A port of Insector X
The player controls an insect-sized warrior named "Kai" who takes on a vast army of cyborg insects to free the insect world from the dark ruler queen. The game uses two buttons: one for an upgradable main shot, and another for a seemingly random selection of secondary weapons.
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Very cute, fun pixel art, but otherwise it's way too easy and repetitive to earn high marks. It's maybe a great first shmup for a kid though? But I did enjoy the time even if it didn't bring me anything new.
Was just thinking of playing something short and random for tonight but didn’t know what. Saw a random review for Insector X on the Mega Drive page and I linked the Famicom page in case they wanted to post it here and got me thinking “Hmmm I did just play the Mega Drive version before 2023 ended, let’s see how the Famicom version is.” and now we are here. Sadly I wasn’t too big on this port either.
Well first off, this was a way easier game. Granted I was playing on the Normal difficulty and was almost tempted to see what Special was but I didn’t play it. I’m glad the graphics are more like the Arcade version as I wasn’t a big fan of the gritty look the MD port tried going for. There’s even a 2nd character. The first one is the original boy name Andy and the new one is a girl named Myu. Sadly she’s the easy mode of the game and lets you have your main weapon at max and rapid fire at all times. The character is even labeled as “For Girls'' which feels a little sexist though maybe I’m overreacting.
When it comes to the actual gameplay, I didn’t really get much out of it. It’s pretty easy like I said and a lot of it I wasn’t really engaged with at all. Not even all of the bosses are that interesting. Maybe it’s the fact it came out in 1990 or my standards are too high but it just felt very standard and did nothing to really be amazing.I was going to praise it had co-op but nope, you just take turns which is very lame. If you didn’t like how the MD port had checkpoints then you won’t like this either as it also does it. That said however, it is pretty short. It took me about 20 minutes to be done with the game so you won’t be playing it for long. I also wanna note this game has two different secondary weapon types, go for the red one and not the blue one. Sadly can’t even recommend the music as it’s nothing great and is constantly interrupted by sound effects when playing.
It’s hard to really compliment Insector X even if it’s just okay at best for me. There’s just much better shmups you can play on the Famicom. I can give it credit for it being easy so maybe you might like it as a beginner but I’d argue there are better shmups for that. Though I don’t know if it’s a hot take but I’d still rather play it over the MD port. Despite its issues, at least it doesn’t look ugly and looks really unimpressive for the console it’s on. If you just love shmups then I guess it can’t hurt to try this one out, just don’t go in expecting a lot.
Well first off, this was a way easier game. Granted I was playing on the Normal difficulty and was almost tempted to see what Special was but I didn’t play it. I’m glad the graphics are more like the Arcade version as I wasn’t a big fan of the gritty look the MD port tried going for. There’s even a 2nd character. The first one is the original boy name Andy and the new one is a girl named Myu. Sadly she’s the easy mode of the game and lets you have your main weapon at max and rapid fire at all times. The character is even labeled as “For Girls'' which feels a little sexist though maybe I’m overreacting.
When it comes to the actual gameplay, I didn’t really get much out of it. It’s pretty easy like I said and a lot of it I wasn’t really engaged with at all. Not even all of the bosses are that interesting. Maybe it’s the fact it came out in 1990 or my standards are too high but it just felt very standard and did nothing to really be amazing.I was going to praise it had co-op but nope, you just take turns which is very lame. If you didn’t like how the MD port had checkpoints then you won’t like this either as it also does it. That said however, it is pretty short. It took me about 20 minutes to be done with the game so you won’t be playing it for long. I also wanna note this game has two different secondary weapon types, go for the red one and not the blue one. Sadly can’t even recommend the music as it’s nothing great and is constantly interrupted by sound effects when playing.
It’s hard to really compliment Insector X even if it’s just okay at best for me. There’s just much better shmups you can play on the Famicom. I can give it credit for it being easy so maybe you might like it as a beginner but I’d argue there are better shmups for that. Though I don’t know if it’s a hot take but I’d still rather play it over the MD port. Despite its issues, at least it doesn’t look ugly and looks really unimpressive for the console it’s on. If you just love shmups then I guess it can’t hurt to try this one out, just don’t go in expecting a lot.