The player is cast as a soldier fighting the Aki-Do Forces, an evil empire bent on taking over the entire universe. To stop them, the player has access to an experimental mech, the Vortex, to travel the seven worlds of the Aki-Do system and destroy the bases.
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I think calling a game "Impressive, for an [insert old console here] game" typically carries with it the implication that the game in question is more technically advanced than one might expect, but not necessarily remarkable otherwise.
This game's spiritual predecessor, Star Fox, is impressive, for a Super Nintendo game. A home console game with real-time polygonal 3D graphics in the early 90's is something to behold, but it's a pretty basic space shooter from top to bottom, a looser Space Harrier or After Burner. Putting the game on a more recent, capable platform might improve the game in some relatively basic technical ways, like improving the framerate. Aside from that though, Star Fox has the bittersweet benefit of being trite enough to be fully realized.
This is all to say that Vortex is not merely impressive for a Super Nintendo game, it is flat out held back by being a Super Nintendo game.
On startup the game informs you that it not only uses to Super FX chip, it has surround sound and paid the license to use the Dolby branding. It opens with a short narrative introduction before giving you a Zelda 1-style rundown of what all the objects in the game are for, what to avoid, what to collect, etc. The title screen presents several options, including a hands-on explanation of the game's controls, which a first-time player should probably check out.
Considering how simple Star Fox was, I was kind of shocked by just how deep this game's core mechanics are. This game has a surprising focus on a unique style of movement; you press left and right to turn, but up and down more or less act as a gear-shift, from reverse to park to 3 levels of forward drive. You can press X to jump, and press B to do a Resident Evil-style quick-turn (or perhaps Croc is the more appropriate comparison). You can hold L and press any face button to select one of several different modes, your main robot form, a car, a plane, and a stationary defense mode. If you press both shoulder buttons while in defense mode, you detonate a bomb that acts as an emergency screen nuke when you're feeling overwhelmed. The plane basically controls like an Arwing, meaning that you can use the up and down buttons for free aiming (though the game has a strong enough lock-on that you likely won't need it), and is your fastest option for movement. The car is almost as fast, but uses less fuel, so it's the best option for getting around. The robot is slow, but is the only form that can pick up objects, and the only form that can use all weapons. You shoot you lefthand weapon with Y, and your righthand weapon with A, and you can hold R and press either of these buttons to cycle between weapons.
Before going into the main game, a novice player should probably also check out the 3 training missions. The first is basically a hoard mode level in a mostly empty field, all you have to do is kill 30 enemies. The second is a linear obstacle course that introduces the game's first-person underground areas. These parts of the level are full of crusher obstacles that deal so much damage and are so difficult to avoid (primarily because the first-person perspective means it's difficult to tell where you actually are in space, but also because your movement is so indirect and the framerate is poor) that I wonder if this is actually meant to make the player look for an alternate way to clear the stage; you can actually just jump over the buildings that lead you underground and walk all the way to the exit. The third level is a simple map with a series of paths leading to five enemy structures that you must destroy.
And honestly, a first-time player may as well stop there, because the game has just peaked.
Despite the game's generous onboarding process, the first level of the actual main story mode leaves an absolutely terrible impression. The player is in a hallway in outer space, the environment is an empty starfield with a couple of barriers on either side. Unlike the ground missions, there is absolutely no verticality here. Enemies are all at the same elevation, and the alternate forms of your vehicle are basically useless for anything other than changing your speed. At the end of this completely linear area, the player encounters a boss. The boss's hitboxes are nebulous, what weapons damage it most are a mystery, and the player should probably be awkwardly mashing both the Y and A buttons. Especially if it's your first time, you will probably die; even if you know what you're doing the hitboxes are fickle enough that you might die anyway. You are sent all the way back to the beginning of the hallway.
The game only has 7 levels. There are 2 levels in this game that consist solely of these "space hallways". These levels are the "vortex" that the game is named after. It barely matters if the later levels use the material seen in the training missions in interesting ways, nearly a third of the game's content is flat out bad. What I have played of the later levels was a significant enough difficulty spike that I feel confident saying that it probably isn't worth trying to play through this game without using passwords.
What I mean when I say this game is held back by being a Super Nintendo game is that while, yes, a framerate boost would definitely help, the game has a really strong foundation that it simply cannot deliver on when constrained to this platform. Its controls are so convoluted that even a modern controller would struggle to conveniently assign each gameplay function to its own input. The game introduces so many types of level widgets and obstacles and systems that seem like they would be perfect for a game with the structure of Ace Combat or Rogue Squadron, but completely wastes these concepts in favor of hallways seemingly for no reason other than the cartridge simply didn't have the space for anything more interesting. This game was released in September 1994, just a few months before the release of the PlayStation in Japan. If this game had come out one generation, even one year later, it would have benefited in so many ways. More horsepower, more frames, more space for level layouts and graphics and music, they could have put that surround sound license to much better use; keep waiting until '97 and you could have had enough buttons.
This game could have been in fierce competition with Jumping Flash or Air Combat, instead it's faded into total obscurity. Despite its incredible potential, in the state that it's in, the game as it actually exists, I don't think it deserves better.
