Interesting shooter game: Hellfire (Sega Genesis) first impressions
Daniel W. Rouse Jr.
It's a fairly older Genesis game, and I never did ever play the Toaplan
arcade version, so I had no prior knowledge of this game other than a few
web reviews and screenshots. All I knew was that this game was a horizontal
shooter with a fairly high difficulty level.
Just a few days ago--I found this game at a local Gamestop for $1.99, marked
down from $2.99. Of course, I bought the game... I figured even if I hated
it, it was only two bucks.
Hellfire has okay graphics, decent for the time it was made, but nothing
spectacular. The sound effects are fairly generic. The background music is
somewhat irritating even though they obviously tried to make a rock
soundtrack, the quality of the synth and guitar sounds just gets irritating
after a while and the electronic "snare drum" backbeat sound is just awful,
so it's best to keep the volume as low as possibly when playing this game.
And, some of the backgrounds are a bit generic, while other backgrounds
actually feature parallax scrolling. Finally, some of the foreground enemies
are rather interesting, like the moving parallelogram turret walls with
shooting heads in stage 2, and the stage 2 "mummy" boss.
In Hellfire, the ship starts out with all the weapons and they can be
powered up rather quickly, but there is one basic flaw with this game that
could easily cause a player just to say "forget it":
* Take every speedup ("S") powerup the game offers, and the ship is nearly
uncontrollable--it's bound to ram into something, and even the one-shot
shield available in the game, the ship cannot survive ramming into anything.
So, after a bit of experimenting--it seems that if only one "S" powerup is
taken when playing at the Easy level, or only two "S" powerups are taken
when playing at the Hard level--the game is much more of a controlled,
deliberate shooter--with fairly predictable enemy movement patterns and
fairly predictable enemy shot patterns.
The super laser beam, unfortunately, seems fairly useless except for
damaging midbosses and stage bosses--since it only fires forward. Using it
as a last resort on normal enemy attacks still only eliminates the enemies
in front (and not those that are behind, above, or below the player ship).
Losing a ship does *not* lose the accumulated number of super laser beams,
which is rather interesting, and sort of makes the game a bit more on the
"fair" side.
Now, the midbosses and stage bosses are still quite challenging and tend to
use the entire screen in their attack and defense patterns, forcing a lot of
ship movement and even frequent weapons changes. And this game also uses
startback points--some of the startback points after a ship is lost are
quite unforgiving... they are still passable, but they often require a lot
of precise evading of enemies and shots since all the ship reverts to its
slowest speed and weakest shot power each time a ship is lost.
After playing this game off and on for about 6 hours or so--I've reached
about 2/3 (estimated) through the third stage on a single credit--and at
this point, I'm forcing myself to play as far as I can on a single credit so
I don't finish the game too quickly. Note that continuing a game starts the
game at the beginning of a stage and not at the point where the last ship
was lost. I can only imagine that the game continues to get even harder
since they give 20 credits to continue!
In any event, Hellfire goes from nearly impossible to a worthy challenge
when the ship is kept at a slower and more controlled rate of speed. Of
course, they do offer a Yea Right difficulty (with the appropriate "cheat"),
and after trying that difficulty twice--the enemies do not move any faster
but the enemy shots are very fast (I couldn't even pass Stage 1 on Yea
Right, while I have passed stage 1 on Easy and even when experimenting with
the Hard difficulty level).
BelPowerslave
>
> It's a fairly older Genesis game, and I never did ever play the Toaplan
> arcade version, so I had no prior knowledge of this game other than a few
> web reviews and screenshots. All I knew was that this game was a horizontal
> shooter with a fairly high difficulty level.
>
I've not either...always wondered how it was. May look into it via MAME at some
point, just to have a general reference.
>
> Just a few days ago--I found this game at a local Gamestop for $1.99, marked
> down from $2.99. Of course, I bought the game... I figured even if I hated
> it, it was only two bucks.
>
Yep....hell, half of my Genesis collection has come from that line of
thinking(and pricing). ;)
>
> Hellfire has okay graphics, decent for the time it was made, but nothing
> spectacular. The sound effects are fairly generic. The background music is
> somewhat irritating even though they obviously tried to make a rock
> soundtrack, the quality of the synth and guitar sounds just gets irritating
> after a while and the electronic "snare drum" backbeat sound is just awful,
> so it's best to keep the volume as low as possibly when playing this game.
> And, some of the backgrounds are a bit generic, while other backgrounds
> actually feature parallax scrolling. Finally, some of the foreground enemies
> are rather interesting, like the moving parallelogram turret walls with
> shooting heads in stage 2, and the stage 2 "mummy" boss.
>
Yeah, it's not overly mind blowing, but I thought it looked alright most of the
time.
