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.