So this is a pretty cool title. It's pretty similar to StarFox where you're piloting a ship through a pretty on rails level (though your ship can be stopped and reversed if you want). You blast through enemies in these linear levels and they can drop upgrades that heal your ship or unlock a boost and it's all pretty fun.

Control wise this makes full use of the Virtual Boy controller. Movement is on the left d-pad while you can dash in a direction with the right d-pad. The left trigger allows for tighter movement to be made while the right trigger is the blaster. A and B will increase and lower your speed respectively and Select changes the viewpoint. It's a pretty fleshed out moveset which is nice to see in a Virtual Boy game.

You'll be making full use of your moveset with the bosses at the end of every stage. These fights are like StarFox all range boss battles where you fight in an open arena allowing for free feeling battles as you move all over the arena, trying to position yourself in a good position to shoot the boss. I think some loop options or something would be nice to shake off homing missiles in these fights but otherwise, these are surprisingly well fleshed out.

Graphically they've gone for a wire frame look which allows for pretty fleshed out level designs without hurting the eyes with the red and black colours but it does mean the 3D effect isn't the most impressive thing here.

Overall, Red Alarm is a pretty solid StarFox like game. There's an impressive amount of depth to it compared to other Virtual Boy titles and it makes good use of the unique controller.

Virtual Boy Complete - Game #11

Everything I've been through with the VB up to this point was worth it. I had a massive smile on my face while playing this, it is such a great Star Fox-style rail shooter, with a lot fun little details. (I love how you can destroy unboarded ships and mechas to prevent the enemy army from boarding them)

The controls work really well, you can customise directional movement, you can slow down or speed up with a button, shooting feels good, and there's a sort of air dash (there's probably a better term for this on-rail shooter fans would know) to dodge bullets.

The graphics are unexpectedly great - I might not be getting the full picture since the emulator I used makes VB games grey-ish purple and not red, but I never had any problem with identifying what is good and bad, identifying what's a wall and what's a gap, so on. The biggest problem is draw distance, but even then everything renders in time for you to react

In terms of negatives: there are no bombs or alternate weapons as far as I could tell, which is a shame, perhaps they show up later, I dunno - also, the sound design is a bit funky, I get why they made it so that rapid-shooting doesn't make a sound (assuming it is intentional and not an oversight), but it makes shooting feel a little soft.

My biggest gripe is the boss fight, as I've said before, I'm not completing these games, only giving my first impressions after 1 or 2 levels so perhaps the later boss fights are better. This boss is fought in a very open level, which the ship clearly isn't meant to steer in, and the draw distance cannot support. There is no radar to see where the boss AFAIK, so you will be bombarded with lasers from behind.

Also, yeah, I dunno what's up with the Virtual Boy product placement on the corner of the screen lmao.

This is one of the coolest game I’ve ever seen, keyword: Seen.

I’ve been told plenty of times “Dude you should play StarFox” but I’m always like “No thanks dude I’m already full of dogshit today” but no more, today I’ve decided to play Red Alarm, and I’m not sure what type of animal an Alarm is.

I’m gonna be frank with you, I only finished one stage of this game I’m a fake Virtual Boyer I’m sorry, maybe if this game had infinite continues I would but I don’t feel like retrying it over and over just to add this to my work resume.

So from what I played it seems that we are a Spaceship and we kill a lot of people, everything is red so I’m guessing it’s a metaphor for genocides because who told you that Virtual boy games couldn’t be deep and have 3 hours long video essays about them. Gameplay wise it’s what you’d expect in a StarFox type game, the only difference is that you are stationary at all time and the game somewhat lets you roam free in each stages even though they are just straight corridors until you get to the dogshit boss room.

Dogshit boss rooms! Yeah that’s my least favourite part of the game it’s already hard to move around and the first boss keeps moving from side to side it’s a bitch to find him sometimes cause the field of rendering is small as fuck in this game, it’s like a ps1 fog but instead of fog it’s the void from Final Fantasy 5.

The red is an issue even though it’s part of the brand, red alarm like yeah ring the fucking bell there’s red EVERYWHERE, I can’t tell the difference from a fucking space rocket and a power up or a wall to an enemy but I think it really plays in the whole “The player is evil and committing a genocide” shtick like move over Spec ops we got a new deep game in town.

One last weird thing I noticed is that there’s a “NINTENDO VIRTUAL BOY” logo flashing all over the screen every 5 second as if the game was some shutterstock footage, I think they knew nobody would buy this console and everyone in future would pirate it for emulation, jokes on them nobody wants it.