 Ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss The Super FX Chip offered a ton of promise when it was first introduced in 1993, games like Star Fox and Yoshi's Island used it to great effect to provide a gameplay experience that wouldn't otherwise be possible on Super Nintendo, let alone on a home console. But not every game that featured the Super FX Chip was a smash hit. You also had games like Vortex, made in September 1994 by Argonaut Software, the same folks who helped out Nintendo with Star Fox. Bortex isn't great by any means, it certainly isn't anywhere near the games I already mentioned. But it's still kinda interesting in its own right, and it definitely would have been a trip to play back when it was first released. Playing it today, that's a different story, and I'll get to that in a bit, but first I want to mention a rumor about this game's development. A story popped up after this game was released that it was supposed to have been made as a Transformers game, specifically for Transformers Generation 2, and the rumor was that Hasbro didn't like what they saw, so they pulled the Transformers license entirely since that game ended up getting cancelled. Bortex does look the part, seeing as that you can transform and stuff, but Transformers was a completely separate project, as confirmed in a 2015 Retro Gamer Magazine interview with Argonaut Games programmer Michael Powell. Bortex had nothing to do with Transformers. This one is kind of an interesting game though, it's part shoot-em-up, part run-and-gun, part platformer, and you play as a mech that the game refers to as the morphing battle system, and you get three lives and no continues to get through seven levels with a password system, and the levels take place on five different planets where you have to retrieve items called core segments, and you take them back to the Citadel on your home planet where you put them together to restore order to the universe and all that stuff. And how do you do that? Well, by blowing everything up, of course, but as I mentioned earlier, the distinct thing that Bortex has going for it is that you can blow stuff up by transforming into four different vehicles by pressing select. There's the Walker, which has the most range of motion and the most weapons, you'll be using that form the most. And there's also the Sonic Jet, which you'll mostly use in space, like you see here, the Lanburner, which is the fastest form, and the Heart Shell, which is used for defense. Each environment lays out a setting where it's up to you to decide which form works best to proceed, and it's usually pretty obvious, like using the Lanburner in sections like this, the Heart Shell to protect against big boss attacks, or the Walker to use any of its four weapons to do lots of damage, and that brings me to the controls, which are a little odd because they differ slightly depending on which form you're in. For instance, with the Walker, it's Y to shoot with the left arm, A to shoot with the right arm, X to jump forward, X and down to jump backward, and B flips you around 180 degrees. The Walker has two weapons on each arm, and you have to hold L while pressing Y or A to switch between the two. It can be a little goofy, but it's doable, and the weapons are what you'd expect in a game like this. There's guided missiles, rockets, lasers, all that good stuff. To switch forms, you can either press select to cycle through them in order, or you can use a shortcut, like press L and Y to switch directly into the Walker, for example. Each form has its own feel, the Sonic Jet controls similarly to the R-Wing in Star Fox as you'd expect, and the Lanburner seems to be too fast for its own good at times, which can get annoying. The Heart Shell is kind of goofy, since you can't really move, but you can press L and R at the same time to use electro bombs, which function as kind of a clear screen attack. But yeah, with the other three forms, you automatically propel forward, so you have to manage your speed in addition to managing your fuel and your shield energy. You'll find out quickly that some forms take damage very easily, and some forms use up fuel like crazy, like the Sonic Jet, so you can't use it too often. Thankfully, there is a training mode here to help you get familiar with how everything works. The first level of the game is very straightforward, you just fly to the end and fight a boss, but if you try and approach this one like Star Fox, you're going to have a bad time. Vortex expects the player to always be changing forms, so once you get to the boss here, your instinct is gonna be to fight fire with fire, right? But since it's impossible to dodge attacks like this, you're gonna die pretty quickly. You have to switch to the Heart Shell mode to absorb damage. Not every level is like this, thankfully. There's a few in this game that are open-ended, where you're expected to find keys and unlock doors while fending off enemies, and that's cool, but the problem here is with the controls. Vortex is one of those games that's ahead of its time, but painfully so, because this game is slow, sluggish, and at times seems unresponsive. I appreciate all the shortcuts and the weapons and the different forms and all that, but man, this game just feels like a total mess at times, like they tried to cram too much into this one. The frame rate is a major problem. You get stuff popping up directly in front of you out of nowhere, and you get random slowdown here and there. If this one would have come out a couple years later when the second iteration of the Super FX chip came out, then that would have gone a long way toward fixing the problems here, but as it is, it's a pretty rough playthrough. Like this level here, where we get to do some 3D platforming. Everyone loves that, right? You have to be precise to land these jumps, and that's hard to do when the controls are unreliable. The Land Burner has its problems too, where you're falling off the edge of the road, and the difficulty here is relentless. You have no time to get settled. You're almost always under fire. Still, Vortex has some highlights that are worth pointing out. I really appreciate ambitious games like this, and I admit I'm a little more forgiving towards games that swing for the fences. So despite all his flaws, I still kind of enjoy this game in a weird way. And once you get used to the shortcuts, and you get a feel for how each form controls, it can actually be kind of fun. I mean, there's really no other 16-bit game quite like this. And of course, it certainly helps that the music and sound design in this game are friggin' awesome. There's other random little things this game has going for it too. Like in the Nintendo Power right up, there's these little comic sections that help tell the game's story that shows you fighting to retake the AI core and its data banks. Also, this is another one of those games where if they had simply kept the Super Famicom cover, I think it would have sold a little better in the US. That is a much better looking cover than what we got here. So yeah, there was a lot of effort put into Vortex. That's made very clear from the first minute of gameplay. But unfortunately, this game kind of performs like an ant pushing a tricycle. I admire the effort, but the game itself is just okay at best and clunky, slow, and unresponsive at worst. This is the start of something good, but ultimately, we never got to see a Vortex 2. Who knows, maybe a group of fans somewhere will make a ROM hack that cleans up some of the controls and the performance and maybe even turns this game into that aforementioned Transformers game or something. Like I said, I admit I'm more inclined to like games like this because I'm a big Star Fox fanboy, so take any praise that I give this game with a grain of salt. And ultimately, you can experience the best qualities of Vortex in other games, but I still think it's worth checking out if you're curious about the growing pains that came with early 3D home console games. If nothing else, Vortex is an interesting artifact, but otherwise, it's pretty much a stay away. All right, I wanna thank you for watching and I hope you have a great rest of your day.