Bio-Hazard Battle (Genesis/Mega Drive)

A purple outline for the text, that's... an interesting choice. I guess the thing in the background is one of those bio-hazards that I'll be battling then.

Yeah, there it is on the top right. These are some nasty looking creatures, I wouldn't want to catch any of them creeping around my house. The art style makes them look almost 3d rendered.

Wait, is this a character select screen? These creepy looking things are what I'm playing as?

But the hero on the cover is flying a normal metal space fighter. You lied to me box art!

The screen's not showing any stats or different weapon load outs for the different fighters, so I'll just go with the first one on the top left.

Hey it's the Sulaco from Aliens! This mothership comes on screen, drops my fighter off at a planet, then leaves me to freefall.

I don't know where I'm going, why I'm going there, or what I'm meant to be doing... but it's a safe bet it involves flying mostly to the right and shooting down a thousand waves of enemy fighters. And then maybe there'll be a giant brain or something at the end for me to kill.

It seems I've got two weapons, a weedy forward firing gun, and a little pod that trails behind me as I fly around, firing backwards. Which means I have to move away from the enemy I'm trying to hit to point my pod's lasers towards them. I haven't quite got the hang of it yet.

Enemies don't drop power ups, but sometimes I'll see a pick up or two floating by. It seems that each colour is a different weapon for my pod, and collecting more of that colour powers it up.

But the damn things don't stay still so I collected the wrong colour by mistake and set my gun power back to 'crap'.

There we go! Got the damn thing facing the right way now. Have some charged shots from my fighter's cannon too, ya bastards.

Hey the sky's getting brighter. Also there's sky now. 

Damn... I was kinda hoping this thing would have exploded before it got this close, or else I wouldn't have let it pin me in the corner.

Well at least now I know that I die in one hit, I've got extra lives, and I continue straight from where I left off when I respawn.

Stage 2, and I can't see a damn thing any more. The enemies are camouflaged against the background.

I get the feeling somehow there's a link between that flying thing directly above my ship and the missiles homing in on me from off screen, but whenever I start moving around to get my pod facing the right way to hit them, I lose track of where I'm flying and end up crashing into things.

You know, I was having a hard enough time trying to keep track of what was on screen before the bullets started raining down on me.

I instinctively want to fly up and grab that pick up, but I'd just end up getting hit by something. Best to hide down here I reckon.

And then the screen moved up without warning and I got thrown into a rail. One life left.

Oh that's cool, a giant gun on a rail, which can rotate to one-shot me out of the sky wherever I am on the screen.

Not that I've got anywhere to go on screen. I'm stuck flying between the rails, trying to dodge the wasps as they appear.

GAME OVER.

I didn't even get a cool piece of 'game over' artwork to reward me for my failure.

Oh hang on, 9 credits left. Seems that I'm not done with the game just yet. Infinite continues would have been better, but I'll take what I can get.

Continuing put me right back at the start of stage 2.

Son of a bitch. He really didn't give me much room to dodge that one.

I chose a different ship this time, but I didn't notice any obvious difference in how it performed. I've been managing to blow up in all the same places. Game ain't easy.


A FEW CREDITS LATER.

Hey that's cool. The rail gun ran out of track, fell down, and landed on the rail beneath. And then I got blown up again.

I have to admit, I'm starting to regret having so many continues. I'm having to force myself to stay focused and keep playing until I've used up all my credits.


MUCH LATER.

On my second to last continue, and with zero lives left, I FINALLY make it past that damn gun!

But my ridiculous optimistic dreams of actually finishing stage 3 are suddenly crushed when I accidentally fly straight into one of those worm things. I never make it past the rail gun again.


Well it's hard to judge a game after two levels... so I won't. I did get bored of it long before I got to game over, but to be fair it's not my favourite genre, so it had an uphill struggle to win me over from the start. Next game.