It’s got…something to it. Like, lots of fun transformations and a bit of strategy in learning what to use when. But it’s also hampered by kind of forcing grinding upon you whenever you die and lose 2/3rds of your attack power. And lots and lots o’ jank.

LMAO

…Should you eat 4 shield ticks of damage in an instant, or try to dodge and hope you avoid the rows reaching the bottom of the screen, wiping out all of your reserve lives for this credit? (Yes, this happened to me)

A ROM hack that gives you 2-3 seconds of i-frames would do wonders.

The trick is knowing when to fish and when to cut bait. Any stage with invaders not all moving in the same direction and/or Gravity UFOs is not advised. And of course it won’t work in the caves, where UFOs don’t spawn.

I managed to make it to Wave 35/36, and to Wave 30 on 1 credit. Almost there.

Something critical I remembered during this replay is that you really have to farm for UFOs when you can.

Leave 8 or more invaders on the screen, and they’ll keep coming out. Regardless of how many you manage to hit, the fifth one will always drop a Life Recovery (+2 shields).

Also, that argument doesn’t really work when the better Compile game developed for the Genesis is on a cart.

… I had a few imports (JPN Mega Drive) games as well, some of which I still have today:

New Zealand Story
Rainbow Islands
Batman
Devil Crash
Phelios
Nadia
Marvel Land

About 90% of all of these were paid for out of my own pocket. I delivered a lot of newspapers to feed my Sega habit.

Taz-Mania
Shining Force
Shinobi III
Gunstar Heroes
Sonic Spinball
Valis III
El Viento
Splatterhouse 2
Rocket Knight
Target Earth
DJ Boy
Insector X
MUSHA
Klax
Pac-Mania
Pit Fighter
Madden (91)
Lakers vs Celtics
Castlevania Bloodlines
Animaniacs
Gauntlet IV

*Whew*! Yeah, so around 56. Also…

Mystic Defender
Revenge of Shinobi
Golden Axe
Zoom!
Phantasy Star II/III
Alex Kidd
Ghostbusters
Moonwalker
Columns
ESWAT
Sword of Vermilion
Castle of Illusion
Strider
Flicky
Sonic 1-3 + K
Alien Storm
Spider-Man
Shining in the Darkness
Streets of Rage
ToeJam & Earl
Quackshot
Out Run
(continued)

…on any of the later waves. Some of those are still hard, but most are nowhere near as tough as 3-4.

It’s very bizarre that they would throw all of this at you so quickly. Then again, so is giving you zero i-frames after taking a hit and giving you extra lives in 5-hit portions based on your score.

The real secret about this game’s difficulty is that Waves 3-4 (/30) are among the hardest in the game. These introduce:

*Diagonal bullets
*Homing shots (x2 damage to you)
*Invaders not all moving in the same direction
*Gravity trap UFOs

Aside from the first one, these rarely all show up again…

It had arcade cred, and that’s what they were going for initially. TFII is the better game, but it was an unknown, and not one Sega owned outright.

Yeah, I mean a game about on par with those pretty much did sink the TurboGrafx-16 out of the gate. (My pick there would’ve been Legendary Axe over Keith Courage, but again, that one involved a third party, so it may not have been a viable option)

I’m just thankful they didn’t go with either of these since they both could’ve been on the table. Though shame on whoever ultimately decided Alex Kidd deserved a U.S. release.

TBF, it was really the most solid pick if you look at what games they had available to work with at the time. Ghouls’n Ghosts would’ve been ready in theory at that point (launched in Japan 11 days prior to the system coming out here), but I doubt Capcom would’ve signed off on it.