The fact that this even exists and is as playable as it is shows just how good M2 was even before most heard of them, myself included.
There are some omissions and changes, as to be expected, but quite frankly I preferred some of these changes to what was going on in the Genesis game. For instance, in Green's level, you pilot a sort of jetpack/helicopter instead of the anti-grav minecart which I always found awkward as hell to control. Black's level is also completely gone, and while I know it probably has its fans, it was my least favorite part of the Genesis original. I kind of wish they would have put a unique stage in here (similar to how GG Ristar had an exclusive pirate ship stage and boss), but oh well.
As far as enemy AI goes, I feel like soldiers and bosses were more apt to try and throw me around- especially Green during his second encounter. As a whole, though, the same weapon combos (homing+laser, force+ fire) work incredibly well and the final boss is definitely a lot easier.
The biggest knock against the game would probably be the amount of slowdown and flicker. There is one portion exclusive to this game in place of the shm'up stage where you pilot a walker that shoots an infinite array of lasers that bounce around the screen. The game absolutely chugs here and there is literally zero challenge or strategy involved. Just hold the fire button down and go straight- you won't even take a hit. I'm not sure why this is even here- it couldn't have been that hard to come up with a shm'up stage even if it wasn't 1:1 with the Genesis.
Still, keeping in mind that they were trying to port a 16 bit game to 8-bit hardware, this is impressive stuff. I just think perhaps M2 pushed it a little too much in spots.
There are some omissions and changes, as to be expected, but quite frankly I preferred some of these changes to what was going on in the Genesis game. For instance, in Green's level, you pilot a sort of jetpack/helicopter instead of the anti-grav minecart which I always found awkward as hell to control. Black's level is also completely gone, and while I know it probably has its fans, it was my least favorite part of the Genesis original. I kind of wish they would have put a unique stage in here (similar to how GG Ristar had an exclusive pirate ship stage and boss), but oh well.
As far as enemy AI goes, I feel like soldiers and bosses were more apt to try and throw me around- especially Green during his second encounter. As a whole, though, the same weapon combos (homing+laser, force+ fire) work incredibly well and the final boss is definitely a lot easier.
The biggest knock against the game would probably be the amount of slowdown and flicker. There is one portion exclusive to this game in place of the shm'up stage where you pilot a walker that shoots an infinite array of lasers that bounce around the screen. The game absolutely chugs here and there is literally zero challenge or strategy involved. Just hold the fire button down and go straight- you won't even take a hit. I'm not sure why this is even here- it couldn't have been that hard to come up with a shm'up stage even if it wasn't 1:1 with the Genesis.
Still, keeping in mind that they were trying to port a 16 bit game to 8-bit hardware, this is impressive stuff. I just think perhaps M2 pushed it a little too much in spots.