Red Zone, known as Hardwired during development and Commando Raid when demonstrated at Summer CES 1994, is a Sega Mega Drive game released in 1994 by Zyrinx. It is noteworthy for achieving sprite rotations, 3D vectors and full motion video; things that were often considered impossible to do on Mega Drive hardware. No additional hardware (such as an extra chip in Virtua Racing is used. The game proudly announces this technical achievement before the title screen. Zyrinx were previously responsible for Sub-Terrania, and the two games share similar graphics and logos. The soundtrack was again composed by Jesper Kyd.
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The first screen you see when you start the game states:
“This game features:
Rotating Background Graphics
Rotating Background Texture
3D Vector Sprite Objects
3D Vector Polygon Graphics
Real-time Zoom
Full Motion Video Compression
All running without the use of additional hardware.”
That’s a pretty hilarious and hardcore way to open a Sega Genesis game, and while the tech is impressive and eye catching, the game unfortunately boils down to a more confusing and less fun version of EA’s Strike series. I commend the Danish weirdos (who now make the IO Hitman games) that clearly put a lot of work into this.
“This game features:
Rotating Background Graphics
Rotating Background Texture
3D Vector Sprite Objects
3D Vector Polygon Graphics
Real-time Zoom
Full Motion Video Compression
All running without the use of additional hardware.”
That’s a pretty hilarious and hardcore way to open a Sega Genesis game, and while the tech is impressive and eye catching, the game unfortunately boils down to a more confusing and less fun version of EA’s Strike series. I commend the Danish weirdos (who now make the IO Hitman games) that clearly put a lot of work into this.
Hardly a visual showcase - game looks muddy and farty, - but DAMN what a technical exhibition. Pseudo 3D top-down environments, rotating maps and objects, realistic helicopter physics and damage, loading all these alternate sprite tiles for even miniscule angle differences, elaborate mission objectives communicated through a real-time scaling map and radar loadout - a 3D wooden kitchen table, just because??!?? It may be 16-bit, but this game feels like it has as many bits and pieces as a PS2 game, yet only shows signs of performance issues during the switch to on-foot combat.
Normally I'd scoff at the hand-wringing title screen, boasting about all the features they packed in; the appeal of games that tout impressive technical mastery is that they speak for themselves. The effect is dulled when it becomes the selling point and not a player's personal takeaway. But with that said, Red Zone makes my exception because it goes above and beyond a reasonable expectation. NOTHING looks or functions like this from this entire console generation.
"But is it fun to play" No no not in the goddamn slightest, HELL no. Its dedication to physics realism makes everything so heavy, awkward and frustrating to navigate through. Take even a bit of rear damage and your helicopter loses tail balance, and just starts rotating everywhere, and it was actually giving me a bit of motion sickness. Mission time limits are way too strict, the overly-dark spritework makes for nonexistent visual clarity, and ALL of this is on a single life with no continues. You could consider something like Shadow of the Beast worse, with its total absence of mechanics or intelligent design. But Red Zone is the total opposite: A game so frontloaded with mechanics purely for sake of 'wow' factor, it becomes hellish by nature and an impassible brick wall. Even if it wasn't hard, it would still be a begrudging experience.
I usually reverse the 'no score' reviews for vent games and unlicensed bootlegs, but Red Zone was too personally-conflicting for me to assign it a score. Highly commendable but totally antithetical to everything I find enjoyable in game design.
Normally I'd scoff at the hand-wringing title screen, boasting about all the features they packed in; the appeal of games that tout impressive technical mastery is that they speak for themselves. The effect is dulled when it becomes the selling point and not a player's personal takeaway. But with that said, Red Zone makes my exception because it goes above and beyond a reasonable expectation. NOTHING looks or functions like this from this entire console generation.
"But is it fun to play" No no not in the goddamn slightest, HELL no. Its dedication to physics realism makes everything so heavy, awkward and frustrating to navigate through. Take even a bit of rear damage and your helicopter loses tail balance, and just starts rotating everywhere, and it was actually giving me a bit of motion sickness. Mission time limits are way too strict, the overly-dark spritework makes for nonexistent visual clarity, and ALL of this is on a single life with no continues. You could consider something like Shadow of the Beast worse, with its total absence of mechanics or intelligent design. But Red Zone is the total opposite: A game so frontloaded with mechanics purely for sake of 'wow' factor, it becomes hellish by nature and an impassible brick wall. Even if it wasn't hard, it would still be a begrudging experience.
I usually reverse the 'no score' reviews for vent games and unlicensed bootlegs, but Red Zone was too personally-conflicting for me to assign it a score. Highly commendable but totally antithetical to everything I find enjoyable in game design.
This is a pretty cool tech demo they made here, it's got the whole shebang and they even advertise it to you at you start the game! 3D Vector Sprite Objects and Realtime Zoom! Would anyone back in 1994 even know what that is? Probably not, but it sure sounds awesome! It reminds me of when they advertised how big the game was on the cartridge. Oh baby! 4 megabytes! How can it store such a beast?!?!!? How big even is that?!?
Anyways, Red Zone is really cool, but it's a shame it's completely unbeatable by conventional means. If your helicopter crashes, YOU ARE DEAD! Such realism! I got blasted out of the sky by enemy MIGs so fast that I didn't even know what was going on when I saw the random countdown over my helicopter. I've met Famicom games that were more forgiving. They also put Asteroids in the game, which means I have to give every single one of the people responsible a swift kick to the butt.
Honestly the coolest thing about this is that Jesper Kyd brought back one of the music tracks for Amok and then Hitman Blood Money.
"Meh, no one played Red Zone anyway."
"Meh, no one played Amok anyway..."
Anyways, Red Zone is really cool, but it's a shame it's completely unbeatable by conventional means. If your helicopter crashes, YOU ARE DEAD! Such realism! I got blasted out of the sky by enemy MIGs so fast that I didn't even know what was going on when I saw the random countdown over my helicopter. I've met Famicom games that were more forgiving. They also put Asteroids in the game, which means I have to give every single one of the people responsible a swift kick to the butt.
Honestly the coolest thing about this is that Jesper Kyd brought back one of the music tracks for Amok and then Hitman Blood Money.
"Meh, no one played Red Zone anyway."
"Meh, no one played Amok anyway..."