for a nearly 30yo game, it holds up decently well - the movement/controls, the power-ups, the upgrades you can find by exploration, the visual design... they're all still strong.
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however, there were enough archaic game design elements that prevented me from scoring it higher. i know old-school games are deliberately difficult, but parts of this are just punishing. trying to do the platforming sections in this game after playing something like Celeste is just impossible.

i beat all 8 bosses, but ultimately i didn't want to run through the final gauntlet, so i stopped there. took me ~4h.