 Ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss Do you like F-Zero? How about a game that kind of sorta looks and plays like F-Zero, but instead of racing you just shoot everything that moves and make stuff go boom? That's kind of the idea behind HyperZone. One of the earliest Super Nintendo game releases in North America coming out in September of 1991. Now that description of F-Zero with weapons is probably too generous, but it's pretty clear that that's what developers at how laboratory we're going for here. HyperZone is a clear case of what you see is what you get. This is a rail shooter where you follow a track lined with a barrier. Drift outside that track and the barrier will do big time damage to your ship. Each of the game's eight levels also contains a zone that will replenish your power for a short period of time. So yeah, in other words, very similar to F-Zero. However, instead of breakneck turns, here you travel endlessly toward the horizon, traversing across several different scaling and rotating background layers, made possible by the Super Nintendo's Mode 7 capabilities. So this game is kind of an exhibition designed to show off what the SNES was capable of right off the bat. You can't move forward or backward, but you can move in eight directions otherwise. Enemies get closer to you as you approach them while projectiles come at you much faster, making dodging tricky at times. So yeah, there's eight levels, and you shoot stuff, and you shoot some more stuff, boosting your score to the point that you can unlock a new ship to start the next level. And there's up to six upgrades here, so shoot anything and everything and rack up those points because you don't want to be stuck with an inferior ship in a particularly tough boss fight, like this one here that's half of a Super Nintendo controller. You can also charge your shot to make stuff go boom even faster, but as far as special weapons or other upgrades go, that's about it, unfortunately. A couple of other things I have to point out here. Number one is how freaking weird this game is to look at in the year 2018, with the colors and the way the ceiling reflects the ground. I mean, some levels are just downright ugly, but this game was pretty freaking cool looking when it first arrived. And hey, even these Earth levels still look kinda awesome, but other levels like the first level here, I mean, it looks like I'm flying through an endless box of fruity pebbles in a search for a Fred Flintstone toy or something. It is ugly as hell. So yeah, there's good looking environments here, and there's some that don't look so great. The music of Hyperzone is worth pointing out as well. It's composed by Jun Ishikawa, who's made the music for most of the Kirby games, and the soundtrack here is memorable and it fits the game perfectly. Ultimately though, it appears the primary reason for Hyperzone's existence was to serve as an announcement to the world of Look What This New System Can Do. Where F-Zero and Pilotwings accomplish the same thing, those games provide a lot more substance than Hyperzone, where you're quite literally just shooting anything that moves, making sure you're staying on track and dodging any enemy fire. If you're looking for anything beyond that here, you're not gonna find it. And of course, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Hyperzone is still kinda fun to play today, if you like stuff like Space Harrier or Star Fox. Sure, you don't have as much freedom here as you do in those games, but as a quick playthrough where you just wanna shoot and dodge stuff while playing within the track rails and racking up points and ship upgrades, it's perfectly fine. It's a quick playthrough with only 8 levels, and there's no saves or password system here, but this game doesn't need one. It's a decent game, and a reasonably cheap cartridge as well.