WELCO METOT HENEX TLEVEL - Battle Frenzy

Publisher: Good Deal Games (Acclaim)

Developer: Domark

Released: 2004 (1994)

I'm not sure if I've mentioned Good Deal Games on this blog or not. They're a great place to find copies of previously unreleased games for some of your favourite classic game systems. They have a decent selection of Sega CD titles available, one of which is Battle Frenzy.

Battle Frenzy was actually released in 1994 in the UK, but didn't see a North American release until a decade later.

This is another example of a Genesis cartridge game being re-released on the CD format, complete with redbook audio and... not a whole lot else. Considering this is a first-person shooter, it's not surprising to see other reviews out there on the interwebs saying it was only possible through the scaling and rotation abilities of the Sega CD hardware.

Not true. The cartridge version of the game runs pretty much exactly the same as the CD release.

The goal in Battle Frenzy is to navigate 12 levels of shooty action. Each level contains a core (or something) that you must destroy. Once that's done, you have to run back to the level entrance before a timer counts down and everything goes boom.

It's not only very repetitive – it's very difficult to play. There's a reason we didn't see a whole lot of first-person shooters on the console scene before the advent of the dual-analog stick controller. This thing is just a pain to control, with the d-pad controlling both look and forward/backward movement, and a button that you can hold in order to strafe.

When I do these updates, I always try to find something interesting about each title. It was difficult to come up with much in this case. Of course, developer Domark is one of the handful of software houses that eventually merged to create Eidos Interactive (currently owned by Square-Enix).

I thought that was all I'd have to go with. But then a name in the credits jumped out at me. Ian Li

vingstone is credited with writing the story in Battle Frenzy. If you're a child of the 80s, you might remember him as a writer of fantasy fiction, as well as one of the people behind the Fighting Fantasy series of books – a sort of single player, RPG-lite series for the younger crowd.

Turns out he's been a part of the games industry for a long time (and even before that, co-founded Games Workshop in 1975). In fact, he's still around. When Square-Enix took over Eidos he was apparently promoted to “Life President.”

Sounds fancy.