The first Treasure game I ever played as a child, now beaten for the first time many years later. Not as great as Gunstar Heroes, but easily one of the best games on the Genesis. Like Gunstar, it's surprisingly modern, including tutorials, awesome setpieces and how it messes with video game story tropes for fun.

This one doesn't have infinite lives, but continues are easier to get than I expected. I think most people wanting to play this could get pretty far without needing to use savestates because it's a tough but fair game, except maybe for the final boss. Even once you figure out how to predict his attacks, you'll need to be so fast you'll probably want to pause the game. This is all about the Japanese version with the English patch though, the western version was made even harder, removed all story and changed names and enemy colors and designs for no reason. Play the Japanese one.

What is better than Gunstar Heroes is the music. It's shocking that tracks like "you're Izayoi" or "Danzen Dungeon" aren't in best Genesis music compilations on YouTube. I also can't not praise the graphics, the art design stylized around a puppet show, the game's surreal, funny tone and what may be the first Vergil in action games, Maruyama.