Overview
Section-Z is a Capcom shoot 'em up. It was one of the first shoot 'em up games to feature a humanoid sprite rather than a spaceship or some other battle vehicle. The protagonist, identified as Captain Commando in some versions of the game, passes through various sections on his way to fight L Brain at the end of the enemy space station. In the Arcade mode, the gameplay switches from horizontal to vertical scrolling stages.
It was first released for the Arcade in 1985 and later made its way to the NES and Famicom Disk System in 1987. The FDS version was not sold as a retail cart: rather, the player would have to write it onto a blank Famicom disk as part of a Disk Writer service in Japan. The Arcade game was later added to the 2005 Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 1 compilation for PlayStation 2 and the original XBox.
Story
An enemy space fortress of the Balangool Empire is approaching Earth. Captain Commando has to infiltrate it and find his way to Section-Z to destroy L-Brain, the computer controlling the fortress.
Gameplay
Secton-Z is a side-scrolling game in which the player is a space soldier who can land on the ground and other platform structures and run along them. It is one of the first games which gives players the ability to not only shoot forward, but backwards. It is also one of the first games to give players a choice of paths at the end of each level. Depending on which path they took, they could get special weapons or bombs which wouldn't show up if the other path was taken. To compensate for this, the path without the weapon is often easier. They can activate these special weapons by pressing Select.
Sometimes, one of the paths will be flashing red instead of the usual yellow. This indicates that it is impassable unless the player locates and destroys the Generator Boss that is creating the field. Therefore, it is imperative to find the right paths through the fortress to get to the Generator and blow it up. Once this is done, it is possible to safely pass through the red gates and move onto the rest of the area, and eventually, the area boss. Each time a generator is destroyed the player will earn a capsule that increases total HP.
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