A space odyssey
A late-gen release for the NES, To The Earth attempted to bring the dream of interstellar warfare to the 8-bit console. Was it successful? It all depends on your mindset. For those who owned a Zapper and we eager to find games to justify their purchase, To The Earth provided a fun experience that brought back memories of space operas, laser battles and The Last Starfighter. However, those looking from the outside likely saw it as a muddy-looking game with repetitive action and fairly average sound effects.
In the end, this is one of those games that really relies on the imagination of the player to fill in the holes. It’s feels very dated now since lightgun games improved immensely as the technology powering them improved. For many, it will be hard to see past the technical limitations of the NES. These players should look into slightly newer lightgun games, like Lethal Enforcers or the Snes Super Scope titles. For the rest of us, To The Earth is still good fun for a blast around if you can overlook the obvious flaws.
At the time, this game would have been much more than the sum of its parts.
