after watching several balan streams, i tried playing this on ryujinx (look man i refuse to give daddy yuji any bail money). on top of the game just feeling terrible to play, the first boss had so many graphical and camera issues going on (admittedly a ryujinx issue and not a game issue) that i literally could not beat him. i quit and promptly deleted the game off my hard drive just to spare any further headaches.

"Well, that's your fault for trying to illegally emulate a copy of the worst version when you could've bought a legal copy the PC version!" okay then jackass, give me the money for it

the only thing stopping me from giving this half a star out of five is that naoto ohshima's designs still whip ass (you #thankyouyujinaka fuckers owe him a huge apology), and frankly i genuinely do not think this game is as bad as bubsy 3d. balan is one of the most interesting kusoge out there, but at the end of the day it is still kusoge.

i have zero respect for yuji naka.

EDIT: so as it turns out, ryujinx's compatibility lists balan as "playable"; i assume the issues i had were because i didn't install the day-1 patch for it.

my point still stands about this game being awful though. whether i'll go experience the full extent of the bad is another matter entirely.