- JP release: 10th July 1998
- NA release: 15th December 1998
- PAL release: N/A
- Developer: Hudson
- Publisher: Hudson (JP), Electro Brain (NA)
- N64 Magazine Score: 62%


Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth is a very traditional style sci-fi scrolling shooter. While it features some nice 3D graphics, it doesn’t try to utilise 3D in its gameplay or camera usage, it just keeps things simple. I was quite surprised that this game worked well with widescreen, as with the fixed camera, you would expect everything out of view to be removed.

However, keeping things simple works for this genre. You can pick between a few ships that have different weapons – all of which can be upgraded by collecting power-up, which level down if you get destroyed. Everything is fast, smooth and feels polished.
Outside of the main mode – which has some hidden paths to unlock bonus missions – there’s also a couple of timed modes for quick high score challenges. It’s a decent example of its genre.

Fine
Gameplay is predictably and reassuringly simple. Just select one of three distinctly different types of ship and head off into battle. The controls will be familiar to anyone that has ever played a SNES or arcade scrolling shooter.
Martin Kitts, N64 Magazine #19
Remake or remaster?
A regular re-release would be fine.
Official ways to get the game.
There is no official way to get Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth
N64 Games by Date
1997: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
1998: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
1999: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2000: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
Aha! Now I get to talk about the Aleck 64 arcade board!
This was the first game released for this arcade PCB, and the N64 cartridge release is essentially identical in every way to its arcade counterpart…
… that’s because the Aleck 64 is essentially an N64 shoved into an arcade cabinet. Not the first of its kind by any means, arcade boards based on consoles were common at the time (indeed, part of the reason why the PS1 was such a huge success was because Sony licensed out the PS1 hardware for use in arcade boards, especially ones made by Namco such as the System 11; which powered some of their biggest arcade hits of the late 90s, including the Tekken series)., but what makes this one a bit unusual is that Nintendo had little to no involvement with the Aleck 64’s development. No, this was a Seta joint; yes, the same Seta responsible for the bizzare Morita Shogi 64 and its weird custom cartridge that you saw a couple pages back in this same thread. Seta liked to tinker with odd hardware accessories and the like, and it seems that Nintendo took notice and granted them the keys to the Mushroom Kingdom 64 here.
It perhaps came too late to make any real impact in the arcade world. The N64 hardware wasn’t particularily impressive compared to contemporary arcade competitors (I mean, it wouldn’t have been impressive by 1996, let alone 1998!), and the N64 itself was famously much more difficult to develop for than the PS1, so it didn’t really compete well at the low-end either. Kind of caught in a bit of a no-mans land really.
Still, the Aleck 64 did end up getting a fair few games made for it, 16 in total, but none of them would end up being notable successes in the arcade business. Either way, 16 games is a decent amount for a standardised arcade PCB, so it’s hard to call it a failure; especially for a small developer like Seta. But, to my knowledge, only two games from the Aleck 64 would ever get ported to the regular N64; and Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth just so happens to be the first one.
Interesting, I had no idea about that arcade unit, I may test out how they emulate (looks like the ones that use odd controllers have a patched ROM to accept a regular controller) and sneak them somewhere into my playthrough, something interesting to look at.
Worth noting that every Aleck 64 game has now been converted into standard N64 ROMs that can be played off a flash cart (and presumably emulators too).
Same thing was done with the 64DD library too. You can now play them all on a flash cart without a 64DD needed (yes, even the games like F-Zero Expansion Kit that interfaces with a seperate cartridge).