Super FamiComplete #31: Hyperzone (Redux)

 

Title: Hyperzone

Release Date: 08/30/91

Developer: HAL

Publisher: HAL

Thank goodness that in the early day of the SNES/Super Famicom most of the games are still pretty darn short and easy to get through. Now this is a game that I had never heard of before starting this blog, and frankly couldn't have told you a thing about it besides what I could discern from the box art. What I found, in the end though, was nothing really worth finding. 

Background of Game

This is a game developed by HAL Laboratories, the game developer that would go onto make Kirby games, Earthbound, and of course the original Smash Bros. Obviously this is a very little known game done by the studio, but interesting in that it is the first game developed by HAL for this system (followed up by the disappointing Arcana. The music, though, is done by Kirby composer Jun Ishikawa.

The games story is very simple: Earth is no longer habitable, so the people of Earth are looking for a new place to live; they start to look in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but find a race of cybernetic organisms who live there already. The goal of the game? Kill all these cyborgs. Very weird genocidal story for this game. Granted if you didn't read the manual, you would never know this from the game. It just goes from a menu right into the action. 

What is this game?

Playing the game blind, this game has no story, no background, and no real context at all. You play as a ship that travels through some weird sort of computer or future-scape and blasts shapes out of the sky with a laser. You are pushed ever onward and straight towards the horizon with no real control over the speed, and you have to avoid a whole series of obstacles. While the game looks very similar to F-Zero, it is not a racing game at all. It is more akin to an on-the-rails shooter. Each stage is a short 3-5 minute gauntlet of obstacles, things to avoid, and turrets/monsters that attack you, all capped off with a short boss battle at the end. You have only three lives, and once they are expended, that is it. There are only 8 stages, and once those are concluded you start the game over again and the game loops ad-infinitum. The game reminds me of a really wonky Space Harrier.

The graphics are so convoluted and messy. Since everything is just shapes and colors with no real discernible context, you really can never make sense of the action. There is no game feel or investment from the player. Some of the stages can be visually striking (there is a snow palette stage which isn't too bad), but mostly everything is very visually confusing. There is almost too many colors and too many patterns going on at once on the screen; just looking at the picture above is visually much, imagine seeing it in motion!

The game is challenging, but in a frustrating way. The faux-3D graphics make dodging enemy projectiles nigh impossible as it is difficult to tell where projectiles are heading. Obstacles to dodge are arranged so that you can't even move around them without traveling off the border of the track and damaging your vehicle. It is just frustrating. The hitboxes are all over the place too; you think you will have dodged a projectile in time, but end up getting damaged. Half the time, as well, I couldn't tell if I was damaging any enemies or not.

And those enemy designs! They are just shapes, orbs, and colors to be honest. There just seemed to be no actual thought or design put into this game. Even the final boss is a weird orb with an oddly brain like pattern? Nothing really suggests much or anything; it is like you are fighting a fleet of play-pit balls and rubik's cube pieces. Very odd choices.





Please tell me the music's good at least?

The music is actually the best part of the game. Jun Ishikawa knocks this one out of the park.

The crazy thing is that the track names denote that there was some planning as far as story. The stages have names like "Blast Furnace" and "Materials Factory" which makes it sound like you are slowly picking apart the enemy's base of operations. Too bad none of this is translated into gameplay at all. 

Ads, A Review, and Commercial

Oh my goodness the story is all in the manual. I know this was a thing for this time, and I have been spoiled by modern narrative focused games, but c'mon. Put a LITTLE bit of this into the game. 

Sadly no commercials. Weirdly enough, this game garnered positive reviews? I think it was because it captured arcade style action on a console. But here is a weird quote from the Entertainment Weekly review (from which it received a solid A rating)..."For the parents who make up a substantial portion of the Nintendo demographic, Hyper Zone might more appropriately be called ”Go Faster, Dear, They’re Throwing Boulders at the Windshield.” A futuristic piloting-shooting adventure, the game has players hurtling along in a spaceship, blasting away at approaching bad guys. With lots of practice, you can learn to forestall annihilation, but when you finally blow up (and believe me, you will finally blow up), it’s like reliving every grisly driver’s-ed film you saw in high school." Why is that a good thing?"

Worth playing?

Let's leave this game in the annals of history. This game is just a curiosity. Why was it made? Who is this game really for? Who thought of this game? It isn't fun. It isn't worth playing.