Cleared on May 5th, 2024 (SEGA Genesis Challenge: 62/160)

Vectorman is a game that I’ve always had access to through Sonic Genesis Collection, but I thought it was so hard that I could never get past the first level at the time, but now that I have had more experience with the run and gun genre, I can say that the game… is still really hard, but with enough patience, it is somewhat more manageable.

The plot is that robots are in charge of helping to clean up toxic waste that polluted earth in the year 2049 while the humans fled to space, but one of them known as Warhead went rogue and started a robot revolution. Vectorman, having come back from his routine of dumping the sludge in the sun, discovers the revolution and through his immunity to mind control, was able to challenge the revolution and set forth on a mission to take down Warhead.

The game is divided into multiple levels that you must clear within a time limit. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this style of gameplay as B.O.B. has that same structure, but Vectorman works so much better in practically every single way. The controls are fluent, there’s no fall damage or stuns from falling, you can double jump without it being tied to a gadget, you can aim diagonal upward and diagonal downward in the air, and you can aim straight down while in the air. On top of that, the ammo is unlimited, so you can freely shoot and not be as worried about enemies that you can’t see coming because the camera doesn’t cover a lot of area at a time.

The levels are appropriately designed with their length in mind and they carry a sort of labyrinth feel to it, but really, it’s not so much of an issue of getting lost. As long as you move right, you should be fine. At least until you get to Level 15, and that’s where you’re going to find yourself confused, and I think I was only able to beat it with less than 30 seconds left on the clock.

You have 3-5 health points depending on your difficulty of choice, but health point drops come fairly easily not just from the enemies in your way, but also from TVs which will net you other benefits such as score multiplier, a weapon upgrade, or some crazy power-up known as morphs. This allows you some leeway to rushdown the levels which may help you to save time, and the weapon upgrades you get are very powerful. You have spread shot, you have homing shot, you have shots that spin around you, and you have a shot that acts something like a flail. As for the morphs, they are odd power-ups that are activated as soon as you acquire them, which is admittedly one of its only real disadvantages over B.O.B. as you may not get to use it to its fullest and instead make you feel awkward for even acquiring it. You can acquire Bomb Morph when there’s no enemies nearby, Drill Morph or Buggy Morph when you are trying to go up, or Parachute Morph when you are trying to go down. The Missile Morph was practical for ascending in Absolute Zero given its level layout, and Jet Morph let you fly in Superstructure. Those two were the best power-ups, but they only appeared for those respective levels since morphs are tied to specific stages or we’d be acting like fish in the air.

The game is, as I’ve said, really hard. As I’ve said, enemies can come from you out of the screen to ambush you if you keep moving, but even from a positioning standpoint, there are enemies that can hit you from above diagonally, notably the turrets that show up in just about every level. Also, you cannot hit foes off-screen, so don’t think you can pull some sniper shenanigans which makes dealing with the enemies much harder. Oh and because your default shot is in a straight line, there may come points where hitting the enemy is actually difficult and this especially becomes apparent with the bosses, and they are the hardest parts of the game. The first boss has you avoid the boulders hanging on the wings and avoiding any bomb barrages while hitting the jet. The second boss is actually one of the worst bosses in the game because the perspective is trippy, you can only shoot in 3 directions, you have those flying robots shooting you from the side, and you gotta jump over them all while shooting the boss in front of you. The third boss is easily cheesed. The fourth boss is really frustrating with how difficult it is to avoid their shots just by trying to jump over them, but if you manage to keep shooting downward diagonally from above, you should get it down. The three phase penultimate boss does take up a bit of your time and the Piranha is the worst of the three since if you shoot it at the wrong time, it will move fast and trying to jump over it will be impossible without taking a hit. The final boss is a DPS race where you need to down it in 1 minute and 30 seconds as soon as you get up the tornado, but trying to aim for him is difficult due to its hitbox being conveniently below your highest jump point and above ground level. This makes it really frustrating to hit, and you need to worry about dodging him if he gets too close and if you damage him enough, he’ll just unleash shots that you also need to avoid. You can go under him through a moving platform, but only if you’re on the left as you will need to jump over him if you are right.

But if you can get past its difficulty, it’s a good game with some genuinely impressive 3D style visuals and a boppin soundtrack that fits the futuristic atmosphere the game has. It’s also quite flashy with so many enemies to shoot and in turn, so many explosions on screen.

i remember the first time i tried this i thought it was way too difficult and i just gave up. trying it again now though i persevered through the difficulty and im pretty glad i did. it feels pretty good to play, the levels are explorable, and the game is great stylistically. the game also has plenty of powerups and modes you can change into through item pickups as well as a few gimmick stages that help give the gameplay a little more variety, occasionally for the worse but usually for the better. there's a good level of challenge here but sometimes the challenge can be things that feel intentionally placed and sometimes the challenge is the screen is a little too tight and sometimes you just cant see things youre about to jump into or land on top of which can be really frustrating. i think the way the game is so zoomed in really brings it down a bit and its the root of a lot of the game's problems. if you can get over that issue though and power through i think youll have a pretty good time. also personally i used save states for this one, it just helps but i dont think its entirely impossible to do a run without them, its just gonna be hard

I mostly played this game for its visuals because of how Chaotix-ish it looks, but, I was pretty pleasantly surprised with a really fun run and gun!

Level design is much less straight-forward than games like Contra or Metal Slug which, I really like.

Weapons feel really satisfying to use, though their variety is sadly really limited.

Music is, honestly a tad overrated? But it fits the game pretty well nonetheless.

And of course the game is very wonderful visually and detailed beyond belief, not on the same level as chaotix for me but... considering this was made with stock Genesis hardware, I'm incredibly impressed!

The big sorepoint for me was the final boss, that thing is just kind of bullshit to fight if you didn't find all the health upgrades, he removes half a star from my rating by himself.