Soldiers Of The Sun

Soldiers of the Sun is a side-scrolling arcade rescue shooter by Ben Spees, released through Mixed Metaphor Software. The evil aliens of Hyperion Six have kidnapped a multitude of hostages, and your puny but expandable patrol ship has to retrieve them, level by level, while dodging the enemy's many technological defenses. This entry tracks the 3.0 release.

Rescue, Don't Just Shoot

Unlike a pure shooter, Soldiers of the Sun puts the emphasis on rescue runs: you fly out, find hostages, and ferry them back to base before the level's defenses grind you down. Your patrol ship is described in the documentation as both small ("puny") and upgradeable, so progression is built around outfitting that ship to survive deeper into Hyperion Six's defense grid.

The 3.0 Branch

Version 3.0 shipped as a shareware build from Mixed Metaphor Software (mixedmetaphor.com), with separate 68K and PowerPC packages that were distributed through Info-Mac as soldiers-of-the-sun-3 and soldiers-of-the-sun-3-ppc. Both flavors require 8-bit color, about 4 MB free RAM, 3 MB of disk space, and "lots of free time."

System Footprint

Macintosh Garden lists Soldiers of the Sun as compatible with System 7.0 through Mac OS 9, on either 68k or PPC hardware, and confirms it runs cleanly under SheepShaver and Basilisk II for modern emulation.

Sibling Release

An earlier 1.1 build is preserved alongside 3.0 on Macintosh Garden and tracked separately in this catalog as soldiers-sun-0 (nid 10571). The two share the same setting and core loop but differ in scope and platform support.