Crazy hybrid of Strider, Guyver, and a western. Besides Treasure's output on the Genesis Tanzer has quite possibly some of the tightest controls for a game on the console and trust me you'll need them with how brutal the difficulty gets. If there is one flaw Tanzer has it's the lives system. Whereas most games have a traditional three life or continue system Tanzer instead opts for giving the player one life with the ability to purchase a checkpoint any time when they reach the ingame shop between stages. While this may seem advantageous at first the real flaw comes with the price of upgrades and the checkpoints, the majority of the time you'll only be able to afford one or the other meaning it's either going back at least one whole stage when you die or not get any fun new powerups to toy with. If you're able to put up with an incredibly punishing difficulty Tanzer is absolutely one of the best homebrew games on the console as of this review and I'm greatly anticipating the next game by Mikael Tillander.