 Sssss, that's drunk. Even developers that cranked out crappy game after crappy game occasionally made something halfway decent. Take a look at Bit Studios, they were responsible for Super Nintendo games like Wolverine, Adamantium, Rage, Last Action Hero, Space Football One and One, a really terrible arcade port of gun force, among other things. But hey, every once in a while a blind squirrel finds an acorn, or at least a cashew that it might think it's an acorn or something. genocide 2 is a super famicom game that was never localized elsewhere, at least on that platform and it's a perfectly decent side scrolling beat em up slash action platformer where you play as a mech and crush other mechs in your way. This is actually the sequel to a game that was only released for the sharp x68000, turbo graphics cd, and the FM towns marty. And the story hits all the major notes here, we got out of control robots, we have an evil corporation, we have a main character that uses a name of two more popular characters named Ken Ryugasaki. All we're missing here is the president's daughter getting kidnapped or something and we've got 16-bit action game bingo. You get one huge health bar that can be used up twice for each life, and you gotta get through five levels split up into two or three stages with unlimited continues and when you die you start at the beginning of the stage even if you're at a boss fight. The game cuts a pretty good pace, the controls are solid and about what you'd expect from a game like this, but if anything this game feels a little too frenetic. I end up just flailing around without any idea if I'm doing any damage to anything. It's B to jump, Y to attack, hold down L or R to sprint, and the X button summons either a special weapon or your droid partner named Betty, who you can also control, just hold down a direction on the d-pad as you're doing your regular attack then it'll fire off a missile that way. This is especially handy with the first boss fight, since all you gotta do is hang out up here and just go to town. The thing is, once the meter in the upper left runs out, Betty goes away and automatically recharges before you can summon it again. But yeah, you also get other power-ups like Mad Betty, which is a clear screen attack, and High Power which buffs your strength for a short period. But yeah, as you can see, your life meter at the bottom is friggin' ginormous, so this game can be pretty forgiving, at least in the first few levels, before you reach your classic action game difficulty spike that shows up towards the end of the game. The bosses all have huge life bars too, often times more than one. Now if you're like me, you'd just say, screw fighting all these enemies, I can just run past them. But nope, in order to clear each section, you have to destroy the number of enemies dictated by the meter up top of the screen. Genocide 2 certainly looks pretty good, and it's one of those games that looks better and more interesting the further you progress. You're on an aircraft carrier, you're in a forest, you're underwater, okay yeah, it's all the usual settings you'd expect, but hey, the volcano level shows the heat distorting the background, that's pretty cool. There's also some interesting enemy effects here and there, like these guys that surround you, you just have to catch them at just the right time to get them out of your way to move on with the level. And the music throughout the game is pretty solid as well. You do eventually get into some platforming here where the game slows way down. And I don't mean the pacing, I mean the classic Super NES slowdown that we all know and love. It's by far the worst part of the game, you find yourself falling off ledges pretty consistently, and the game really begins to feel like a slog at this point. So yeah, pretty simple game here with Genocide 2. You play as a mech, you run to the right, and fight other mechs, and there's plenty of other 16-bit games like this, like Cybernator or Metal Warriors to name two obvious examples, or a Target Earth for Sega Genesis. But really this game is closer to something like Ninja Warriors, or really Ninja Warriors lesser known cousin from out of town or something. If nothing else, the name Genocide 2 sounds like an IFD films Ninja movie from the mid-80s starring Richard Harrison and Stuart Smith, and that's always a good thing. This game certainly isn't bad, it looks good and the music is good stuff, but the gameplay is pretty one-dimensional. It's kinda like the John Isner of side-scrolling mech games. Sure, Isner's a big dude with an even bigger serve, but that's it. The same goes for Genocide 2. Yeah, the game looks nice and it's fun to fight as giant robots, but that's about it. If that sounds good to you, then check it out. If not, you can find better elsewhere. Alright, I want to thank you for watching and I hope you have a great rest of your day!