Review: Hellfire on Sega Mega Drive

Picture the scene if you will: a group of developers are sat around a table dissecting their latest masterpiece.  They’ve developed a horizontal shooter that has all the key ingredients: ace graphics, check; storming soundtrack, check; rock hard difficulty, check; novel weapon system, check; great array of enemies, check; compulsory Egyptian themed level, check!

That’s a lot of boxes ticked but they’re still not happy:

“We need something else to really grab peoples’ attention” says one.

“We could add some burst processing?” ventures another.

“Nah, Sonic’s already got that covered”

“Maybe split-screen two player?”

“Wouldn’t work with the horizontal scrolling”

“How about some digitised speech?”

“Dude, did you even play Street Fighter 2?”

“How about we just stick a sodding great gun on the front of the ship!?”

“Love it!  Gentleman, Hellfire is born!”

OK so I may have employed a little artistic license with that conversation but I’d love to think that’s how these kind of decisions went down back in the 90s.  Hellfire is a game I have a lot of time for, and it’s another Mega Drive classic that never was.  I’ve recommended it a lot on Twitter and I’m staggered by the sheer number of people who have never even heard of it!

Hellfire is a standard horizontal scrolling shoot ‘em up so nothing untoward there then, but at the core of the game lies an unusual weapon configuration that made this title really stand out for me.  The standard forward fire is actually just one of four available options, with the other three comprising backwards, vertical and diagonal.  The direction of fire can be cycled through at will, and of course the game throws waves of enemies at you in such a way that you’re always frantically cycling through your options to find the most effective form of attack.

As well as the firing system, the game also incudes a fairly hefty power up stack.  Each life sees you start with what can only really be described as a Robin Reliant floating around in space with the handbrake off.  You have to kill enemies and blow up scenery in order to unlock power ups that include speed, upgraded fire power, a shield and also a little helper robot that attacks enemies and even soaks up the occasional bullet for you – cheers bud!

Now we come on to the piece de resistance of your weapon arsenal, the title of the game is also your ships main weapon: the Hellfire!  A quick tap of the C button and you unleash a behemoth of an attack.  A super powered laser-flamey thing (that’s the technical description I believe) gushes forth and tears into any standard enemies and makes short work of bosses.  Handily it also clears the screen of any standard enemy bullets, which means it’s equally effective as a defensive tool.

The graphics in this game are good, with suitably themed levels and enemies and some nice explosions and effects.  The soundtrack however is something else entirely.  It’s not a stretch to say that the music in this game is some of the best produced on the Mega Drive.  Each level thumps along to a kicking beat and the tunes stick in your head long after you thrown your Mega Drive out of the window because the game is so stupidly hard!

That brings me to my only criticism of the game: it’s simply too hard.  I’ve been playing it for over 15 years and I’ve never completed it – I don’t think I’ve even got to the last level!  It’s such a shame because it really mars what is otherwise a great package.  If you’re a glutton for punishment then I really recommend seeking this out – it’ll chew you up and spit you out over and over again.  If however you have the gaming dexterity of a space amoeba then this probably isn’t a title for your collection!

Article: Out of Service (Games)

I'll make no secret of the fact that I'm a Sega fanboy. The console ownership record of my earlier years followed the rather predictable path of Mega Drive, Saturn, Dreamcast, and then... something truly awful happened: Sega stopped making consoles!

I'm going to take this opportunity to put forward my view on Sega's journey from console manufacturer to third party publisher. The Saturn had been a substantial commercial failure. Sony's fancy new Playstation console had smashed all competition right out of the park. Sega and Nintendo were both reeling from having the proverbial rug pulled out from under them. Then Sega unveiled the Dreamcast.

Boy what a console! Everything about the Dreamcast was Sega screaming "we're back" from the rooftops! (even the horrendously uncomfortable controller still had the forward thinking Visual Memory Units!). I still maintain that the Dreamcast was a fantastic console, and this is clear to me from the high regard the console is held in by the Twitter community. Sega had fixed all the issues that plagued the Saturn. The console was powerful, easy to program and capable of hosting near arcade perfect conversions of Sega's great arcade games; an area in which they were still a major force.

It's hard to explain how I felt at the time of Sega’s announcement. Even though most people saw it coming it was still a shock. The Dreamcast had a relatively short lifespan for a console and lots of great games in the release pipeline had already been cancelled. I think anger played a big role in my emotions back then. I'm not proud to say that I held Sony personally responsible for ruining everything by having the audacity to turn up uninvited with a clearly superior machine. It was a childish and irrational response; video games are big business after all. It also led me to steadfastly avoid owning a PlayStation until the third generation. Of course that meant that I missed out on two whole generations of great great games, which is something I deeply regret. On the plus side it forced me into supporting Nintendo!

Supporting Nintendo. Two words that sound simple enough but let's not forget how much of a die-hard Sega fanboy I was! Imagine my despair when the console choices I was presented with were either buying a PlayStation from the evil Sony corporation, or joining forces with the old enemy in order to help bring down the new kid in town. This all sounds very melodramatic and over the top, which of course it was, but I'm trying to accurately paint the picture of the depths of my despair!

So I eased myself into my new Nintendo life gently. I bought a second hand N64 and a copy of Ocarina of Time. A happy coincidence that it just happens to be one of the greatest games of all time! It wasn't long before I was galloping across Hyrule field on horseback, collecting stars in the Mushroom Kingdom and bounding around Spiral Mountain with a bird in my backpack! It didn't take me long to realise I'd made the right decision and the pre-order for a GameCube followed soon after.

This article isn’t a homage to the potted history of my video game legacy however; it’s about the demise of a once truly great company. The sad thing is that despite Sega's best efforts the Dreamcast just didn't sell well enough. The installed user base wasn't large enough for many publishing companies to want to gamble on releasing a game that might not sell. So they took the sensible, heart-breaking decision to pull out of console manufacturing and focus on publishing instead. Arguably the best business decision they made in many years, great news for Sony and Nintendo, but ultimately devastating for all their fans. Whoring Sonic out to all takers wasn't a popular decision in many eyes but it put Sega back in the black financially and saved the company from the brink.

A financially stable Sega has to be the best news for all their fans, not least because it gives us the hope that they may, one day, return with a new console. It's highly unlikely but if it does ever happen one thing is for sure: I'll be there on launch day grinning like the hedgehog that got the cream, with a super shiny copy of Shenmue 3 in my hand!

I still love Sega, but it saddens me to say since they were this good Is Ages!