soldier gameplay to the Virtual Boy hardware. Japanese magazine Famitsu said that the game felt dated in comparison to other games of its genre already on the market, while also criticizing its graphics for making the enemy shots hard to see. The Electric Playground criticized its gameplay for being bland and for lacking originality, unfavorably comparing it to games such as Xevious and 1942, alongside its "generic" soundtrack and graphics.