Fun fact: this game was released 2 years after Cybermorph. You know, the "Where you did learn to fly" one.
...boy, where do I even begin?
This game is rough. Not because of the graphics being done completely in wired models, no. Trust me, that's the least of its issues for me, personally. It's a functional game that runs fine. Anyone who actually plays this as it should intuites right away how the levels are structured: go through them reaching the Danger Zone and beat the bosses. 6 stages. So a very short experience (32 minutes averagely...which can definitely more than double on playthrough's time since this game is very on the hard bs side).
And this for one problem: the controls. Not being able to fully turn around in here is aggravating.
To add more salt to the wounds it's relentless and gives barely any power-up/bonuses useful during the stages. Especially on shield (health). And, again, on
normal difficulty. Why? Oh, and no checkpoints. Yup, when you're dead, you have (3?) Continues where you have to start each level from scratch, even if you reached the Danger Zone. I have no idea how people were able to beat a game like this back then. Maybe in easy, sure. But let's not forget: it's a goddamn Virtual Boy game and on og hardware would be actually painful.
The fuel part is also very punishing, especially on Stage 4 against that goddamn totem boss.
Ah, yes, the bosses. Well, do you like being constantly punished with them going all over the place and manage very little to pull hits on them? You're gonna love them.
Most people dislike this game for being disorientating. I don't think it is at all: you can absolutely understand what to do, especially if you come from games like StarFox. I feel playing it in 3D on real hardware/Switch will just make it probably more understandable since I see footage on emulators making look it worse.
If you wanna "heal" from a game like this, yeah the og just mentioned StarFox is indeed a much better medicine.
4.5/10
