I'm mainly just rehashing sh*t from my personal blog onto here with additions and edits, except for the previous Altered Beast thing because the power was out for 3 days due to a huge storm and my getting the game in the mail the same day the power came back on. And I ran into a slight snag with this one being that I'm a n00bish f*cking bitch. Decided to repost it on the day that I actually WANTED to post it.


I honestly have no idea why Destructoid's CBlogs does this ... but this is the best I could do for the box art. :)



Back in the 16 bit era, they had half-assed releases of several astonishing arcade games to the home consoles. Some worked out, such as the original Outrun, Afterburner, Altered Beast, etc etc … others didn’t fair so well. Especially to the Genesis. As much as I love this system, they had some terrible arcade ports.

Sometimes I buy these ports just to see how bad they really are. Such is my reasoning for buying Galaxy Force II. The first time I’d ever heard of it, I read a review of it on Sega-16.com (which I highly recommend you go to if you’re a Genesis, Sega CD and/or 32X fan).

So I decided to try something. I hopped onto eBay, found Galaxy Force 2, and ordered it. Then I downloaded the arcade ROM and played it. Just like someone would have back in 1988 or so ... just without the downloading of the ROM and using Final Burn Alpha to run it because my Acer Aspire Netbook doesn't run the game worth a damn in MAME. Now I know that I’m missing a great major part of the arcade experience not being in the humongous sit down cabinet that moves and whatnot, but there aren’t any arcades around me that have the game. So I’m making due with what I’ve got.


F*ck I wish I could find this!!!!

The arcade game is balls to the wall awesome. I love sprite scaling games, Outrun, Space Harrier, Afterburner, Power Drift. I love them all, they have a certain charm about them that got completely lost with polygons. The SNES definitely got it right with me with games like Super Mario Kart and F-Zero. Sure, the SNES ones haven’t aged very well, I can’t really sit in front of them and play them for hours on end like I used to, but they’re still fun in short bursts. Even though F-Zero doesn't feel anywhere near as fast as it did in '92 the first time I played it. And Mario Kart feels like it's moving at about 10 miles per hour. But arcade sprite scaling games of the 80's never get old to me.

But the arcade Galaxy Force II, in my humble opinion, is balls to the wall awesome. The graphics are gorgeous, even if there’s a little bit of draw in off in the distance that tends to snag a few cheap hits against the walls from time to time. the sheer sense of speed and that constant “oh sh!t I'm gonna die, oh sh!t I'm gonna die” feeling you get when wading through the enemies that fill the entire screen in their numbers is awesome. I wish I could find an arcade around here that had that game, or even better, buy one. It’s just that good.


This is a shot from my favorite level of the arcade version so far.

The sound and the music add to the experience as well, the constant explosions of the enemy crafts, your co-pilot telling you about turns (sometimes a bit late unfortunately). The sound of your missiles flying through the air and connecting with various enemies on the screen. Oh man I love it.

Now one thing I did know about the Sega Genesis when I ordered the game, it doesn’t have support for sprite scaling. They have to kind of cheat and redraw the sprite bigger and bigger and you get closer to it (or the other way around obviously). It worked fine in Outrun and other games of that nature. And it worked fine in the original Afterburner, even though there was quite a bit less going on on the ground than there was in the arcade and near perfect 32X version.

But Galaxy Force II on the Genesis, while it is a halfway decent game in it's own right, is a train wreck of a port. Everything took a huge hit from the graphics to the sound. No more sense of balls to the wall speed, no more having more enemies than you can handle rushing you all at once. No more of the Star Wars type ships that loom over you menacingly. And the flicker. Oh God the flicker. It makes it almost unplayable. When you first put the cartridge in and get to the title screen, you think “Okay, no problem.”, you head into the options screen, and, naturally because the Genesis only had a 3 button controller at the time of it’s release compromises had to be done with the controls. That’s alright, I expected that.


