Return to Genesis

Yay, menu #015 is dedicated to Steve Bak. Which means I have to review one of his games. Err, hooray, I guess.

Not to diss his coding of course which is quite good, especially considering the dates he released the games. Where people were struggling to get any decent frame rates for arcade games on the ST, he was capable of delivering smooth ones. So hurrah to him!

Whether the games he made were any fun to play is an entirely different matter though. Like this one, a top-scrolling (half screen but we'll let that slide) with parallax layers and tiny sprites. The ship has got as much inertia as it needs to be annoying as you can't steer clear of danger easily, especially when some tiles you can crash into come at you at frightening speeds. And the enemies move and fire at speeds which makes it very hard to avoid as well. Before writing this I tried quite a few times to get past level 1, but I only got so far as around 25%, picking up all scientists on the way.

So, technically nice, gameplay wise - meh...