This game's spiritual predecessor, Star Fox, is impressive, for a Super Nintendo game. A home console game with real-time polygonal 3D graphics in the early 90's is something to behold, but it's a pretty basic space shooter from top to bottom, a looser Space Harrier or After Burner. Putting the game on a more recent, capable platform might improve the game in some relatively basic technical ways, like improving the framerate. Aside from that though, Star Fox has the bittersweet benefit of being trite enough to be fully realized.
This is all to say that Vortex is not merely impressive for a Super Nintendo game, it is flat out held back by being a Super Nintendo game.
On startup the game informs you that it not only uses to Super FX chip, it has surround sound and paid the license to use the Dolby branding. It opens with a short narrative introduction before giving you a Zelda 1-style rundown of what all the objects in the game are for, what to avoid, what to collect, etc. The title screen presents several options, including a hands-on explanation of the game's controls, which a first-time player should probably check out.
Considering how simple Star Fox was, I was kind of shocked by just how deep this game's core mechanics are. This game has a surprising focus on a unique style of movement; you press left and right to turn, but up and down more or less act as a gear-shift, from reverse to park to 3 levels of forward drive. You can press X to jump, and press B to do a Resident Evil-style quick-turn (or perhaps Croc is the more appropriate comparison). You can hold L and press any face button to select one of several different modes, your main robot form, a car, a plane, and a stationary defense mode. If you press both shoulder buttons while in defense mode, you detonate a bomb that acts as an emergency screen nuke when you're feeling overwhelmed. The plane basically controls like an Arwing, meaning that you can use the up and down buttons for free aiming (though the game has a strong enough lock-on that you likely won't need it), and is your fastest option for movement. The car is almost as fast, but uses less fuel, so it's the best option for getting around. The robot is slow, but is the only form that can pick up objects, and the only form that can use all weapons. You shoot you lefthand weapon with Y, and your righthand weapon with A, and you can hold R and press either of these buttons to cycle between weapons.
Before going into the main game, a novice player should probably also check out the 3 training missions. The first is basically a hoard mode level in a mostly empty field, all you have to do is kill 30 enemies. The second is a linear obstacle course that introduces the game's first-person underground areas. These parts of the level are full of crusher obstacles that deal so much damage and are so difficult to avoid (primarily because the first-person perspective means it's difficult to tell where you actually are in space, but also because your movement is so indirect and the framerate is poor) that I wonder if this is actually meant to make the player look for an alternate way to clear the stage; you can actually just jump over the buildings that lead you underground and walk all the way to the exit. The third level is a simple map with a series of paths leading to five enemy structures that you must destroy.
And honestly, a first-time player may as well stop there, because the game has just peaked.
Despite the game's generous onboarding process, the first level of the actual main story mode leaves an absolutely terrible impression. The player is in a hallway in outer space, the environment is an empty starfield with a couple of barriers on either side. Unlike the ground missions, there is absolutely no verticality here. Enemies are all at the same elevation, and the alternate forms of your vehicle are basically useless for anything other than changing your speed. At the end of this completely linear area, the player encounters a boss. The boss's hitboxes are nebulous, what weapons damage it most are a mystery, and the player should probably be awkwardly mashing both the Y and A buttons. Especially if it's your first time, you will probably die; even if you know what you're doing the hitboxes are fickle enough that you might die anyway. You are sent all the way back to the beginning of the hallway.
The game only has 7 levels. There are 2 levels in this game that consist solely of these "space hallways". These levels are the "vortex" that the game is named after. It barely matters if the later levels use the material seen in the training missions in interesting ways, nearly a third of the game's content is flat out bad. What I have played of the later levels was a significant enough difficulty spike that I feel confident saying that it probably isn't worth trying to play through this game without using passwords.
What I mean when I say this game is held back by being a Super Nintendo game is that while, yes, a framerate boost would definitely help, the game has a really strong foundation that it simply cannot deliver on when constrained to this platform. Its controls are so convoluted that even a modern controller would struggle to conveniently assign each gameplay function to its own input. The game introduces so many types of level widgets and obstacles and systems that seem like they would be perfect for a game with the structure of Ace Combat or Rogue Squadron, but completely wastes these concepts in favor of hallways seemingly for no reason other than the cartridge simply didn't have the space for anything more interesting. This game was released in September 1994, just a few months before the release of the PlayStation in Japan. If this game had come out one generation, even one year later, it would have benefited in so many ways. More horsepower, more frames, more space for level layouts and graphics and music, they could have put that surround sound license to much better use; keep waiting until '97 and you could have had enough buttons.
This game could have been in fierce competition with Jumping Flash or Air Combat, instead it's faded into total obscurity. Despite its incredible potential, in the state that it's in, the game as it actually exists, I don't think it deserves better.
Fantastically ambitious but plagued by awkward controls and sometimes infuriatingly obtuse combat. This is the sort of game you are practically required to cheese in order to make any significant progress, but the bones of a truly ambitious title are here, and that makes the game worth a look for those interested in seeing the evolution of early 3D console games.
Nothing extraordinary about this one except I love the soundtrack. Hit up SNESmusic and grab it if you like some 90s techno.