Bloodshot – Sega Mega Drive Review
This might be the best looking Sega Mega Drive Game out there!
The box shots for this game look amazing. A fully 3D FPS game running on the Sega Mega Drive with multiple weapons, enemies and gameplay modes; Like 2P Co-op and Death match. Domark managed to bring an incredible experience directly to the Mega Drive and Sega CD… At like, 10FPS. The game is choppy.
But when everything is standing still, the game does look great. Bloodshot is a great example of what the hardware could do. It’s fun to look at as more of an experiment than a fully fledged gaming experience. A lesson in the power of the Sega 16-Bit system.
Bloodshot – Another Alien Invasion?
For a game about an alien invasion, the plot feels unnecessarily complicated but it’s fun to look at the illustrations and artwork. Upfront, on the title screen, we have credits to Jim Blackler for the story and Joe Groombridge for the artwork.
In the year 2049, the Earth moon base Yaz 67 is destroyed by an alien battlecruiser. The Earth Federation Starfleet Command retaliates by sending two of its own space battlecruisers against the alien ship with the goal of damaging the ship’s defenses and taking as many prisoners as possible. When soldiers enter the battered alien ship, they find it completely controlled by robotic soldiers who outgun and outclass the boarding humans. The ship is eventually taken on to Earth’s orbit and human scientists successfully shut-off the alien robot crew using electromagnetic fields. However, when the scientists reactivate the cruiser’s computers, they find an invincible space carrier containing even more robot soldiers and armed with extremely destructive Nova bombs is on its way to Earth. If the ship is disabled before it reaches Earth, then it is programmed to crash onto Earth’s surface and detonate the bombs. The only way to completely destroy the carrier is to destroy its twelve plasma nodes. Once the plasma node is destroyed however, the entire deck the node is located on will explode.
A year later, the Earth Federation makes it their mission to board the carrier once it has entered the Solar System and destroy the ship from the inside. Players assume the role of the cybernetic-ally enhanced trooper (starfleet elite marines) assigned to the mission, who is implanted with the special combat Battle Frenzy Chip which gives the soldier an unstoppable desire to kill, a condition known as “Bloodshot”.
The Graphics
Bloodshot uses a pseudo-3D style of graphics called Raycasting. It’s not the only game for the system that does it, but Bloodshot does a great job giving us screen real-estate and multiple weapons, enemies and levels. Zero Tolerance is a popular comparison, released by Accolade, and it’s a lot more playable. The gameplay is smoother, you can jump, run and pick from a group of different characters with different abilities and attributes. It also supports multiplayer via Link Cable. The catch? The graphics take up a small letterbox in the top half of the screen.
On the 32x we had Doom. Doom was everywhere and it’s a great way to compare hardware between the ports. The Sega handles the game very well, it’s smooth, but even on the 32X Doom had more letterboxing than Bloodshot.
Finally, in the years since we’ve seen some incredible 3D titles hit the Sega Mega Drive. Ports of both Wolfenstein 3D and Duke Nukem 3D show what was possible with the hardware. Especially compared to the original games. Duke Nukem was developed by Tec Toy, a Sega distributor in Brazil in 1998. Wolfenstein 3D is a homebrew port Bloodshot was given an official release but you can check out both titles right now via emulator.
Wolfenstein 3D for Sega Genesis via AtariAge Forum
Duke Nukem 3D for Sega Genesis via CoolRom
Bloodshot vs Battle Frenzy (Region Differences)
Which one to get? In Germany the name Bloodshot was changed to Battle Frenzy for the cartridge release. Bloodshot was considered too violent. When the game was released in North America, the title Battle Frenzy was used to distance the game from a Comic Book bearing the same name. In the US, the cartridge version of Battle Frenzy was exclusive through the Sega Channel service. The Sega CD and Mega CD version of Battle Frenzy was released throughout Europe and North America. This CD version has several differences from the cartridge version.
To reduce loading times and disc access times, the enemies have been reduced and the levels altered. The soundtrack has also been changed to a techno trance track. In game review magazines, the CD version received higher scores. Possibly due to the small changes made to help the game load into the RAM of the Sega CD, reducing on-screen enemies and improving gameplay.
After more extreme FPS action?
Get onto the latest game straight from the Leftover Culture Review, Mall Madness 1 & 2.
