The ost carries this harder then the difficulty💀

Sucks that this game is bogged down by the some of the bullshit design since the music and visuals are amazing my main issues wit the game is that you move slow as hell makin it hard to dodge any attacks especially with bosses an even then the game will just say fuck you cuz it feels like the projectiles move faster then you this would be fine if you didn't die in one hit an had to restart like mid way through the stage an got damn that boss rush on the 2nd to last level was hell even after all that i still kinda like this game somehow also what the fucks the point of the shield if you
can still be able die in a single hit shit feels like rng man

Cleared on April 29th, 2023 (SEGA Genesis Challenge: 10/160)

This game enrages me because the base game itself is actually really fun. I'd say at least 3 stars, 3.5 or even 4. But this port is atrocious. It never dawned on me how bad it truly was until I got to the third boss which revealed to me the inconsistent frame rate this game had with constant slowdown. Oh and the final boss is just as bad.

I would just play the Arcade version, but I couldn't figure out how to make it work with a gamepad on browser or setup an Arcade Emulator. If you can get your hands on the Arcade version, just play that. Alternatively, I heard the PS1 version is fine too although the music is different from the Arcade version, but from what I listened to, it seems serviceable. Maybe when I get around to it in my eventual Playstation 1 challenge, or somehow find a way to play the Arcade port with controllers, then I'll do a review on this game proper.

The one positive thing that I can say is that they were classy enough to give unlimited continues because something tells me they knew this game was going to be a slog.

There's poetry to games that treat their unobjectionably fake, polygonal inhabitants as a living, breathing ecosystem. That's the jazz here - isometric as to make you an overseer and spectator to a funky, toybox-like world. You put your quarter in, launching through the skies towards abstract sights and sounds, solely for pleasure of participating in their dioramic reality.

"But does it play well?" Good question! Not really! The diagonal perspective makes bullets a pain in the ass to dodge and I wouldn't be surprised if it impacted the collision logic too. We have the modern convenience of adjustable collision spheres and polygons, but I assume by this time, games still had to use right-angled box collisions to keep division and comparisons low on CPU usage. You definitely feel it when bullets that should kill you, clip past (very cool); and bullets that have grazing room, kill you (not very cool).

Play this on Neo Geo. Genesis is commendable for its sheer sprite size and commitment to the danmaku-like density of the original's boss attack patterns, but runs in perpetual slowdown. Nonstop sprite flickering on bullets ruins visibility, making an already punishing run worse. The version included on the Mini 2 is overclocked in emulation to reduce slowdown, but still carries all of this port's debuffs. I love it as a curiosity, like 'damn they really thought they could pull off something like this', but it's unrecommendable to anyone else.