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.
"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.