 SEGA DRUNK By 1995, Sega was looking for an answer to the crazy success Nintendo was enjoying with the Donkey Kong Country series. So they responded with Vectorman, and immediately the first thing that jumps out at you with this game is how it looks. You play as a pre-rendered 3D model, and the animation here is so smooth, it just looks cool. So it's a testament to the Genesis hardware that can pull off these types of visuals, every bit as well as the Super Nintendo can, if not better. So yeah, Vectorman is a run-and-gun platformer hybrid, a bit similar to games like Megaturiken, but Vectorman's capabilities are closer to games like Contra 3, where there's weapon upgrades, like the spread gun and a rapid-fire machine gun that bounces off of walls, but they only last about 30 seconds. There's also a shield you can pick up, and there's clear-all bombs as well. Vectorman is also similar to Yoshi's Island, believe it or not, because you can change into a variety of different forms like Yoshi can, like a bomb to blow up a wall, and unlock an area, a drill or a missile to climb or dig vertically into a level, a car, a helicopter, you get the idea. One simple trick I really like is that if you're falling, you can slow yourself down by shooting down into the ground to save yourself some damage, I just think that's a nice touch. There's 16 stages total for you to do all this in, there's the traditional side-scrolling platforming levels, but also a few overhead levels, like in Contra 3. A lot of people hate those levels, but these are well done. Just look at this mini-boss here, it's so frickin' cool. Most of the levels are huge and ripe for exploring. There's hidden areas to unlock and explore, nothing on the level of Donkey Kong Country 2 or anything, but it's still pretty well done. Each level is timed though, so you can't screw around for too long. The best way I can explain how Vectorman plays is that it's just good old-fashioned professionally crafted platforming. This is one of those rare platformers that anyone can pick up and get the hang of very quickly. Everything is responsive and player-friendly, there's no tricks, no annoying flaws that make the game outdated, it's just well made. I also like how Vectorman starts out somewhat on the easy side for the first five levels or so, but then the stage six boss, yikes, this one will take you a while. And after that, the enemies get tougher with patterns that are hard to get the hang of. And oh yeah, there's no continues here, lose all your lives and it's game over. There's a story here too, your typical science fiction stuff for the Earth is too polluted to live on, and our hero Vectorman flies garbage and stuff into the sun to help clean up the planet. But while he's gone, another robot goes insane after latching itself onto a nuclear warhead and enslaves all of robot kind. I will give the story credit for having an environmentally friendly theme without it being painfully lame like Captain Planet, god I hate that show. Anyway there was a sequel made, Vectorman 2, and it's 22 levels of more weapons, more transformations, more Vectorman, it's very good as well. Anyway Vectorman could very well be a top 20 Sega Genesis game, it's just one of those platformers that's got universal appeal, the fact that anyone can pick up and play this game and get the hang of it so quickly is a tribute to how well it's made. Even better, the original cartridges are available cheap, and both games are on a bunch of different compilations in online stores. Highest recommendation for Vectorman.