*Shudder*

Once you get into the game itself however, everything plummets downhill. The opening of the arcade game is massive. Your ship starts off docked in a field of other ships in a hangar. You launch and there's everything from asteroids to waterfalls and lava in your way and you're constantly being raped by the enemies. On the Genesis it’s almost a completely different feel. It’s just a vast emptiness with an occasional few crafts that fly in your way. Almost no evasion is needed whatsoever. On the arcade you're constantly flying this way and that to avoid God knows what, and once you penetrate the enemy forces, you fly into a cavern in the side of a mountain, or through a waterfall and it's all pretty f*ckin' epic looking. On the Genesis however, when you penetrate the enemy forces, instead of, for example, flying through a waterfall, your ship stops, you see a washed out image of what you're flying into, then you’re “treated” to a floor and ceiling devoid of any kind of detail with the occasional enemies on the floors and whatnot. The turns themselves aren’t even challenging. You just kind of stay in the center of the screen and move left or right to avoid enemy shots you see coming from a mile away. The arcade had a lot of areas where you chose whether you wanted to go left or right, and those areas in the Genesis are completely gone. The fire level or lava level or whatever you want to call it is one of the most impressive stages from the arcade with these monstrous geysers of fire shooting straight up and even more flying across the screen in loops along with the enemy ships and various other environmental hazards to contend with. On the Genesis, none of that comes into play. The lava is merely a barebones orange and red strip that sways a llittle bit, the geysers aren’t dangerous at all, it's just a comparatively horrible looking flickering red sprite sticking out of the "lava". It’s just f*cking painful.


Here is the elegance that is the arcade version that came out in 1988.


And what followed on the Sega Genesis in 1991.

The audio got a hit as well, the main blasters instead of the sci-fi sound they have in the arcade … they’re reduced to this pathetic “pew pew pew” sound. The rockets, although grainy sound pretty good. The music is actually halfway decent, but still nothing compared to the arcade. It doesn’t suck you in and make you want to play it. If you hear the arcade version from across the room, you’ll think “What’s that.” and investigate if you didn’t know what it was, and it would help you want to play the game. On the Genesis however, it doesn’t make you want to play the game. It seems like it’s more there just to have something there.

The game controls just fine with the controller, especially since the Genesis 6 button (I don’t use the 3 button for anything, too uncomfortable) is the single best controller ever made for any console in my opinion. But the game PLAYS slowly, monotonous and boring since everything took such a massive hit.

It’s almost like they just took a Sega Master System game, went through the slight rounds to make it 16 bit Genesis capable, and released it. Now, I know that Galaxy Force II, despite the fact it was released in 1988, up until the 32 bit era of consoles was impossible to port. They just shouldn’t have even tried on the Genesis itself though. They should’ve saved it for the Sega CD because that added a Mode 7 sprite scaling capability. There still would have been losses, but not so much as there was here. And don't give me any crap about the SNES having sprite scaling capability and possibly doing this game better. As awesome as the SNES is, t's just entirely too slow to handle a game like this and it more than likely would've only been marginally better than the Genesis version. Ignoring the obvious fact that this was a Sega game in the arcades. As I said before, up until the 32X and the 32 bit systems after it this game was pretty much f*cking impossible to port to much of anything and at the same time making it worth playing.

If you’re curious about this game, go ahead and get it. I think I paid 11 bucks for it with the case and manual and everything. It's probably cheaper for just the cartridge. Now to my credit, I had originally written this prior to it's release on the Wii's Virtual Console because I heard Chad's less than enthusiastic (but ultimately correct) mini-review of it on RetroforceGo, even though I think he should've tried out the bloody awesome arcade version. :) I thought to myself "Ah f*ck people are gonna think I f*ckin' ripped off of him or something". I don't want people thinking I wrote this to go with Retroforce's recent say about it. hehe

But if you have access to the arcade version, that’s the one to play. No, it's not the best game in the world, but if you're standing there at an arcade pop a in a quarter, it's a hell of a lot of fun. Or you can just do what I did and snag a ROM and play it through MAME or Final Burn Alpha. Now, yes, I am aware that it got re-released on the Sega Saturn and the Playstation 2, and I’m sure they are EXCELLENT conversions. But I don’t have them. So I can’t comment. And this is yet another game that would've gone PERFECTLY on Sega's 32X system.

I know it reads like I’m just bashing this game to no end, and I am. Compared to the excellence that is the arcade version, this is a train wreck. But on the same note, despite the fact that the game doesn't have as much going on and is quite a bit slower, this is one of my favorite games of it’s type for the Genesis. I give this a play probably 2 or 3 times a week just to watch myself f*cking blow up right before I would beat the game. And now that it's on the Wii's Virtual Console, it's easy as all hell to get, even if ... what is it 800 points? If I'm right on that, 8 bucks for a f*cking ROM with no awesome artwork or anything to go with it and without that f*cking tank of a Genesis "box" in your hands, buy something better like one of the Sonic games or Beyond Oasis or something if you're into buying ROMs.

If only they would release a port of the arcade on the Xbox Live Arcade. I'd snag that sh*t up in a heartbeat.
But I think it's just wishful thinking.