is a shoot 'em up video game developed by KID for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The game was released in North America by Taxan in March 1990, Europe by Nintendo and Australia by Mattel in 1990, and Japan by Taito on July 20, 1990. The game was also ported to the Game Boy and retitled as Burai Fighter Deluxe, and was released in Japan on June 27, 1990, in North America in January 1991 and in Europe in 1991; this port eventually wound up on the Game Boy Color as Space Marauder, originally released in Japan as Burai Fighter Color, as the original Game Boy version is not compatible with the later models. The setting for Burai Fighter, according to the manual, is to fend off seven bases of Burai, super-intelligent cyborgs. The player starts out with a relatively weak cannon, but can upgrade to ring, laser, and missile weapons, which are much more powerful. The player can initially choose from three difficulty settings: Eagle, Albatross, and Ace; the fourth difficulty setting, Ultimate, must be unlocked. The character can be moved in 8 directions and can shoot in a different direction from the direction he is moving towards. Gameplay Burai Fighter is a singleplayer two-dimensional automatic sidescroller. It has three difficulty levels to choose from. At the start, the screen moves from left to right, but it can move in any cardinal direction and change directions in the same level. The player is expected to keep up, as getting stuck on the edge means the player character dies. The player starts out with a basic gun that can fire in all eight directions. Holding down the fire button locks the player's firing direction. The player floats through space to destroy robots. At the end of a level they must defeat a boss to continue to the next level. At times the player may find a gap at the side of the screen. When the player moves into the gap with correct timing, the orientation of the screen changes and takes them into a secret room with some power-ups. Higher difficulty levels have fewer secret rooms and more precise timing is required. The game is fairly linear, but there are some forks in the path where the player can either travel on the left side or the right side of the screen for a little while. Some sides are more challenging