>
> In Hellfire, the ship starts out with all the weapons and they can be
> powered up rather quickly, but there is one basic flaw with this game that
> could easily cause a player just to say "forget it":
>
> * Take every speedup ("S") powerup the game offers, and the ship is nearly
> uncontrollable--it's bound to ram into something, and even the one-shot
> shield available in the game, the ship cannot survive ramming into anything.
>
> So, after a bit of experimenting--it seems that if only one "S" powerup is
> taken when playing at the Easy level, or only two "S" powerups are taken
> when playing at the Hard level--the game is much more of a controlled,
> deliberate shooter--with fairly predictable enemy movement patterns and
> fairly predictable enemy shot patterns.
>
> The super laser beam, unfortunately, seems fairly useless except for
> damaging midbosses and stage bosses--since it only fires forward. Using it
> as a last resort on normal enemy attacks still only eliminates the enemies
> in front (and not those that are behind, above, or below the player ship).
> Losing a ship does *not* lose the accumulated number of super laser beams,
> which is rather interesting, and sort of makes the game a bit more on the
> "fair" side.
>
Yeah, that was a real disapointment. I mean, the game is called "Hellfire" and
the manual/story even refers to it as the "ultimate weapon", yet it nothing
more than a slightly more power regular shot. As big as it is, you'd think it'd
rip straight through bosses...but no....
>
> Now, the midbosses and stage bosses are still quite challenging and tend to
> use the entire screen in their attack and defense patterns, forcing a lot of
> ship movement and even frequent weapons changes. And this game also uses
> startback points--some of the startback points after a ship is lost are
> quite unforgiving... they are still passable, but they often require a lot
> of precise evading of enemies and shots since all the ship reverts to its
> slowest speed and weakest shot power each time a ship is lost.
>
Yeah, this is my main problem with the game....one hit kill, back to the
startpoint...
>
> After playing this game off and on for about 6 hours or so--I've reached
> about 2/3 (estimated) through the third stage on a single credit--and at
> this point, I'm forcing myself to play as far as I can on a single credit so
> I don't finish the game too quickly. Note that continuing a game starts the
> game at the beginning of a stage and not at the point where the last ship
> was lost. I can only imagine that the game continues to get even harder
> since they give 20 credits to continue!
>
> In any event, Hellfire goes from nearly impossible to a worthy challenge
> when the ship is kept at a slower and more controlled rate of speed. Of
> course, they do offer a Yea Right difficulty (with the appropriate "cheat"),
> and after trying that difficulty twice--the enemies do not move any faster
> but the enemy shots are very fast (I couldn't even pass Stage 1 on Yea
> Right, while I have passed stage 1 on Easy and even when experimenting with
> the Hard difficulty level).
Hmmmm, what's the cheat to get "Yea Right" difficulty? I doubt I'd try it, but
would like to know. :)
Bel
--
Whip Ass Gaming: http://www.whipassgaming.com/
or http://users2.ev1.net/~belpowerslave/
"Stacy's mom has got it going on..."
- Fountains of Wayne, Stacy's Mom
Daniel W. Rouse Jr.
news:3F75DF82...@ev1.net...
> > Hellfire (Seismic Software).
>
[snip...]
> Hmmmm, what's the cheat to get "Yea Right" difficulty? I doubt I'd try it,
but
> would like to know. :)
>
I got it off the web, but the time interval is much longer than expected
(they say wait a moment--but it's a rather long moment).
Go to the options menu, set the difficulty to Hard, and then leave the
options menu screen up and idle for about 90 seconds or so.
The game will "ding" and auto-start at the "Yea Right" difficulty.
I recommend the following alternative method:
Go to the options menu--set Rapid = On, then exit the options menu.
Return to the options menu set the difficulty to Hard, and then leave the
options menu screen up and idle for about 90 seconds or so.
It's worth noting that this cheat has to be done for the start of each game
at the Yea Right difficulty level.
Max Lords
well...and with CD music to boot! :)
--
"Nothing good ever comes from the Earth."
Jet Black - Cowboy Bebop
"Daniel W. Rouse Jr." <dwro...@nethere.comNOSPAM> wrote in message
news:10646851...@news-1.nethere.net...
Daniel W. Rouse Jr.
>
> Hmmmm, what's the cheat to get "Yea Right" difficulty? I doubt I'd try it,
> but
> would like to know. :)
>
to Hard, wait about 90 seconds, a chime will sound and the difficulty will
be Yea Right.
Recommendation: Go into the options menu, set Rapid to On, exit the options
menu, then do the Yea Right code (reenter the options menu, set the
difficulty to Hard, wait about 90 seconds.
Daniel W. Rouse Jr.
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