Imagine a cheap, repetitive knockoff of Wonder Boy in Monster Land only even slower and more sluggish, where you fight the same floating cats and rats to, in what I’m sure we can all agree is our favorite type of gameplay, grind to get gold to buy better equipment and heal. Then imagine you get into a voltron-ass robot suit and fight admittedly cooler baddies but then have to fend them off in whatever infinite vortexes they borrowed from the Ninja Gaiden series. Now imagine doing that seven times in a row.

And finally, imagine being a kid in the early nineties and realizing that your only choice is this game or Altered fucking Beast.