I play a lot of games and usually don't dive very deep into any one of them beyond clearing them once, but I've revisited Layer Section at least once a year since I bought it in 2007, making it quite possibly my most frequently revisited game ever. That's not to say I've dived that deep—in fact, it took me fifteen of those years of revisiting to clear it just the one time. But that in and of itself is remarkable, because usually if I can't do something in the amount of time it took me to go through all of school, I give up on it. Something about Layer Section keeps bringing me back. It was my first Saturn shmup, and the first shmup I played for more than a session or two.

All this should illustrate pretty clearly that I consider it a standout title within the genre. It's not that it does anything particularly unique or subversive, I think it just strikes a very precise balance between approachability and challenge, while also delivering an audiovisual feast that perfectly showcases the genre's appeal. It's not the easiest shmup (though I'd be hard pressed to identify one that's even kind of easy), but it might be the best intro to the genre. It helps that it's also one of the most affordable shmups on the Saturn, though that is increasingly akin to being the most affordable Ferrari on the Ferrari lot.

One thing I like about the Saturn port, at least on paper, is that it gives you a set number of credits that can't be upgraded. You can't press an "insert coin" button to drag yourself past the finish line without actually achieving anything. Either you clear the game within the allotted 4 credits, or you lose. This implies some degree of thought went into designing the port as a home experience where there would be no such thing as coins. Whether that's the right number of credits for a game this hard is up to you to decide, but it bears repeating that it took me fifteen years to do so.

This brings me to my one gripe about the game, which is that there's ostensibly no way to practice it other than sequentially from beginning to game over, which means if you're struggling to learn the boss of Stage 7's attack patterns, you'll have to play through the entire preceding 25 minutes or so every time you want to witness that boss. This is like having to run back home every time you make a mistake on page 10 of that Chopin Etude, run back to the piano teacher's house, and start the piece over. That's no way to learn. And of course, this wouldn't have been the case in the arcade, where you would've been able to insert a coin to extend your play. There's sort of a catch-22 there, since, as I already mentioned, simulated coin slots rob video games of their meaning. The answer to this catch-22 that console shmup designers eventually landed on was to include practice modes with stage selects. Well, I'm happy and eager to report that Layer Section on the Sega Saturn HAS a stage select, hidden safely away in a debug mode where no one will find it. Use a Pro Action Replay, Pseudo Saturn Kai, or other cheat code input method to activate this mode. If your Pseudo Kai is up to date, the code is already pre-loaded in the database, you just have to activate it from the Pseudo Kai menu. The debug mode also lets you fast forward through the game in real time, which is very handy for skipping over some of those dazzling graphical transitions when you're just trying to drill a specific sequence.

Speaking of those transitions, I think another key aspect that makes Layer Section so compelling is in how the background action clearly conveys the trajectory of your journey. This is a game about going deep, layer by layer. You start in outer space, close in on the Earth until finally breaching its atmosphere, infiltrate the crust, and make your way deep into the core, where the ultimate threat awaits. It's a simple and catchy visual concept that facilitates a great variety of setpieces that feel far more jointed than in your typical shmup. Nothing more jarring than suddenly finding your intergalactic spaceship gliding at a bicycle's pace past the pyramids of Egypt without explanation. Layer Section is a top-down shooter, and it means it. The main gameplay gimmick—a lock-on laser that allows you to shoot threats below you—is also a clever way to meaningfully harness the top-down perspective.

Maybe that's what makes this game so special. It takes a well tread genre template—the top-down vertical shooter—and uses it so thoughtfully that it retroactively justifies the template's existence. "Here's what only this type of game can do."