True fact: Shooting the Sega logo in Vectorman is life’s greatest pleasure

Also, what was up with level two?

It’s been almost two decades since I first played Vectorman, BlueSky Software’s treasured run-and-gun game for the Sega Genesis, and I still can’t get over how absurd its second level is.

That’s what I had intended to write about today — the fact that, suddenly and inexplicably, Vectorman is a train chugging along on a track suspended high above an abandoned, overly polluted Earth while an evil robot (err, “orbot”) with a nuclear bomb for a head grabs at him.

It’s a super short level — the timer begins with 60 seconds on the clock — and then it’s over, no real explanation provided. You’re thrown back into familiar side-scrolling action until later one-off levels envision Vectorman as a cricket and eventually a dancin’ fool in a disco for some reason.

Such a strange, lovely game. I sat down to replay this stuff and gather my thoughts but ended up being too entranced by the interactive Sega screen. If more games began this way, the world would be a better place and we’d all be rich and dogs wouldn’t go hungry in the streets probably.