Last Resort is a scrolling ‘bullet hell‘ shooter developed by SNK and first released as an arcade game, on Neo Geo MVS hardware, in 1992. From what I can ascertain it doesn’t seem to have been released on cartridge for Neo Geo AES home systems, but it was later released on the Neo Geo CD.

The game features one or two-player cooperative play modes and is pretty challenging, as side-scrolling shooters go. The storyline is that you’re trying to stop a mysterious computer virus that has taken over a space station and has convinced humans to side with it, and then attacked Earth. There are five separate stages, each with an end boss battle, and you’ll need to beat them all to save the Earth.

Your “Cyber Jet” can acquire an indestructible robot drone that can be used in a number of ways. The drone can be rotated around the craft, depending on the direction you’re moving, or it can be fixed in position either above, below, or to the left or right of the craft. The drone – rather importantly – can also be used as a concussion projectile by holding down the fire button (which fills a meter in the bottom left of the screen), and releasing it. That makes it shoot out in a particular direction to dish out enhanced destructive power.

By collecting power-ups your craft can speed up or enhance its firepower up to a factor of three. A variety of different weapons can also be collected to further augment its destructive power. If you lose a life you lose all your accumulated weapons and power-ups, which is always a problem in this type of game.

Last Resort is similar to Aicom‘s Pulstar – another very good Neo Geo shooter – and was developed by former Irem employees, which goes some way to explaining the many R-Type influences.

Overall, Last Resort is a fun-to-play shooter. The graphics and sound are excellent and the game has plenty of nice touches that further enhance the gameplay (like, for example, your craft being able to ‘fly’ underwater; rain and weather effects; fast bullets and slow bullets, and pilots falling out of enemy craft). Take note, though, that the game starts off hard and becomes very difficult in later levels, so is not for the faint of heart.

More: Last Resort on Wikipedia