Blood Money

The Good
Blood Money was one of the best shooter games at the time, along with Xenon 2 (which incidentally also had the money collecting element). The pixel art graphics have lots of detail and surprisingly smooth animation considering it was released in 1989. The planets are huge and each of the levels take about 20 minutes to complete. There are lots of different enemies with different attack patterns and there is lots of variation in the backgrounds. Playing in two player mode made the game more fun and a little easier, but the downside was that you had to fight over which player would catch the money.

The shops are placed carefully throughout the levels and collecting the money to buy power-ups adds a subtle element of strategy to the game. Each planet has an entrance fee, so you have to make sure you have enough money left when you are about to finish a planet.

I would always start on planet 1 (space) and stock up as many extra lives as possible, then planet 4 (fire) as it is the hardest, then planet 2 (water) to stock up lives again, and finally planet 3 (ice).

The Bad
The collision detection is a bit tricky. When you hit a wall or an enemy you just move through it and your health bar will drain very quickly until you move out of the wall or enemy. The energy bar is essentially useless because most of the time a hit will just kill you instantly. Also, it's not always clear which parts of the background you can and cannot hit, this makes navigating through the levels feel like playing an electric wire loop game.

The game seems like it moves a bit too slow, especially compared to newer shoot'em-ups. The screen scrolls at a fixed pace and you can't move around the screen very quickly.

The Bottom Line
An amazing shooter back in the day and a beautiful relic of a computer game, but it's probably too slow paced and difficult for today's audiences.