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Beyond Oasis is an action/adventure game developed by Ancient for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. It was released quite late in the system's lifecycle, late 1994 for Japan and 1995 everywhere else. Since Ancient was founded by Yuzo Koshiro, it also includes a soundtrack composed by him. This is most likely Sega's answer to The Legend of Zelda mixed with some Mana series, since there are many similarities in gameplay design, puzzle solving, and progression.
Continue reading Psychotic Reviews: Beyond Oasis
 Xenon 2 was one of my staples back in the University days, although then I played it on a pc. Now I've got the Mega Drive version I find it's almost identical, from the pounding Bomb the Bass track Megablast to the Super Nashwan firepower upgrade that's totally useless.
The game is a vertically scrolling shooter, with just about everything including the scenery being an enemy. Find yourself trapped in a cave and as the screen scrolls to the bottom and no way to back out and you've lost a life. As is common with most of these shooters the enemies arrive in predetermined waves and always fly the same pattern, which means that to extract the best out of the level you have to play it and play it and play it so that the patterns become second nature.
Each swarm of enemies destroyed creates bubbles on screen that when collected translate into money that you can then use for upgrades, some of which can be found floating around various levels anyway.
 There's a real knack to getting the best firepower for each level and the game restricts you to what you can carry, for example you can't have both side and rear guns, but you can have an insane amount of front facing weaponry. Some of the levels have a plethora of side attacking enemies, some come from the rear.
Each level ends with a boss fight, and it's really only here that the game shows any break from swooping attack patterns as the bosses, whilst usually stationary, can actually aim and take proper shots at you. Each one has it's own weakness to be discovered, and once you do it's pretty straightforward to repeatedly exploit this until it explodes into a mass of bubble coins.
 During each level and again at the end you're able to visit the shop to buy and sell upgrades and it's vital that you make the right choice here - buy a side shot on a level where everything happens behind you and it makes for a very frustrating experience indeed.
The game is quite short, taking about and hour to play to the end, but the memorization required to achieve anything like a decent high score is phenomenal and will take many more hours.
I'd thoroughly recommend it to anyone wanting to play a simple shooter that doesn't require the reflexes of todays shmups, and fancies a bit of 80s electronica as background. A word of warning though, the only music track is Megablast, and after about 30 minutes of playing it my kids told me to 'turn that damn noise off'. I expect they'll be shouting at me to get off their lawns next.
 For his 15th birthday in 2004, Mega Man (or Rockman, if you prefer) recieved the special treatment and had all 8 of his original games bundled up and re-released with some special extras on the Xbox, PS2, and GameCube. Fortunately (or unfortunately) each version has unique exclusives, making no version inferior to the others (that includes you, GameCube). If you're a hardcore Mega-Maniac and that still isn't enough, there's always Mega Man X Collection gathering up all the other titles.
Whatever you call him, the blue bomber always delivers the right technique, and should he defeat you... he will assimilate your specialty move into himself, further expanding his arsenal. Just look at the lineup of bosses little Rockman conquered in Mega Man 2, he means business.
There are few "Mega" things that can rock as hard as Rockman himself, but Sega knew how. Affectionately called the Mega Drive in Europe and Japan, this 16-bit system ushered Sega into the golden age of gaming in the early 90s; with an edge that showed even mighty Nintendo that the stakes were raised.
Finally, we acknowledge a collector with fairly even-spread numbers for most of his consoles. All games in silentscythe's collection are childhood favorites, and likely get some play every once in a while. A healthy helping of RPGs and adventure games always catches my eye, and are a welcome addition to any collection.
That's all for now. Check out chat tonight, and tune in to channel 3...
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