Heavy Unit: Mega Drive Special
released on Dec 31, 1990
Heavy Unit: Mega Drive Special (ヘビーユニット メガドライブスペシャル) is a 1990 Sega Mega Drive shoot-'em-up developed by Kaneko and published by Toho exclusively in Japan. It is a port of Kaneko's 1988 arcade shoot-'em-up Heavy Unit. Humans have developed an artificial planet, "Le Tau," which is being attacked by aliens, and only the Heavy Unit transforming ship can stop them. A and C shoot; rapidfire is an option. B drops a bomb, which you have an unlimited supply of but must collect as a powerup. Among the various powerups is one, labeled T, that transforms your ship into a mecha and back, which plays identically, except its bombs will home in on enemies.
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It's bad but at least has the charm. These ugly no-name poorly-shaded gremlins are a sore sight for sorer eyes.
Heavy Unit sucks. The robot is cool and can destroy everything way faster but his hitbox is like twice the size of the ship form, so there's no real winning here because the ship always takes forever to kill things. There's lots of gotcha moments in the stage layouts, which is strange due to taking up the full screen. Somehow it isn't enough room, because it scrolls up and down with you if you go higher or lower, oftentimes into an obstacle you couldn't see previously. Music is mostly pretty short and grating loops and they're all atypically loud for some reason, requiring me to pause every now and then to hear what my friends were saying in vc. It all adds up to create a pretty big mess, though at the very minimum it's not as ugly as I expected it to be from other reviews? I guess there's that?
I had been avoiding Mega Drive games with "Heavy" in their titles for quite a while thanks to a certain unplayable mech brawler, but after seeing some activity for this one here I ended up getting indirectly peer pressured into booting the game out of curiosity.
It looks and sounds really shitty, but for some reason it's awfully alluring with it's garbage-ness. A kind of "ugly beauty" I guess. The music is nothing outstanding, but I like the soundfont a bunch? It's like when you listen to a metal band who doesn't have any fantastic compositions, but their production sounds really fucking cool. I don't know how else to put it.
The game was rather easy as it should be the in the first level, apparently so easy I fell asleep at the wheel and died to something. Upon respawning in 1-3 with all of my upgrades stripped I died about three times attempting to get through a big moon-looking enemy that was tracking me, he wouldn't die in time to my shots and I was only barely fast enough to get around him without his hitbox clipping me. It was at that point I went "oh bby its one of those shmups ain't it?" The final boss can kiss my ass too, I love only having ten centimeters to work with while I operate my useless school bus.
This ain't a good shmup, but I don't detest it's existence, so I guess it can feel good about that.
It looks and sounds really shitty, but for some reason it's awfully alluring with it's garbage-ness. A kind of "ugly beauty" I guess. The music is nothing outstanding, but I like the soundfont a bunch? It's like when you listen to a metal band who doesn't have any fantastic compositions, but their production sounds really fucking cool. I don't know how else to put it.
The game was rather easy as it should be the in the first level, apparently so easy I fell asleep at the wheel and died to something. Upon respawning in 1-3 with all of my upgrades stripped I died about three times attempting to get through a big moon-looking enemy that was tracking me, he wouldn't die in time to my shots and I was only barely fast enough to get around him without his hitbox clipping me. It was at that point I went "oh bby its one of those shmups ain't it?" The final boss can kiss my ass too, I love only having ten centimeters to work with while I operate my useless school bus.
This ain't a good shmup, but I don't detest it's existence, so I guess it can feel good about that.
I don't really despise this game but it's very unimpressive. It's also surprisingly easy outside of a few moments. The thing that got me killed the most is just touch damage because your hitbox is huge. The final boss is also a pain in the butt. There's worse out there but I wouldn't recommend playing it.
Iiiiiiii um...didn't like this one. I actually wish I had more to say, actually?
It looked like a PCE game, which of course it did, because this is an adaptation of a PCE game I think. But I thought it was wildly unmemorable.
I liked how I could transform into a robot though!
It looked like a PCE game, which of course it did, because this is an adaptation of a PCE game I think. But I thought it was wildly unmemorable.
I liked how I could transform into a robot though!