Game of the Day 3/8/2016: Insector X

[celerystalker]

Insector X on the Genesis is a port of a Taito arcade game (which is also available on Taito Legends 2) that has had a few alterations that were in my opinion for the better. It is a horizontally scrolling shooter in which an insect-sized hero blasts his way through waves of cyborg bugs in order defeat their queen and save the invertebrate world. Each level ends with a giant bug boss fight, though the stages are often split between an exterior portion and an interior finale.

The powerup system is pretty basic, but has a couple of highlights. You power up your gun, increase your speed, and pick up the odd bomb or extra life. However, you also get two other secondary weapons; a red bug weapon that shoots forward in a dual wave pattern and a blue bomb that arcs out just in front of you before dropping straight down. You can switch between both on the fly for situational use, and both have unlimited ammunition. You do lose all of your powerups upon dying, though, so you'll want to be sure to use them liberally.

Death in Insector X moves you back to a checkpoint, so you have to be sure to clear your passages and boss fights cleanly, which is most of the challenge is derived. Still, it's quite fair, and you don't die by touching walls, making maneuvering much more comfortable. This is good, as you're usually in tight spaces in the interior areas, and your sprite is a rather large target.

Speaking of sprites, that's where the biggest changes from the arcade occur. The original game is much more a cute 'em up, full of cartoony, big-eyed bugs that look like they jumped off of the pages of a children's book, and your hero looks plain goofy. On the Genesis, everything is given a sci-fi overhaul that in my opinion really works in its favor. Instead of popping away at a big cartoon bee that's just begging for Bonk to headbutt it, you fight a huge biomechanical monstrosity that looks like it actually means to kill you. Your hero also takes on more realistic porportions, and looks far cooler in his metallic exoskeleton on Sega's machine.

The pace is good, the control is spot on, and the levels and enemies work together to tell the story of the brave little hero cohesively. Insector X is one of the better horizontal shooters on the Genesis, and I believe it outshines its arcade parent.

Played it?

[Steven]

Loved this game as a kid! It combines two things that fascinated me as a kid: bugs and shmups lol. Played it again like ten years ago and was underwhelmed. I remember borrowing this game and Street Smart from my brother's friend. Also have weird memories of munching on Captain Crunch Peanut Butter as I played Insector X.

Also as a little kid I called it Inspector X lol.

[Emperor Megas]

This was on of my favorite Genesis games BITD. I still own a complete copy of it, and a cart only copy of the Japanese Mega Drive version. As much as I like Insector-X though there's a SUPER ANNOYING semi game breaking quirk that really puts me off.

Insector-X is one of those shooters that ramps up the difficulty as you power up your weapons. Eventually, the weapons cover more screen area, but are less effective against enemies that require more than a single hit to kill. So you get a wider, cooler looking spread shot at the forfeit of actual destructive power...but THAT'S not my issue.

Like a lot of other shooters of the era, when you reach a certain power level, destroyed enemies leave a bullet behind on a collision course trajectory. This isn't really a huge deal, just a cheap little punishment to ramp up the challenge so that you're not completely invincible when you're fully powered up, so you aren't blowing through every stage. This isn't really a huge deal...until about the 4th stage (I believe).

The things is, when you reach a stage -- and I believe it's the second area of the 4th stage -- you have to fly through a narrow corridor that doesn't allow you to dodge or maneuver vertically. It's just too tight to. There are several single hit enemies that fly at you in this area, and if you're powered up they release bullets at you when they're destroyed in this tight ass, bottleneck corridor, which you WON'T be able to avoid. Unless you manage to avoid powering up fully for about HALF THE GAME to avoid this problem, you WILL loose a life there, unfairly.

I hate when when games punish you for playing well with bullshit like this. The game is way too short for this issue to not have been discovered in play testing. They WANTED you to die here, unnecessarily.

[Emperor Megas]

Also have weird memories of munching on Captain Crunch Peanut Butter as I played Insector X..

Did it cut up the roof of your mouth?

[Tanooki]

This game was also released on Famicom as well and it's a surprisingly well made conversion too. I've only bothered with it while researching things I'd like to own eventually for the Famicom, but I keep forgetting about it yet I do intend to pick it up. I may just have to re-evaluate it now since the Genesis copy exists too and I don't think it would need importing either and would be in english.

[celerystalker]

This was on of my favorite Genesis games BITD. I still own a complete copy of it, and a cart only copy of the Japanese Mega Drive version. As much as I like Insector-X though there's a SUPER ANNOYING semi game breaking quirk that really puts me off.

Insector-X is one of those shooters that ramps up the difficulty as you power up your weapons. Eventually, the weapons cover more screen area, but are less effective against enemies that require more than a single hit to kill. So you get a wider, cooler looking spread shot at the forfeit of actual destructive power...but THAT'S not my issue.

Like a lot of other shooters of the era, when you reach a certain power level, destroyed enemies leave a bullet behind on a collision course trajectory. This isn't really a huge deal, just a cheap little punishment to ramp up the challenge so that you're not completely invincible when you're fully powered up, so you aren't blowing through every stage. This isn't really a huge deal...until about the 4th stage (I believe).

The things is, when you reach a stage -- and I believe it's the second area of the 4th stage -- you have to fly through a narrow corridor that doesn't allow you to dodge or maneuver vertically. It's just too tight to. There are several single hit enemies that fly at you in this area, and if you're powered up they release bullets at you when they're destroyed in this tight ass, bottleneck corridor, which you WON'T be able to avoid. Unless you manage to avoid powering up fully for about HALF THE GAME to avoid this problem, you WILL loose a life there, unfairly.

I hate when when games punish you for playing well with bullshit like this. The game is way too short for this issue to not have been discovered in play testing. They WANTED you to die here, unnecessarily.

I noticed this while playing again to write it up when I got to the first boss powered up... and all of a sudden he pulls out a stinger attack I hadn't seen before. Next life, I only had one weapon powerup, and he went down in seconds. At first I thought there might have been some sort of cumulative damage system, so I started over after that credit, just keeping my weapon powered up once, and it went down easily again. It's the shooter equivalent to rubber band AI in sports games.

So, I still really dig the game, but I've found that it's most playable if I pick up all speed powerups and the secondary weapons, but leave my basic gun at level 2. The red secondary weapon helps keep the corridors clean while the low powered main gun keeps the bosses and bullets where I want them.

The game would have been better without that sort of system, to be sure.

[Tanooki]

Guess I wasn't paying attention that much to realize it but this sounds familiar to the Famicom release too as I was doing quite well then it was like what the hell...dead with no place truly to go to avoid that.

[jammajup]

This is a game I never even heard of until years later through emulation ,youtube,forums and other means. I like it although I recall not much in the way of parallax scrolling which would of made a big difference cosmetically unless there is some after level 2 because that is as far as I can get lol

[Steven]

Did it cut up the roof of your mouth?

I remember it leaving a bit of sticky after taste if you ate it without milk, lol.

Keep it up Celery. Nice to have these daily discussions of random lesser known games.

[Gameguy]

I really like this game. I haven't played a whole lot of it but what I did play was pretty fun, to me it's one of the best shmups on the Genesis.

[eskobar]

This was one of the first shmups that I bought recently when I tried to recover my original Genesis library. It was better and easier in my memory, but it is a very good game.

Great daily threads !

[celerystalker]

Did it cut up the roof of your mouth?

I think that's the only way it's legal to eat Captain Crunch. If your mouth feels normal afterward, you did it wrong.