 SEGA DRUNK About a week ago, I posted a video about Cotton 100%, a horizontal shoot-em-up that never left Japan, and in a weird coincidence, later that same day, an announcement came from ININ Games and Strictly Limited Games that they're releasing a 30th anniversary collection of cotton games, including Cotton 100%, Cotton 2, Cotton Boomerang, Guardian Force, and Panorama Cotton, the latter of which was made for SEGA Mega Drive in 1994 that, again, did not make it over to the US. Well, now that it's finally officially on its way over, I can provide a bit of a preview of what Panorama Cotton actually is, and what it is is freaking awesome. I mean, just freaking look at this game, it's insane, and it's especially crazy that this is merely a 16-bit Mega Drive game. You play as Cotton, of course, in an over-the-shoulder rail shooter, you get one life bar, which you can see up top, and five continues to get through five levels. Yeah, unfortunately, this game is pretty short, but geez, Louise, they packed as much cool stuff into this game as they possibly could. For one thing, just at a glance, this is easily one of the best 16-bit SEGA games ever. The degree of difficulty to pull off a fast rail shooter that still maintains smooth controls is really tough, but Panorama Cotton nails it. The A button controls your speed, B shoots your main weapon, and C uses a magic spell. The first level has you flying forward in typical rail shooter fashion, blasting everything that moves, ducking under these rock formations to pick up extra points that earn more continues, but each level is cleverly broken up into several different sections, which see you moving from side to side, making the game occasionally almost like a gallery shooter at times, as well as up and down these tower sections. This game is such a trip to play, all the settings and backgrounds have this intense psychedelic feel to them, but of course, and most importantly, it helps that the controls here are very easy to get the hang of. This is classic pick-up-and-play style gameplay here, nothing too nuanced or complicated. Seriously, even the developers at Treasure were probably green with Envy when they saw this game. The weapon system works just like it does in most other Cotton games, where you get experience points for destroying enemies, and you fill up the gauge at the bottom and it levels up your main weapon, take damage, and your level goes down. There's a bunch of different magic spells you can collect as well, where you can hold up to as many as six at once. What's cool here is that if you press the C button while holding down B, it'll charge up your fairy partner, who follows you around. Just tapping the C button will do a normal clear all spell, like fire, thunder, or homing missiles or whatever, but holding B for a while and then pressing C can do a more powerful spell, like summoning a swarm of other fairies or creating a shield barrier. You can also control your speed by pressing the A button, which is pretty cool, however this brings about the game's biggest flaw, and that's slowdown. This is especially evident when you're at top speed and there's a ton of enemies coming after you, the game can really get choppy. The whole purpose of this function is to increase your time bonus when you finish a level, but I usually just keep the speed on low just because I like making stuff go boom so much in this game. In addition to the regular game mode, there's also a separate score attack mode, which introduces a timer into the mix, and once you beat the game you unlock the ability to play as Silk, the fairy, with Cotton taking the role of a complimentary character. So yeah, not much else to say about this one, Panorama Cotton is a fantastic playthrough with great visuals, great music, and really easy pickup and play controls. Unlike Cotton 100%, the Mega Drive version of this game does have an English patch available on romhacking.net, if you choose to play this game any way you can, and up until now, that would be the preferred way to go since this cartridge is insanely expensive. According to Game Fan magazine, only about 4,000 carts were produced, so this game appears to be legitimately rare, but thankfully not for long. This game alone is worth checking out the 30th anniversary collection, which is coming soon. Alright, I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.