This game got robbed, placing only sixth.

Personally I picked the shotgun and had no issue with the first few bases. (Using a controller, as well. Didn't know about mouse support until just now. Didn't know the NES had a mouse until just now.) Some of that's from playing Irritating Ship first. Some of that's from having seen Babylon Five dogfights.

Switched to the autocannon for the asteroid field. That fight proves the controls are not the issue. I mean. Side thrusters would be immensely useful - especially when enemy shots keep pushing you away, and you're pointed at the base, to fire (A gun that shoots out the side(s) would do about the same thing.) A no-brainer "slow down" button would make late corrections massively easier. (And could be discouraged by spinning the player randomly while doing it.) But I think complaints about the physics could be solved by a seemingly unrelated  change:

Move the camera.

The draw distance is so short, even when travel and combat demand high speed. Some bases can barely be kept onscreen. Several times, I was fighting a pixel in the minimap, which itself is not especially wide. The player's not even centered in the playfield. They're centered onscreen. So anything "north" of you is hidden by four additional rows of HUD. 

Displacing the camera by a fraction of the player's velocity vector would provide precious milliseconds of reaction time and improve spatial awareness. Even when stationary, it could be centered ahead of you, to better see what you're shooting at. 

Displacing the player would be simpler. Same vector, opposite direction, looks about right. But it would undermine how good the starfield looks. Those dots do a fantastic job of conveying movement. "You didn't notice it... but your brain did." (I didn't even think about tilemap versus sprites until the fourth base.) Keeping the effect locked to the player makes any forward-looking camera feel like it's sampling from a larger screen. Turning around, looks around.

Leaning into that subtly excellent feature: the deepest layer could have constellations. Tighter clusters of stars, in distinct patterns, allows orientation more natural than glancing at two numbers. 

And those arrow enemies... I have nothing clever. Please nerf.

Loved it! From a technical stand point, excellent implementation of AxRom, great clean graphics that make it clear what's going on generally.

I have lots of nitpicks with it - feel free to ignore all of these, as they are purely my thoughts and opinions:

I had a tough time controlling it - I think we spoke on the discord, and if you are going to map a or b to accelerate, it will make it a lot easier to control. Once I did this in Mesen I could really get in to the control. It was still tricky but it felt less like I was fighting a control scheme.

I felt the difficulty ramped up to an extremely high level - I'm not sure if this was on purpose, but there were two missions I just couldn't beat quite far in and I had to figure out how to freeze some memory values to stop the timer and health depletion to get further in the game. I still haven't quite completed it. I feel like some of the later stages could use a longer timer, especially those in which you are encouraged to move slowly, as it would be a nice mix-up of the formula for that to be more relaxed in terms of a timer.

The other mission I couldn't complete without a cheat just seemed to have an insane difficulty, even when my particular ship was maxed out, but this could just be me not being very good at the game! To avoid any spoilers, this was the red level.

The game also crashed on me quite a few times before I was freezing memory. I've saved some savestates of when it happened if you wanted them, let me know.

I found the movement patterns and constant respawning of the bots (the triangle like enemies moving in cardinal directions) a little unfair and not particularly fun - I don't see a good strategy for defeating them or avoiding them given how quickly they move and respawn.

Finally, there seems to be a min-maxing issue with the ships - one of them seems to be much more useful then the others, and one is not very useful later in the game. They also cap quite quickly, which is useful in a way as you reset them to level 1 on destruction, but also means they never get particularly powerful. Some more pronounced variation between them and possibly more of a ramp up in terms of power acquired might be good, with less resetting of power levels possibly.

I thought this was great and really enjoyed it, thanks for making it!

By the way, twitch user (and previous year's compo contributor) Link_7777 has put in multiple long gameplay sessions for this. They helped a lot in terms of showcasing what the game's like for someone who's got it under control:

https://www.twitch.tv/link_7777/videos

An extremely polished game that makes me want to see more of it, but with a steep entry barrier that I don't think I'm going to be able/willing to overcome.

A few things that could help:

• Unique thruster animation for going in reverse. My first two attempts at playing it, I legitimately thought both up and down propelled the ship forward because jets were coming from the rear of the ship.
• Current mission coordinates displayed on the screen, as the first handful of plays, I was so engulfed in trying to get the hang of the controls that I forgot the destination. (and after having twice previously experienced the lock-up mentioned on discord where I couldn't exit the mission briefing-only restart it with select, I definitely was not looking forward to sitting through the mission briefing text again.)
• Some way to prevent the player from getting too far away from the first destination (?)

I don't think the controls (input) are as big of an obstacle as the consequences of losing control are. Like, it's way too easy to be flying around space all willy nilly within seconds of playing, and far too difficult to reach the destinations (in terms of regaining control, dealing with other enemies/distractions, and even just psychologically seeing the coordinates, how far away I am from the destination, and how quickly I'm getting even further away). Unfortunately, I think these hurdles are going to cause a lot of players to bail pretty quickly and miss out on most of the game.

That said, there are some very cool things in the game. The big old claw that grabs you and the asteroid shower were both rad, and I'm very much looking forward to either where you take this game, or what you do next. :D

I love the way this game looks and sounds. I struggled with the controls, but I know lots of retro games used this type of control scheme, so it seems to be right in line with that style of game. 

I like the look! That title screen is excellent. I found it rather difficult, but maybe I just need to practice!

Interesting shootem up game !

This game is difficult :D Thrust mechanics were never my thing, but it's hard to complain with so many mechanics to explore and great polish to boot. 10/10, would explode trying to find the home base again.

That title screen is pretty great! Also, thought having various ship load outs was cool too.