One of the system highlights for the 32X for sure.

The visuals are gorgeous, the music is wonderfully atmospheric, the shmup gameplay is really fun and the weapons the game give you are quite unique!

It's certainly a bit difficult to know what you're doing at times, and the constant respawning enemies is something I wish wasn't there, but if you're able to push through its issues, you'll have a wonderfully unique and enjoyable game to experience!

I don't even remember how I came into owning this game, maybe I found it clearanced in the stores but i'm glad i did get it. This is kind of the spiritual successor to Ecco the Dolphin except much better. It's similar to that game in it has it's own vibe going for it where it feels super atmospheric. It's got a strange surreal story like Ecco. Unlike Ecco though this one has a more arcade gameplay style. It plays like a space shooter except your a humming bird. You can get different weapons and upgrades to shoot other animals and such an explore really vast levels. Just watch a little game play to get what I mean. It's OST is really good at selling it. I'd like to try this game out again sometime.

The prose of Ecco and the same sensation of taking realistic animal controls through a vivid and surrealist world, now bound to a hummingbird with gameplay more akin to the Amiga shmup scene - Apidya and Agony come to mind. There's a lot of clash in the visuals and audio, they use a lot of stock effects for the bullets that I swear I heard in stuff as loony as Backyard Baseball, but I'd say the panoramic art direction still wins out; Jenny and I were comparing it to some hallway paintings in our family's houses, the really detailed watercolors of flowers and pollinating fauna. Very odd soundtrack for a 32X game too, it feels like they're using the PCM for full instrument samples instead of just drums - very SNES-like.

The struggle comes from the divide between the strictness of its shmup design and the unruliness of the controls. There's lots of odd quirks and movement influxes that occur with the slightest tap in an attempt to replicate the buzzing movement of real hummingbirds. With such limited health, it's all too common to make one wrong tap and run right into a bullet. Bad hitboxes exacerbate this further. Really is a 'have your cake and eat it situation', can't commit to phenomenalism and make an idealized shooter.

It was worth experiencing for its artistic and historical significance but I don't anticipate myself returning to it soon. Shmup Junkie was on some shit for putting this in that shmup list of his.

Le vert colibri, le roi des collines,
Voyant la rosée et le soleil clair
Luire dans son nid tissé d'herbes fines,
Corme lm frais rayon s'échappe dans l'air.
II se hâte et vole aux sources voisines,
Ou les bambous font le bruit de la mer,
Ou I'aoka rouge aux odeurs divines
S'ouvre et porte au cœur un humide éclair.

Vers la fleur dorée il descend, se pose,
Et boit tant d'amour dans la coupe rose
Qu'il meurt, ne sachant s'il l'a pu tarir.

Sur ta lèvre pure, o ma bien-aimée,
Telle aussi mon âme eut voulu mourir,
Du premier baiser qui l'a parfumée.