Friday, June 24, 2011

Another Twenty Year Old Game - Sinistron

Clarification from yesterdays post - Five Facts about Sonic the Hedgehog on his Birthday (http://www.geekyclown.com/2011/06/five-facts-about-sonic-hedgehog-for-his.html)
I do have to make a slight correction from yesterday's post.  Not really a correction, but a clarification.  I mentioned that Sonic's bundling with the Genesis made it the leader of market share by January of 1992.  While that is true, it should be mentioned that the Super NES was released in August of 1991 so it had only been on the market for six months when Sega took the console reigns.  Nintendo caught up in April of 1992 and would eventually take them back a couple years later.



Now that I got that out of the way, I wanted to stick with the nostalgia that comes with the year 1991.  About the time I picked up Sonic, I also snagged Sinistron for TurboGrafx.  I mentioned a few days ago that I have always been enamored with side-scrolling shooters and Sinistron was right up that alley.

To give a little bit of personal history, back in the day (1991, duh) I worked in the same office as the guys at EGM and they were big on Sinistron but my little FCI office, that I would spend my Saturdays (the only days I worked), didn't have a PC Engine in it since FCI wouldn't be making TurboGrafx games - just unbelievably shitty NES games, I'm looking at you Hydlide.

After hearing them hype it for awhile, I finally went ahead and picked it up.  It was...ok.  To be fair, I had played through the Mega Drive version of Thunder Force III several times by this point and was really into Blazing Lazers for Turbo as well.  Sinistron wasn't nearly as good as either game.  Hell, it wasn't as good as Life Force for the NES, but I digress.

It moved slow.  I think that was always my biggest complaint, it just moved too slow.  And, it was an R-Type (a fabulous shooter) rip-off.  I did understand why the EGM guys liked it - it was a tough game, it looked pretty in parts, and the music was pretty good.  It just didn't do much for me.

One of the things that aggravated me the most, and I remember this vividly, I had taken an evening and stayed up unfathomably late, for a school night, playing it just so I can say I beat it (and not have to hear shit from work) and finally did.  I sat back and waited for a nice ending and all I got was, "Congratulations".  That bastard.

Note: I have no idea why this is such a obscenity laden post, I guess just my mood.

1 comment:

  1. Like how the front piece opens up to do the wave blast! Beyond that the enemy variety is pretty kickin too!

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