SNES

HyperZone

For the parents who make up a substantial portion of the Nintendo demographic, Hyper Zone might more appropriately be called ''Go Faster, Dear, They're Throwing Boulders at the Windshield.'' A futuristic piloting-shooting adventure, the game has players hurtling along in a spaceship, blasting away at approaching bad guys. With lots of practice, you can learn to forestall annihilation, but when you finally blow up (and believe me, you will finally blow up), it's like reliving every grisly driver's-ed film you saw in high school.

Hyper Zone has the looks and sounds of F-Zero, but the gameplay is extremely limited. You never turn left or right, the game is always straightforward and gets repetitive rather early. The graphics are cool, but there is just enough game there to hold my interest.

Schon "F-Zero" war für mich, obwohl als gutes Spiel erkannt, nicht der Hochgeschwindigkeitshit, den viele meiner Kollegen in ihm sahen. Zumindest beweist "Hyperzone", daß man trotz ähnlichem Bildschirmaufbau vieles noch schlechter machen kann. Hyper Zone ist eher ein neuzeitliches "Eliminator" (vielleicht erinnert sich noch jemand ans Debüt-Spiel des "Nebulus"-Erfinders?), denn ein ausgewachsenes Rennspiel. Ehrgeizige Konkurrenzfahrzeuge fehlen, dafür schlägt man sich mit unidentifizierbaren, da grafisch biederen "Dingern" herum. Nach zwei Runden langweilt das phantasielose und unoriginelle Gerase trotz tapfer arbeitendem 3-D-Chip.

HAL Laboratory (aka Halken in Japan for some of their early titles) tries their best to show off the impressiveness of Mode 7 graphics in this forgettable rail shooter. Lazily fend off waves of uninspired alien creatures and boring boss encounters over the course of eight stages worth of pretty visual effects. The few thrills come from momentarily forgetting that what you're playing isn't F-Zero.