 Let's take a look at another game that never left Japan, Xcelibrid for Super Famicom. Long long time viewers of this channel may remember when I stumbled upon this one way back when I first started this channel in 2013 and I admit I've been a little intimidated to go back to it since then because as you can see this is a game where you give it even one half of a glance and it grabs your attention. Holy crap, just look at this. What is even happening right now? Did someone slip something into my drink or did I accidentally stumble into SNES stoned? Yeah this is one of those 16-bit games that's going for a pseudo 3D effect only without the use of any additional chips as far as my knowledge goes. This is just a game brute forcing its way into a 3D effect and it kind of works, I guess? Yeah it's a little grainy and jagged as hell and it's pretty much the same sequence looping over and over but hey if you squint a little it looks okay. That's just the first level though. After that tunnel stage you go underground into a cave, down some subway tracks and eventually this tower where you're perpetually turning right. Yeah, unfortunately most of the other levels in this game have dark backgrounds but still this game works for what it is, it's a pretty simple rail shooter and I know usually when you think of SNES you'd think Star Fox would be the go-to comparison but this game is a lot closer to something like Hyperzone so if you liked that game you'll probably like this too. You start the game playing as the Silvermare Mech and here's where it would have helped to have an instruction manual or a walkthrough or something because it appears that the game implies that you can eventually have at least two other mechs to choose from since they're all displayed here but I have to claim ignorance here because I can't figure out a way to actually switch to them on the setup screen so I'm not sure if you have to cross a certain points threshold to unlock them or what or maybe these guys are actually bosses? I don't know but I was only able to play as the Silvermare. If you've got any insight on this let me know in the comments. There's also kind of a point allocation system that you use to pick out your weapons equipping one gun for each arm and it's everything from grenade guns to gatling guns and the like to make stuff go boom but bear in mind the more firepower you equip the slower you'll end up being similar to other mech games like Front Mission. You also have a choice before each level as to what you want to transform into an offensive form like a fighter jet or a defensive form like a tank and you press the R button to transform any time you want during gameplay but the transformation only lasts about 10 seconds and I'm not sure why I think maybe the colored meter thing up top has something to do with it again if you know the method behind this please let me know in the comments. The A button punches or kicks B sends out a bomb that can clear the screen of enemies the X and Y buttons are weapons you picked out for your left and right arms and up functions as a jump button when you're in your regular mech form. There's other items you can pick up throughout each level as well like a little option thingy for example that adds to your firepower you get four continues but only one life no saves or passwords so yeah you have to pass the level with one health bar. Now this is one of those games where there aren't many other reviews or playthroughs and there's next to nothing on game facts so I can't tell if this game is really hard and I just suck or if the controls are just clunky and slow it's probably a little bit of both but yeah the controls here feel really stiff and it's difficult to aim your projectile accurately you really just got to be a volume shooter here and just pound the X and Y buttons like crazy and destroy as much stuff as you can what doesn't help matters is that enemy movement rarely has any correlation to what's happening in the background and that is really distracting and it also confuses the hell out of my brain. This game also struggles at balancing where you want your mech to go and where you want your mech to aim thankfully you have the ability to use physical attacks and I ended up using that more often than not but you also end up taking more damage with that method still I felt like I had no choice but to go that route because it can be tough to aim your shot while dodging especially in the offensive form as the fighter jet you do get plenty of health replenishments as long as you're actually destroying enemies and not letting them pass by but still the balancing of controls in this game could use some work there's also a story here and there is an English patch you can get from romhacking.net as well but it really boils down to just a few screens and some dialogue here and there something about each level actually being a race circuit and your team captain gets kidnapped and you have to get him back it's all very vague and not all that important but it's nice that it's there I guess so yeah excelebrate is a weird one it looks insane at first glance but once you piece together what's going on the game is extremely simple and if you play this one on the SNES 9x emulator you can actually shut off the background and this is what you're left with I actually made myself do this for a bit just to practice so I could improve my aim but I found it pretty hard to improve because the controls are just too slow to respond to what I actually want to do this is one of those games that's worth trying out for yourself to see if you can get the hang of it plus it's one of those games you just can't help but gawk at when you first see it because it's so damn weird looking but yeah it's hard to recommend it as a full playthrough just as a curiosity and I want to thank you for watching and I hope you have a great rest of your day