Every now and then, it’s hard to say when a concept for a
video game sounds awesome or just plain stupid. Now, you’d think that line
would be drawn quite clearly drawn somewhere, but today’s game has the plot of
“save Aerosmith and all of ‘Youth Culture’ from the hands of a corrupt
government”. Along with tag lines such as “Music is the weapon!” and a contest
to find the “baddest” player, it sounds like a quick shot at 90’s kid’s buck.
*90’s kid: Duuuuuude-* But I must admit, there is a slight allure to something
like this, as it sounds either a bit cool, or so lame it loops back to awesome.
Let’s find out how it turns out with Revolution X, originally for the Arcades,
but I’ll be playing a Sega Saturn port.
This game was initially developed and published by Midway,
who, at the time, had a bigger arcade hit, Mortal Kombat. I mention this, because
in terms of game sprites, a lot of Midway games had a “style”, and people who
have played Mortal Kombat know what I mean. For those that don’t, it looks as
if the makers of the game just dressed up people, took pictures or videotaped
them and the pixelated it. The plus size is that it looks quite realistic, as
it probably once was. The problem is that some things are just a mesh of
indistinguishable pixels. You really can’t say “its style choice that makes
things SUPPOSED to look weird” when something’s off, because we can tell what
it should really look like. Also, this is a downgraded home port. I can only
imagine it looks even worse on the Super Nintendo or Genesis ports.
As you could expect for the audio, there are a lot of
Aerosmith songs used. These include Eat the Rich, Love in an Elevator, Rag
Doll, Sweet Emotions and other classics. I just really wish I could hear it
more, because this is one of those games where you will constantly be firing
your gun. Since there’s no penalty for just holding down the trigger, all
you’ll hear is the rattle of your gun. And enemies firing at you. And things in
the background getting hit. And breaking, and shattering, and exploding, and
thumping, and whirling-ugh! The constant noise gets overwhelming at a certain
point.
As I might have already mentioned, this was originally a
light-gun, rail-shooter game for the arcades. At its basics, it’s like most
others; you follow a path, get to an area, kill the enemies before they kill you
and then move on. As you play, you can find special weapons, power ups, hidden
bonus items and secret paths. So what separates this game from others like it…
besides Aerosmith of course? Well, one thing I really enjoyed is how much damage
you can take. Unlike shooter games like Virtua Cop, where you need to be quick
or else you’re out, in this game you have a pretty big life bar and can take
many hits. Now granted, this was still originally an arcade game, so you can
still die easily at some points. My point is that instead of worrying about not
getting hit, reacting quickly and making sure you hit everyone before they hit you;
you can just sit back, keep shooting and enjoy the blood splatters.
However, I’m talking about the port here, and there is a
significant problem: it’s not compatible with the Sega Saturn Stunner (the
light gun for the system). For some reason, when they decided to port this game
to home consoles, they didn’t include that option. The game plays fine with the
D-Pad and the cursor I guess, (I mean, I did beat the game) but it never felt
as fast or accurate as a real gun. You can change the “looseness” of it, but no
matter how you set it, you’ll probably be compromising.
Revolution X is the kind of game that I had a
hard time taking seriously from the start, and quite frankly, that’s what saves
it. If at any point I thought this game was taking itself seriously, I would
just have to say that it fails. However, since it just seems to want to be a
ridiculous game, I can only sit back and have fun with it. Granted, there are
still a lot of things going against it: the graphics haven’t aged well, the
sound just becomes noise, the game play isn’t really anything special and the
port screwed up a couple of things. But like I said, it is fun, as I can just
sit back and shoot some things while trying to be the dude that saves Aerosmith
and youth culture. (Seriously, what about that last part doesn’t sound so bad,
it’s good?) This is no Terminator 2 in terms of Arcade shooters by any means,
and I will say the arcade version is a MUCH better experience. But for what
this game has to offer, I think the fun overshadows the problems. I give
Revolution X for the Sega Saturn 6.5 level out of 10.
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